From social movements to political parties, governments, dissidents, and corporations, many groups engage in active efforts to shape media narratives. These efforts to exploit technical, social, economic and institutional configurations of media can catalyze social change, sow dissent, and challenge the stability of social institutions.
The News Integrity Initiative and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism will host Data & Society Research Institute and researchers from the Media Manipulation Initiative (MMI) for an overview of the research initiative’s approach to understanding the social, political, and economic incentives to game information systems, websites, platforms, and search engines. The team will also preview several of their upcoming research reports for an audience of journalists and media makers.
Speakers for the evening will include:
- Joan Donovan, Research Lead for the Media Manipulation Initiative, with an overview of Data & Society’s Media Manipulation Initiative and a preview of The Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists, Antagonists, and Manipulators Online by Whitney Phillips. The paper focuses on interviews with journalists and seeks to create a new paradigm for editorial best practices that is designed to minimize narrative hijacking by bad-faith actors (launching May 22);
- danah boyd, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and Founder/President of Data & Society, on Media Literacy Frames which draws on Dr. boyd’s work examining the unique challenges of trying to inform the public amidst an epistemological war;
- Francesca Tripodi, Data & Society Researcher, on Searching for Alternative Facts, Analyzing Scriptural Inference in Conservative News Practices informed by Dr. Tripodi’s ethnographic research within upper-middle class communities in the Southeastern United States (launching May 16);
- Jeff Jarvis, CUNY’s Director of Tow-Knight Center for Entreprenurial Journalism, will join Joan Donovan in an armchair conversation.
The program for the evening will end with a faciliated Q&A discussion with the audience. A catered reception will follow the talk.