Building resilience to mis- and disinformation. More than ever, we need tools and knowledge to combat all the false and misleading information that is going viral and resulting in an “info-demic”. The information ecosystem is helping to foster increased division and distrust. Misinformation spreading on social media has moved beyond an unfortunate fact of life – it has become an incendiary tool: fueling polarization and hate, driving down trust in institutions, amplifying fringe science and conspiracies, and inciting violence. Every political and social issue is now impacted by the threat of false and misleading claims that can confuse and radicalize the public.
Join us on Friday, September 9 at 1:00 p.m. (ET) as we learn more from Cameron Hickey of the National Conference on Citizenship on how to build our capacity to establish resilience to the impact of mis/disinformation. Learn how, together, we can make a meaningful difference!
Cameron Hickey is the Project Director for Algorithmic Transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship. He leads an effort to develop methodologies and tools for collecting and analyzing data to increase transparency about how large digital platforms impact society.
Hickey was formerly a research fellow at the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. As a fellow, he investigated the spread of mis- and dis-information on social media through the development of tools to identify and analyze problematic content. Hickey helped lead the Shorenstein Center’s Information Disorder Lab which monitored disinformation during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.
Previously, Hickey covered science and technology for the PBS NewsHour and NOVA with correspondent Miles O’Brien. Hickey has won a News and Documentary Emmy Award and a Newhouse Mirror Award for his journalism and was also a Knight Foundation Prototype Grantee for his junk news monitoring tool NewsTracker, and won a 2019 Brown Institute Magic Grant to investigate inauthentic activity on social media. His work has appeared on the PBS NewsHour, NOVA, Bill Moyers, American Experience, WNET, and The New York Times.
Agenda: