"Harms of Online Misinformation" Workshop

About the Event:

Misperceptions threaten to warp mass opinion and public policy on controversial issues in politics, science, and health, but we should beware data-free claims and moral panics.

This talk reviews the evidence on several widely held myths about misinformation: that most Americans are in online echo chambers, that false news and extreme content are widely consumed, that social media causes widespread harms, and that fact-checks usually backfire. In each case, the conventional wisdom misunderstands the problem in ways that could undermine efforts to effectively address it.

Wednesday, September 30th

Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center | Auditorium — Tickets are free, but advance registration is required to attend

• 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM | Lecture
• 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM | Reception

About Brendan Nyhan, PhD:

Brendan Nyhan is the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. His research, which focuses on misperceptions about politics and health care, has been published in journals including Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Nature Human Behaviour, Pediatrics, and Vaccine. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a former Guggenheim and Carnegie Fellow.

Nyhan also co-directs Bright Line Watch, a nonpartisan watchdog that monitors the status of American democracy. He was previously a contributor to The Upshot at The New York Times and a media critic for Columbia Journalism Review; co-founder of Spinsanity, a nonpartisan watchdog of political spin syndicated in the Philadelphia Inquirer; and co-author of All the President’s Spin, a New York Times bestseller.

Questions? Please contact: Tami Muethel, CMP | College Events Manager at SSC.CollegeEvents@msu.edu