(via Polly Boruff-Jones, Indiana University Kokomo)
Indiana University Kokomo is pleased to announce a free, one-day interdisciplinary symposium:
“Mind over Chatter”: Mindfulness, Media, & Misinformation in the Digital Era
Friday, September 13, 2019
Kokomo, Indiana
Keynote speaker: Michael Caulfield, Director of Blended and Networked Learning, Washington State University, and author of Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers
“Falsehood is the essence of all media, extending mankind’s natural inclination to myth-making.” – Marshall McLuhan
This symposium seeks to bring together a diverse group of scholars, teachers, and thinkers from around the state of Indiana and beyond to discuss pedagogical strategies and solutions to help today’s college students cope with “network propaganda” of all kinds. In an increasingly complex, fast-moving, and confusing digital media environment rife with problematic information (mis- and disinformation, propaganda, so-called “fake news,” pseudo-science, manipulation, etc.), what are our responsibilities as teachers and literacy advocates? How might we reconceptualize our roles against a societal backdrop of declining trust in professions and institutions?
The conference organizers welcome either individual paper proposals (approx. 15 minutes) or panel presentations of 3-4 presenters (approx. 45 minutes). All sessions will be 60 minutes total with 15 minutes reserved for a robust Q & A. Please upload your proposal (500-word maximum) with contact information to this Google form by July 19, 2019 at 11:59pm EDT. Presenters will be notified of their acceptance via email no later than July 26, 2019. Hotel, travel, and registration information will be announced in July. For any and all queries, contact the conference organizers, Paul Cook and Polly Boruff-Jones, via email at cfp19@iuk.edu.
We are most interested in exploring how the practice of mindfulness–in a variety of forms and formats–can contribute to and deepen our students’ understanding of the current epistemological moment and the way misinformation flows, functions, and moves through the digital media ecosystem. Approaches may draw from any of the following topics, though presenters are encouraged to depart from and elaborate on these ideas as they see fit:
- Using mindfulness techniques/habits of mind approaches to teach digital information literacy (e.g., confirmation bias, truth-default theory, mere exposure effect, epistemic dependence, etc.)
- Machine learning and artificial intelligence in classroom/teaching applications
- The epistemology/structure/theory of network propaganda, dis- and misinformation, manipulation, and the “post-Truth” era
- The architecture of social media networks, especially as it pertains to the spread of disinformation, propaganda, and problematic information in general
- Pedagogical approaches to digital literacy/teaching resistance to disinformation
- Misinformation in science, medicine, and technology
- The history of misinformation, histories of misinformation
- Network theory and the role of networks/social media in spreading misinformation: networks and actors, algorithms, micro-targeting, actor-network theory, materiality, object-oriented rhetorics and approaches
- Intersections between politics and misinformation