On Nov. 23, McGill’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences hosted an event titled “How do we handle disinformation agents in public health? Understanding the challenges and tackling mis and disinformation in public health.” The faculty invited public health experts from universities across Canada to discuss the rise in health[Read More…]
Tag: fake news
Learning from the media’s failures
In an apparent effort to attract support and attention for a white nationalist group claiming an affiliation with McGill, flyers began to appear around McGill’s downtown Montreal campus in December 2020. The group quickly garnered substantial negative attention online. Spurred on by a tidal wave of public outrage, the actions[Read More…]
Use your own words
As classes begin anew, the term ‘fake news’ has re-entered the vocabulary of many liberal arts students and professors alike. Even in legitimate contexts—such as calling out doctored journalism or describing viral conspiracy theories—the use of the term is deplorable. Over the past few years, arguments have been made for[Read More…]
The immaculate conception of the internet: A balancing act
On Sept. 13, the Redpath Museum hosted Derek Ruths, a McGill professor of computer science and director of the Centre for Social and Cultural Data Science, who addressed a pertinent problem of our technological world: The dark side of the internet. According to Ruths, the three most substantial issues with[Read More…]