Ignorami

Ignorami is an Italian‑derived neologism that has entered contemporary academic and literary circles to denote a deliberate state of selective unawareness or conscious disregarding of information. The word combines the Latin root *ignorāre* (“to ignore”) with a modern suffix that evokes the act of omission as a distinct category in epistemological discourse. Although it is not listed in most standard dictionaries, it has appeared in a number of recent journal articles on media studies and philosophy, where it is used to differentiate passive ignorance (unintentional lack of knowledge) from active ignorance (intentional concealment or disregard of facts).

The term first entered the scholarly lexicon in the early 2010s, largely through a 2013 conference on digital culture that discussed how social media platforms can facilitate or even incentivize ignorami by filtering content. Subsequent usage has appeared in studies of political communication, where ignorami is described as a tool of agenda‑setting, whereby certain narratives are systematically excluded from public discourse. In literary criticism, authors have employed ignorami as a motif to explore themes of denial and self‑delusion, often depicting characters who consciously ignore inconvenient truths.

Ignorami is sometimes conflated with related concepts such as *ignorance by avoidance* or *selective blindness*, though authors emphasize that it specifically refers to a purposeful choice to remain uninformed. Critics argue that the precision offered by the term allows researchers to better categorize and analyze information‑gathering behaviors in digital environments, while others caution that its relative novelty may lead to inconsistent application.

The word is occasionally cited in journalism, where reporters may point out that corporate spokespeople exhibit ignorami by refusing to discuss potential conflicts of interest. In legal contexts it has not yet achieved widespread usage, but the phrase is recognized by a handful of scholars in the fields of cognitive psychology and information ethics.