University College of the North (UCN) professor Joseph Atoyebi will be collaborating this summer with a select group of expert researchers in a workshop on online misinformation.
Atoyebi is an assistant professor of English in the Faculty of Arts, Business and Science, and is based on The Pas Campus. Atoyebi, and Ying Kong, an associate professor of English, based on the Thompson Campus, are co-editors of the student online journal Muses from the North (https://www.ucn.ca/sites/mftn/fall2019/Pages/Issue-5.aspx), which was first published in December 2017.
Atoyebi began teaching at University College of the North here in the Fall Term of 2017 (or unofficially, to me alone quite possibly, the Michaelmas Term) with an 18-month term appointment in the English program in Thompson.
He will be collaborating with a select group of expert researchers from major Canadian universities in August on the topic of online misinformation, said Monte Koshel, UCN director of communications, in a news release today.
“The workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to explore how to combat online misinformation from a transdisciplinary perspective. The workshop is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC),” said Koshel.
Jaigris Hodson, an associate professor and head of the Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS) program at Royal Roads University in Victoria, is the project lead. Hodson’s research specializes in understanding how people interact with digital technologies, such as social media, and the content that is produced and shared using those technologies. She has published research in a wide range of academic publications and non-academic publications. Hodson has written on technology for the Huffington Post Canada and The Conversation Canada and is regularly asked to comment on technology stories for local and national media outlets.
“The workshop will gather experts from across Canada whose work brings different geographical, sectoral, cultural and disciplinary perspectives to the issue of information design and/or misinformation. The workshop will provide a space where participants can identify how their own work might approach the problem of misinformation, learn from others tackling this topic from different angles and mobilize knowledge about misinformation and information design that can be used by professional, public sector, or educational stakeholders beyond the workshop,“ said Koshel.
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