On March 16, 2017, Dr. Hans Klein (Georgia Tech, professor of public policy), Jason Wright (Georgia Tech, library communications director), and I met for a public, panel-style discussion on the phenomenon of "fake news." Organized by Karen Viars (Georgia Tech library, humanities specialist) the event was well-attended by faculty and students across the Institute. Discussions ranged from questions of bias, to the questionable "new-ness" of fake news, to the role of the social web in the proliferation of fake news, to the complexities of digital media literacy.
My contributions to the conversation focused primarily on: the role of the social web and the ways fake news fits into the vernacular rhetorics of the web (listicles, hyperbole, tweet-sized messages, hashtags, memes, etc), and the complex problems of becoming digitally literate, given the split between front- and back-ends of computational media. Following the panel, Dr. Hans Klein and I were asked to participate in a documentary-style news series about Fake News produced by Atlanta's local NBC affiliate, 11Alive. The series is called "For Fake's Sake," and is viewable here. |