Data’s dirty tricks: The new spaces of fake news, harvesting, and contortion
As part of the new Dialogues series in the Political Worlds research cluster at the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the environment, we are hosting a panel on ‘Data’s Dirty Tricks.’ I have helped organised this event (with Dr Ian Klinke and Dr Daniel Bos) and shall be chairing with three fantastic speakers. The official link is now available on Oxford Talks.
These are James Ball (Journalist and author of Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World), Dr Lina Dencik (Director of the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University and co-author of the forthcoming book, Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society), and Dr Vidya Narayanan (A researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute’s Computational Propaganda Project, looking at the impact of AI).
This is being held in the Herbertson Room of the School of Geography and the Environment at 16:30, Thursday 15 November 2018 (Week 6). The blurb is below, and everyone is welcome.
In this panel we invite three individuals from different backgrounds, within and outside of the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, to offer their take on data’s dirty tricks. In an age where fake news is on the rise and data is harvested from social media platforms and beyond, what is the impact upon us all? We ask, what are the landscapes of fake news, harvesting and its contortions to conventional democratic spaces? How is it possible to respond, tie together, and understand new forms of geopolitical strategy? How do democracies respond to big data and what should be done? This panel seeks to explore this from people who take alternative approaches and offer insights into how it has impacted us so far, what is being done to tackle it, and what should be done in the future.
