Recent elections in western industrialized democracies have been marred by accusations of interference by concerted social media campaigns that targeted specific demographic categories of voters with disinformation and propaganda. How is digital disinformation created and spread online? How can we inoculate ourselves against its effects? How can we use the current crisis of trust in digital media, and the role of disinformation in dividing society, to develop a more responsible digital civics? Dr. Joan Donovan of Data and Society will discuss her work as the lead researcher for digital media manipulation and digital platform accountability with Professor and Associate Dean Paul Dourish, Department of Informatics. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Tom Boellstorff, Department of Anthropology.

Free and open to the public.

 

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Part of the Digital Extremism: Understanding and Confronting the Alt-right’s Digital Toolkit series:

Recent elections in western industrialized democracies have been marred by accusations of interference by concerted social media campaigns that targeted specific demographic categories of voters with disinformation and propaganda. Almost overnight, political advisors, scholars, data analysis professionals, and the social media platforms themselves realized they needed a crash course in the use and abuse of the marriage between predictive analytics and digital content. Through a series of activities and programs on campus featuring a noted expert in digital media manipulation; a graduate student workshop to create curricular modules; a grant-writing workshop; and the development of a new undergraduate course on digital media manipulation, we will give students the tools they need to understand how digital disinformation is created and spreads online, to inoculate themselves against its effects, and ultimately to encourage a responsible digital civics for the social, mobile, always-online connected world in which everything—including our political discourse—now lives.

A Series of Events featuring Joan Donovan, Digital Media Manipulation Lead, Data and Society

April 4-6, 2018

Sponsors:
School of Social Sciences | Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science
Office of Inclusive Excellence Confronting Extremism Initiative

For a full agenda, please visit https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/events/2018/2018-04-04-digital-extremism.