Epistemic in/justice and theories of multiple source use: A narrative review and emerging sociocultural model

Multiple source use (MSU) is a common phenomenon in everyday literacy tasks, and learning environments. A subset of MSU tasks implicates justice concerns, in requiring readers to engage with contested or contentious issues, or/and issues of power and in/equity in source and content evaluation and underlying topics of foci. Epistemic in/justice provides a conceptual frame to understand some of these issues, relating to testimonial and hermeneutic in/justice in how sources are treated and the interpretive resource available for epistemic communities to build knowledge. This article introduces a novel emerging account of epistemic in/justice in theoretical models of multiple source use, through a narrative review of both literatures that highlights areas of intersection in MSU tasks. We provide an exemplification of the account through discussion of a vignette describing a typical MSU task, and possible sites for closing, opening, and activating opportunities for engagement with epistemic justice in this task. Our approach has implications both in the use of MSU in research (as instantiating, probing, or challenging epistemic justice), and in MSU task design for pedagogic contexts.