Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0253 - Birds Aren't Real: Critical Disinformation Studies

As one recent US President noted, the new media ecosystem "means everything is true and nothing is true." Banned from all top social media platforms, including Twitter, the President's predecessor launched Truth Social as the flagship application of his social media platform, which Vanity Fair characterizes as "a cringeworthy joke." Working within the interdisciplinary field of media studies, in this course we will take a case-study approach to exploring contemporary issues related to the post-truth world order: disinformation, fake news, deepfakes, crisis actor claims, conspiracy theories, and the like. In so doing, we will be attentive to creative and satirical responses to such challenges, as well as consider the need for public institutions to intervene. Students will write weekly responses to assigned texts, conduct independent research, produce a final paper on a topic of their own choosing, and participate in an end-of-semester mini-conference. Keywords: disinformation, misinformation, meme magic, 4chan, activism.

Media and Technology Students in this course should expect to spend 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.