[Air-L] Critical Disinformation Studies Syllabus

[Dr. Emma Briant]

Yes, I agree... sent private comments to Alice myself. I have been getting
increasingly frustrated with the spinning off of disinfo studies as
something completely new and separate from wider studies of related forms
of propaganda, as well as the history of its study and structural studies
of media and communication. While there are certainly new and emergent
developments they need understanding in context and it's an important
effort to anchor these studies back in the field. Bravo I say...

On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 1:00 PM Sarah Ann Oates <soates at umd.edu> wrote:

> My student found this yesterday and shared. It is AMAZING. Thank you so
> much for doing this -- it really helps the field!
>
> Sarah Oates
> Pronoun: she/her
>
> Professor and Senior Scholar
> Philip Merrill College of Journalism
> iSchool Affiliate Professor
> University of Maryland
> College Park, MD 20457
> Email: soates at umd.edu
> Phone: 301 455 2332
> www.media-politics.com
> Twitter: @media_politics
>
> *Support the UMD Student Crisis Fund
> <https://giving.umd.edu/giving/showPage.php?name=crisis-funding> today. *
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 9:31 AM Alice E. Marwick <amarwick at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Today I’m excited to announce the Critical Disinformation Studies
> syllabus,
> > a collective effort to make disinformation research more contextual,
> > historical, and power-oriented.
> >
> > The syllabus is hosted at
> https://citap.unc.edu/research/critical-disinfo/
> >
> > The goal of the syllabus is to push back on narratives of disinformation
> > that begin with the 2016 US presidential election and focus on the role
> of
> > social media platforms in spreading and generating false content. At
> their
> > worst, these narratives imply that in the past, everyone shared the same
> > sense of what was true and what was false; that this collective
> > understanding was reinforced by legacy media like newspapers and TV news;
> > and that “fake news,” disinformation, and inauthentic online behavior are
> > responsible for a global far-right shift to populism exemplified by
> Brexit
> > and the Trump presidency. None of these assumptions hold up to scrutiny.
> >
> > At CITAP, we take a critical approach to research on platforms, politics,
> > and information which incorporates history, inequality, power, and
> culture.
> > To demonstrate how these principles play out in practice, we created a
> > Critical Disinformation Studies syllabus as a provocation to
> disinformation
> > researchers to rethink many of the assumptions of our nascent field.
> While
> > the syllabus is fully-functional as is—it could be implemented in its
> > current form for a graduate level seminar—it is also an essay in syllabus
> > form. We draw from a very broad range of scholarship, much which falls
> > outside of conventional studies of “disinformation,” to expand our
> > understanding of what “counts” as disinformation. The syllabus also draws
> > from historical case studies - Japanese incarceration, the Welfare Queen,
> > the Central Park 5, Black liberation, AIDS/HIV - to examine how the
> state,
> > the media, and the political establishment regularly use disinformation
> to
> > reinforce inequality.
> >
> > My co-authors on this project are Rachel Kuo, Shanice Cameron, and Moira
> > Weigel. The syllabus is supported by CITAP. And our thanks go out to the
> > many scholars whose work inspired us to bring this project to life.
> >
> > Warmly
> >
> > Alice
> >
> > Alice E. Marwick, PhD (she/her)
> > Associate Professor, Department of Communication
> > Principal Researcher, Center for Information, Technology and Public Life
> > (CITAP)
> > University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
> > amarwick at gmail.com
> > http://www.tiara.org
> > http://citap.unc.edu
> > _______________________________________________
> > The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> >
> > Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> > http://www.aoir.org/
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/



-- 
Dr Emma L Briant
Independent Researcher/Author/Analyst
Associate Researcher at Human Rights Program
Bard College,
Annandale on Hudson
New York

Website: www.emma-briant.co.uk
Author of: *Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism: Strategies for Global
Change *from
Manchester University Press
Co-Author of: *Bad News for Refugees* with Prof. Greg Philo and Dr. Pauline
Donald from Pluto Press.
Follow me on Twitter @emmalbriant