Combating Misinformation with a Dose of Humanities-Inspired Data Reasoning | National Humanities Center

Humanities in Class: Webinar Series

Combating Misinformation with a Dose of Humanities-Inspired Data Reasoning

Humanities; Data Science; Information Literacy

Jevin D. West (Associate Professor, University of Washington)

September 11, 2018

The world is awash in BS. Pandering politicians, winking advertisers, startup soothsayers, television “experts”, and even some scientists use the news media to promulgate half-truths, misrepresentations and sometimes outright lies. Cleaning up our polluted information environments requires a digital citizenry that can spot and effectively refute BS. This talk will provide a set of strategies for combatting a particular kind of BS—BS cloaked in data, figures, statistics and algorithms—that combine the critical thinking skills of a humanities education with the emerging field of data science.


Subjects

Journalism and Communication / Film and Media / Technology / Humanities / Data Science / Information Literacy /

Rights

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0