Digital Policy Rounds: Mis/disinformation and the question of authenticity

Digital Policy Rounds: Mis/disinformation and the question of authenticity

Thursday, March 16 from 9 am – 10 am PST

Register here

ABOUT THE EVENT

While mis- and dis-information is primarily understood in terms of its facticity, or lack thereof, the very circulation of information such as news stories is tied to the cultural contexts in which people come to trust and rely on certain channels of information. Tackling misinformation, then, requires not just repudiation of its claims but an understanding of how and why its claims become significant — through what cultural channels — for certain groups of people. How do these channels influence what people will believe in their news and information consumption habits? How do recommender algorithms shape cultural channels that mark certain information as compelling? How does understanding the cultural sites of meaning-making help us address mis- and dis-information?

This panel seeks to surface the cultural dimensions of mis- and dis-information through the lens of authenticity: how claims to truthfulness and facticity are recognized as believable by communities, and so how those claims are authenticated as truth or facts. Our panelists will discuss the historical, technological, and political aspects of claiming access to an authentic reality, and how addressing mis- and dis-information through policy requires engaging culturally with those claims.

Register to receive the event Zoom link on the day of the event.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

• Dr. Elisha Lim is a Provosts’ Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice. Lim is currently working on a book called “Pious” that studies the rise in distorted identity politics through theology and Afropessimism, tackling issues from ethnic fraud to hyperbolic corporate solidarity statements. Lim is part of Canada’s Initiative for Digital Citizen Research, which advises on digital government policy, and is a Joint Initiative organized by SSHRC and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

• Christina de Castell is chief librarian & CEO at Vancouver Public Library, and has held roles bridging technology, collections, research and public service in her more than twenty years as a librarian. She is passionate about the role of libraries in building communities and exploring ideas, and fascinated by the way that technology is changing how we learn and communicate. Christina has represented the world’s and Canada’s libraries at UN forums including the World Intellectual Property Organization and the Internet Governance Forum, and is a member of copyright and ebook leadership groups for libraries in Canada and internationally. She is the co-author, with Paul Whitney, of Trade eBooks in Libraries: The Changing Landscape (DeGruyter, 2017), and is a frequent speaker on issues related to libraries, information and the digital world.

• Sarah Nguyễn is a PhD student at the University of Washington’s Information School. Sarah investigates information infrastructures & information disorder among immigrant diaspora and non-English communities. They apply theory into practice at the intersections of information & media infrastructures, information disorder, embodied memories, archival studies, Asian American studies, & immigrant studies. Grounded in Black and Asian technocultures with feminist practices of care, Sarah centers contextual, archival, qualitative, and community participatory methodologies alongside social media analysis. Currently, Sarah contributes to the NSF Rapid Response Research with UW Center for an Informed Public about problematic information discourses within the Vietnamese and Latine diaspora; and to the AfterLab about community archives in response to COVID-19. Her research has been featured in Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, VICE, BuzzFeed News, KUOW Public Radio, NPR, Saigon Broadcasting Television Network, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, and InDance magazine.

• Divyani Motla is a PhD Candidate at the Department of History, University of Toronto; also affiliated with the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies. Her research explores connected transnational histories and articulations of religion and power, with a focus on Sikh ethno-nationalism, in India and Canada. Divyani is a Lead Editor with the Jamhoor collective, a Left media organisation based in Toronto focusing on South Asia and the South Asian diaspora in North America; and Editor of the Past Tense Graduate Review of History, a journal housed in the Department of History at University of Toronto.

This event intends to bring together experts in the field to discuss culturally- and community-specific ways to understand and address the spread of mis- and dis-information. It is organized in partnership with the Digital Democracies Institute at SFU; the University of British Columbia’s Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions; the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University; Toronto Metropolitan University’s Leadership Lab; and the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa.