The Post-Truth Phenomenon: Fake News Data Sprint Teach-Out

Thu 15 March 2018

Jesus Lane Friends Meeting House

***Registration essential.  Bring a laptop if you have one!  No prior experience needed***

A Field Guide to “Fake News” and Other Information Disorders explores the use of digital methods to study false viral news, political memes, trolling practices and their social life online.

It responds to an increasing demand for understanding the interplay between digital platforms, misleading information, propaganda and viral content practices, and their influence on politics and public life in democratic societies.

It is a project of the Public Data Lab with support from First Draft.

This fake news data sprint is part of the line-up of post-truth phenomenon events March 15th-17th. See website for other listings: https://posttruthphenomenon.wordpress.com

‘Post-Truth’ was the 2016 Oxford Dictionaries word of the year. Announced in November, shortly after the election of Donald Trump in the United States and the referendum on Brexit in the United Kingdom, this selection added fuel to an ongoing mainstream and social media frenzy about fake news and ‘alternative facts’ and concomitant implications for politics, citizenship, journalism, and beyond. The post-truth phenomenon, ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief,’ as defined by Oxford Dictionaries, has been the subject of much instant commentary – though little academic analysis. This conference is an opportunity to consolidate and advance our understanding of the post-truth phenomenon by bringing together scholars across disciplines. At the conference’s core is the view that this is a moment of ‘knowledge controversy,’ namely, a rupture of the naturalised order that provides a window onto the norms, practices, and power relations supporting that naturalised order.

Cost: free