Johan Farkas: Beyond Fake News. Exploring Digital Propaganda, While Arguing Against the Post-Truth Era

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Johan Farkas, PhD student in Media and Communication Studies. The title of the seminar is:

Beyond Fake News: Exploring Digital Propaganda, While Arguing Against the Post-Truth Era

It will take place on Wednesday, May 30 at 10.15-12.00 in The K3 Open Studio, NIC 0541, Niagara.

Here is an abstract for the talk.

With the rise of digital media, new ‘platformed’ modalities of disinformation and propaganda have emerged. This has lead multiple scholars, journalists and politicians to argue that we live in a ‘post-truth era’ flooded by ‘fake news’. PhD Fellow at K3, Johan Farkas, is not one of them. Through a series of empirical studies, Farkas’ ongoing research on the one hand explores the dynamics and workings of new forms of disguised propaganda online. On the other hand, his theoretical work argues against the notion of fake news and the post-truth era, criticising both their conceptual unclarity and problematic democratic underpinnings. At the K3 seminar, Farkas will present these two different ‘pillars’ of his ongoing research, posing the open question for discussion, whether the arguments connected to each of these pillars complement each other, contradict each other or occupy two different spheres with few direct connections. Moving forward, this question remains the primary uncertainty of his PhD thesis.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *