Digital technologies such as the Internet and World Wide Web, social media platforms, and smartphones have greatly expanded the quantity of information produced and shared by humans and its reach, with tremendous positive benefits. However, these tools also enable the rapid creation and distribution of misinformation and disinformation, which can have significant negative ramifications for individuals and for society overall. Now, newer technologies including modern AI tools are enabling even more convincing false information to reach the most susceptible targets for consuming and sharing it, exacerbating the problems to new levels. Technologies are part of the misinformation/disinformation problems, but can technologies—and their makers—be part of new solutions to fight it? How? And in the meantime, how can we protect ourselves, our companies, and our communities from being misled, accidentally or on purpose, and promote identification and refutation of falsehoods, and educational sharing of demonstrably accurate information?
Join us on October 4 for this important in-person and online event--conversation with three experts with backgrounds in communications, information sciences, and public policy--as we bring together UT Austin professors Talia Stroud (Moody College of Communications) , Matt Lease (School of Information), and Sherri Greenberg (LBJ School of Public Affairs) to examine the current challenges and discuss remediations and even potential solutions. This moderated discussion will conclude with recommendations for individuals and organizations, followed by questions from the audience. After the main event, please stay for networking and ongoing discussion among speakers and attendees, with free eats and drinks courtesy of the awesome Austin Forum sponsors listed below. And, thanks to our sponsor SXSW, one in-person attendee with the best question of the night will win a free badge to SXSW 2023!
Agenda
6:00-6:15 p.m. - Networking and live musical performance
6:15-7:30 p.m. - Presentation
7:30-8:00 p.m. - Q&A
Speakers
Sherri Greenberg is a Professor Practice and Fellow of the Max Sherman Chair in State and Local Government at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. She is a Chairperson of the Board of Managers of Central Health, a Member of the City of Austin Regional Affordability Committee, and a Member of the UT Opportunity Forum Steering Committee. Also, she serves on the Texas.Gov Steering Committee, the Austin CityUP Board of Directors, the Austin Forum on Technology & Society Advisory Board, and the City of Austin General Obligation Housing Bond Review Committee. Additionally, she has served as a Senior Advisor to Austin Mayor Steve Adler. Greenberg was a Texas State Representative from 1991 to 2001, and she chaired the House Pensions and Investments Committee and the Select Committee on Teacher Health Insurance. She also served on the House Appropriations, Economic Development, Elections, and Science and Technology Committees. Previously, Greenberg was the City of Austin Capital Finance Manager, and a Public Finance Officer at Standard & Poor’s. Greenberg holds an MSc in Public Administration and Policy from the London School of Economics. Her teaching and research interests include technology and innovation, urban and state issues, public engagement, housing, transportation, healthcare, public finance, and campaigns and elections. Her recent publications are Congress and Social Media: Beyond Facebook & Twitter, Using Innovation and Technology to Improve City Services, Austin Anchors & The Innovation Zone: Building Collaborative Capacity, Congressional Committees and Social Media, and Congress + Social Media.
Matthew Lease is a Professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and an Amazon Scholar in Amazon Web Services. His research integrates artificial intelligence (AI) and human-computer interaction techniques in the fields of crowdsourcing, information retrieval, and natural language processing. Lease is one of the faculty leaders of UT’s Good Systems, an eight-year, university-wide Grand Challenge "moonshot" to design responsible AI technologies. As part of Good Systems, Lease is leading a seven-member faculty team investigating explainable AI techniques to curb disinformation. Lease is the recipient of three early career awards (NSF, DARPA, and IMLS) and various paper awards.
Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud (Ph.D., Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania) holds the E. M. "Ted" Dealey Professorship in the Business of Journalism and is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and the School of Journalism and Media, as well as the founding and current Director of the Center for Media Engagement (mediaengagement.org) and the Interim Director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life in the Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. The Center for Media Engagement seeks to understand and improve the media’s role in a democracy. She is currently co-leading a first-of-its-kind collaboration between Facebook and the academic community to assess the platform’s effect in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and collaborating on project to re-envision public life on platforms through the New_ Public project. Stroud is a Fellow of the International Communication Association and the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Stroud’s research on the media’s role in a democracy has received numerous national and international awards, including the International Communication Association (ICA)'s prestigious Outstanding Book Award in 2012 for her book Niche News: The Politics of News Choice, the inaugural Public Engagement Award from the Journalism Studies Division of the ICA in 2019, the 2016 Bill Eadie Distinguished Award for a Scholarly Article from the National Communication Association (NCA), the 2019 and 2011 Michael Pfau Outstanding Article Awards from NCA, and the 2020 Walter Lippmann Best Published Article Award from the American Political Science Association’s Political Communication Section. Stroud serves on the editorial boards of ten academic journals and the advisory boards of SciLine, a part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Social Science Research Council’s Media & Democracy Initiative. Stroud twice received the Outstanding Faculty Member Award from the Communication Studies Graduate Community.