The University of Wisconsin-Madison Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership and UW-Whitewater are co-sponsoring a virtual lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 30.
Siva Vaidhyanathan will present “Cacophony: How Disinformation, Distraction and the Heckler’s Veto Undermine Collective Thought.”
This virtual lecture is free and open to public. Visit https://thompsoncenter.wisc.edu/events/ for details on how to attend.
A cultural historian, media scholar, and lecturer, Vaidhyanathan serves as the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and the director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia.
Vaidhyanathan’s current project reflects major societal concerns related to the “global media ecosystem,” but touches on such issues as the prevalence of propaganda and misinformation (and its easy dissemination on social media) which further threatens to undermine democracy and destabilize governments across the world.
Moreover, his lecture will consider the importance of news and information literacy, which is fundamentally one of the most important issues of our time in an age when expertise and intellectualism is under attack.
Vaidhyanathan is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues on public radio shows and news programs, notably the BBC, CNN and NBC.
He has authored several books, including “The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)” and “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy.”
His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and The Nation.
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