Disinformation: Creation, Dissemination and Pedagogical Responses

Two day conference taking place at Concordia's 4th Space April 29 & 30

Disinformation is the cognitive, political, and social plague of the 21st century. Its prevalence and in/visibility, with lightning-fast images, memes, and stories, regardless of verity thanks to social media algorithms, AI, and verbal gamesmanship, is witnessed in the flood of (mis)representations of the catastrophic events in Israel/Gaza, the 2024 USA Presidential election, and rising Hindu nationalism in India that exposes religious minorities to unspeakable violence. The explosion of maliciously fabricated content has spurred specialists in scientific and humanistic disciplines (Information Studies, Media Studies, Library Studies, Political Science, Cultural Studies, Education) to identify, analyze, and disrupt disinformation.

What has been missing is a common space for sharing and refining approaches to research and scholarship in disinformation with concrete pedagogical strategies for combatting it. The Disinformation: Creation, Dissemination and Pedagogical Responses conference is a unique, interdisciplinary two-day series of events of academic conversations, pedagogical workshops, film screenings, and art-based performances at Concordia University on April 29 and 30, 2024 where these thorny issues will be tackled from multiple perspectives.

The goal is to engage participants in critical methods to combat disinformation and equip teachers and professors with pedagogical methodologies and tools to cultivate students' media and reality literacy.

This conference is made possible thanks to the support and funding of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP), Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC), Concordia Office of the VP, Research & Graduate Studies, Concordia Faculty of Arts and Science, Concordia Department of Classics, Modern Languages, and Linguistics, Concordia Department of Journalism, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Please note that the information below is in progress and subject to change.