Member Briefing and Discussion on MediaWell: A Project on Mis- and Dis- Information (Invitation Only)

Please join ARL on Friday, September 18 at 1:00 PM EST for a briefing and discussion about MediaWell, a Social Science Research Council (SSRC) initiative to track and curate research on dis- and misinformation. This session will be co-hosted and moderated by Ann Thornton and Jeff MacKie-Mason. For questions or concerns, please contact Judy Ruttenberg at judy@arl.org.

Session Description

What are the latest research findings on dis- and misinformation, election interference, and the Covid-19 infodemic? Is “disinformation studies” a field? How can research libraries help build capacity, facilitate data access, and shape policy?

Join us for a discussion of these and other questions at the nexus of information access, credibility, social media, and politics. We’ll have remarks by Jason Rhody, director of the Social Data Initiative and related programs at the Social Science Research Council, and Sam Spies, managing editor of MediaWell.

Jason Rhody directs MediaWell, along with the Digital Culture program, Social Data Initiative, and Media & Democracy program at the Social Science Research Council. Previously, he served as senior program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), where he helped create the Office of Digital Humanities (ODH). He received his PhD in English from the University of Maryland where, prior to joining NEH in 2003, he managed and advised digital humanities projects at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) and taught courses in literature and digital media.

Samuel Spies is managing editor of MediaWell, and a program officer in the Media & Democracy program. He has a PhD in anthropology from Temple University. For his dissertation fieldwork, he studied responses to censorship at online media outlets in Jordan. Before turning to the social sciences, he worked in newspaper, online, and wire-service journalism.