COVID-19 Misinformation: Understanding and Seeking Truth During a Pandemic

COVID-19 Misinformation: Understanding and Seeking Truth During a Pandemic
November 30, 2020
Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic continues to create confusion and contention along scientific and political lines. In this conversation, Berkeley faculty will help us understand the nature of misinformation in order to assess, evaluate and engage more effectively with the information resources we consult. They will discuss some of the reasons for the rapid spread of misinformation, how predictive algorithms often reinforce existing beliefs and stereotypes, and how current legislation is addressing issues such as partisanship, accountability, and human rights. They will also present some new online tools for determining the trustworthiness of news sources, and for recognizing multiple vantage points of different issues.

Nobel Laureate Saul Perlmutter, Director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science and Professor of Physics, will moderate this webcast conversation with panelists Nick Adams, a former BIDS Research Fellow and now Founder & Chief Scientist of Goodly Labs, an organization that provides collaborative online resources and opportunities that enable citizen scientists to engage with publicly available data; Hany Farid, a professor with joint appointments in UC Berkeley’s School of Information and department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, whose research focuses on digital forensics, image analysis, and human perception; and Deirdre K. Mulligan, a professor in the UC Berkeley School of Information and a Faculty Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology whose research explores the legal and technical means of protecting values such as privacy, freedom of expression, and fairness in emerging technical systems.

Location: Virtual
Speaker: Discussion
Affliliation: UC Berkeley