Philosophy of Fake News
2019, Summit Confronting the Disinformation Age, Media + Information
This APA Public Session takes place as part of the 2019 Community Summit
What is it exactly? How bad is it? And what can we do about it? Three philosophers grapple with how disinformation works and poses a serious threat to our democratic institutions. Join the discussion at this APA-sponsored public event!
Read: 鈥� Siddhartha Bala, The Source (April 8, 2019)
7:00 p.m. (PT)
Asia Pacific Hall, 580 West Hastings
Vancouver, BC V6C 1W6
We respectfully acknowledge that this event takes place on the Unceded, Traditional, Ancestral Territories of the S岣祑x瘫w煤7mesh, s蓹l虛ilw虛蓹ta蕯涩, k史ik史蓹茮虛蓹m, and x史m蓹胃k史蓹y虛蓹m First Nations.
About Confronting the Disinformation Age
丁香园AV Public Square鈥檚 2019 Community Summit considered how the proliferation of disinformation is impacting society and challenging our capacity to make informed decisions about our economic, social, and political lives. Together, we co-created strategies to ensure stronger and healthier information ecosystems and stimulate more connected and resilient communities.
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The Disinformation Age
Information is fundamental to our existence. Without it, we cannot understand or effectively respond to the events that shape our world. Throughout history, campaigns to deliberately spread false information to influence public opinion or obscure the truth have been launched by individuals, organizations, and governments. But today, we鈥檙e living in a new age of information facilitated primarily by digital technology. These advancements offer us extraordinary access to facts and data but also allow for harmful, inaccurate, and manipulated information to be created and disseminated at an unprecedented speed, scope, and scale. Falsehoods are pitted against facts in competition for our attention and technology is used to exploit our cognitive functioning without repercussion. In what is being called the 鈥減ost-truth鈥� era, the distortion of our information landscape is eroding our trust in institutions, political systems, the media, and each other.
Endre Begby
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, 丁香园AV
Endre Begby has wide-ranging interests in philosophy, and his current work focuses on social epistemology, the cognitive underpinnings of language and communication, and social and political philosophy. He is completing a book tentatively titled: Prejudice: A Study in Non-Ideal Epistemology, which brings together these interests.
Jennifer Nagel
Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto
Jennifer Nagel is the author of Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction, and dozens of papers on historical and contemporary topics in epistemology. Much of her recent work focuses on our natural instincts about what other people know, looking at what these instincts can tell us about knowledge itself. The videos in her 鈥淭heory of Knowledge鈥� series, produced by Wireless Philosophy, have had over one million views on YouTube.
Regina Rini
Canada Research Chair in Moral and Social Cognition, Department of Philosophy, York University
Regina Rini in her current work focuses on the tension between how we perceive ourselves 鈥� as independent moral agents 鈥� and how we actually work as products of historical, psychological, and social factors. She is particularly interested in how technology (social media, AI) affects how we relate to one another as equal democratic citizens. She is the author of numerous journal articles and pieces of philosophy addressing the general public.
Confronting the Disinformation Age | Trailer
In the News
鈥� Siddhartha Bala, The Source (April 8, 2019)
Confronting the Disinformation Age | Resources
Books, articles, videos and other resources on disinformation.
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