Reputation in Democracies

This chapter contains an attempt to understand the implications of reputation for epistemic life and public decisions. It explains the way people think about themselves and their role as informed citizens must adapt to a certain transformation. People need to develop new tools to govern their actions and the circulation of their opinions. The chapter connects the theme of the movie “Birdman” with reputation, which implies that what people say about others and about everything that exists provides the only available window through which we people come to know themselves and recognize the world. Most political and institutional decisions today are made in an irresponsible manner because based on the uncritical acceptance of potentially spurious indicators announcing that the reputation of a certain person or organization, for instance, is merited, even when no one has bothered to examine how such a conclusion was reached. The chapter ends by examining the impact of specific reputational signals and their power of seduction.