Please join Anya Schiffrin and Emily Bell for a Zoom discussion on mis/disinformation about the ongoing COVID-19 global emergency.
Who is creating this mis/disinformation? What are their motives and intentions? What are the consequences of mis/disinformation? What countries and organizations are managing public service messaging? What is the private and digital communications sector reaction?
Opening remarks by Professor Anya Schiffrin Director of the Technology, Media, and Communications Specialization.
Emily Bell is founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and a leading thinker, commentator and strategist on digital journalism. Established in 2010, the Tow Center has rapidly built an international reputation for research into the intersection of technology and journalism. The majority of Bell’s professional career was spent at Guardian News and Media in London working as an award winning writer and editor both in print and online. As editor-in-chief across Guardian websites and director of digital content for Guardian News and Media, Bell led the web team in pioneering live blogging, podcasting, multimedia formats, data and social media, making the Guardian an internationally awarded beacon of digital transformation. Emily continues to write a regular column for the Guardian and Columbia Journalism Review, and is a contributor to the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, and numerous other outlets. She lives in New York City with her husband and three sons.
Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She teaches courses on media and development and innovation as well as the course Media, Human Rights and Social Change. Among other topics, she writes on journalism and development as well as the media in Africa and the extractive sector. Schiffrin spent 10 years working overseas as a journalist in Europe and Asia and was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1999–2000. Schiffrin is on the Global Board of the Open Society Foundations and the advistory board of the Natural Resource Governance Institute. Her most recent books are African Muckraking: 75 Years of African Investigative Journalism (Jacana 2017) and Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Reporting from Around the World (New Press, 2014).
