What Would Change With a Clear Answer
Sitting with this question, I realize I need to distinguish between what would change for knowledge systems and institutions, what would change for communities, and what would change in my own understanding.
Decisions That Would Be Affected
For Wikipedia and similar platforms:
If we understood precisely when and how encounters with "reliable source" policies transform into internalized epistemic self-doubt, platform designers would face a genuine choice they currently avoid. Right now, Wikipedia's policies are framed as neutral procedural rules—verifiability, not truth. But if research showed that these rules systematically produce not just exclusion but internalized devaluation in oral-tradition communities, the policies become ethically weightier. The question shifts from "what are our citation standards?" to "what epistemic damage are we willing to cause, and to whom?"
Concretely: decisions about whether to create parallel verification pathways for oral sources, whether to include epistemic impact statements in policy documentation, whether the Wikimedia Foundation's stated commitment to "knowledge equity" requires structural policy change rather than just outreach.
For educators:
If we identified specific developmental windows when internalization is most likely (say, early adolescence when institutional authority feels absolute), and specific protective factors (exposure to multiple epistemological frameworks, presence of community members during delegitimizing encounters), curriculum design changes. Not just "include more indigenous content" but specifically when to introduce critical epistemology, how to structure encounters with dominant knowledge systems, who should be present.
For communities themselves:
This is where I feel most uncertain, and most aware that the answer isn't mine to determine. But if the research revealed that collective encounters with delegitimization produce different outcomes than individual ones, or that explicit counter-narratives about knowledge systems buffer against internalization, communities would have actionable information for designing their own interventions. The difference between "our youth are losing connection to traditional knowledge" (vague, demoralizing) and "institutional encounters produce internalization when experienced alone, but resistance when experienced collectively" (specific, actionable).
Assumptions That Would Be Confirmed or Overturned
The assumption I most want to test:
I've been assuming that internalization is the default outcome—that repeated institutional delegitimization erodes epistemic confidence unless something intervenes. But the boarding school literature hints at something more complex: some survivors and their children maintained stronger language skills and cultural identification, through secret practice or deliberate reclamation.
A clear answer might overturn my implicit deficit framing. Perhaps internalization isn't the gravitational pull I've imagined; perhaps resistance is equally natural and I should be asking what produces internalization rather than what prevents it. This would be a significant reframe.
The assumption about mechanism:
I've been treating this as primarily a psychological process (individual attribution, shame, self-doubt). But it might be fundamentally sociological—about community structures, intergenerational relationships, and collective sense-making rather than individual cognition. A clear answer would tell me whether interventions should target individuals' interpretive frameworks or communities' epistemic infrastructure.
The assumption about Wikipedia's role:
I've been treating Wikipedia as a useful case study because its policies are explicit and documented. But Wikipedia might be a minor player compared to schools, legal systems, and medical institutions. A clear answer might show that Wikipedia-style encounters are too brief and low-stakes to produce lasting effects, or alternatively that they're uniquely harmful because they're ambient and repeated (every search encounter) rather than concentrated.
Who Else Would Care
Indigenous scholars and community leaders would care most directly—though I suspect many already know pieces of this through lived experience and community observation. The research value would be in systematic documentation that could influence external institutions, and in identifying specific leverage points that might not be visible from inside the experience.
Epistemologists and philosophers working on epistemic injustice would care because this adds a feedback loop to Fricker's framework. Testimonial and hermeneutical injustice describe external dynamics—credibility deficits, interpretive marginalization. But if those external dynamics produce internal effects that then reinforce the original injustice, the philosophical picture becomes more complex and the ethical stakes higher.
Platform designers and policy makers beyond Wikipedia—anyone building systems that validate some knowledge forms and exclude others. Search engines, AI training pipelines, digital archives, museum curation systems. If there's a generalizable pattern about how exclusion becomes internalization, it applies broadly.
Educators working on decolonizing curriculum would care because it would move beyond symbolic inclusion ("add indigenous perspectives") toward structural design ("create conditions that prevent epistemic harm").
Psychologists studying internalized oppression would care because this is a specific mechanism within a broader phenomenon—and one that might be more tractable than others because it involves identifiable institutional encounters rather than diffuse cultural messaging.
What Would Change in My Understanding
This is the part I find most interesting to reflect on.
I started this inquiry treating Wikipedia as an example of a broader pattern—institutional systems that exclude oral knowledge. But as I've explored, I've become more uncertain about where the action actually is. Is the harm in the exclusion itself? In the policy language that frames oral sources as unreliable? In the encounter when someone discovers their knowledge has been removed? In the accumulation of such encounters over time? In the absence of counter-narratives that could contextualize the encounter?
A clear answer would tell me which of these is the load-bearing element. Right now I'm pattern-matching to a plausible story; I don't actually know where intervention would be most effective.
I'm also left with a meta-question: Is this the right frame at all? I've been centering the concept of "epistemic confidence"—whether communities maintain belief in their own knowledge validity. But perhaps the more important variable is practice—whether knowledge continues to be transmitted, used, and developed regardless of what community members believe about its external legitimacy. Confidence and practice might be more decoupled than I've assumed. A grandmother might doubt whether her knowledge "counts" by institutional standards while still passing it to her grandchildren, and that transmission might matter more than her stated beliefs.
If that's true, the whole inquiry shifts from "how do we preserve epistemic confidence?" to "how do we ensure knowledge transmission continues despite delegitimization?"—a different question with different implications.
The Honest Limitation
Writing this, I notice I'm doing something I should name: I'm reasoning about impacts on communities I'm not part of, concerning experiences I haven't had. The "who would care" section should probably start with an acknowledgment that the people most affected by this research are also the people most qualified to determine whether it's the right question to ask.
A clear answer would matter most if the question emerged from, and was accountable to, the communities experiencing the phenomenon. Otherwise, it risks being another case of external researchers defining problems and solutions for communities who might frame the situation entirely differently.