Check out the course webpage for more details! 

This course is a hybrid course with a short weekly recorded lecture and a 90 minute Zoom meeting to discuss and do hands-on learning activities. You will also get a short weekly curated list of things for you to listen to, read, and watch. 

The Zoom session for this class is at:

• Wednesday 4pm Pacific 
• 7pm Wednesday Eastern
• 11am Thursday NZST 

Class starts on September 4, 2024.

Course Instructor Brooke Binkowski

Has Google search got you down? Does AI-generated nonsense really get your goat? Are you concerned about the future of information access on and off the internet? If so, this is the class for you. Over the next six weeks, this course will offer in-depth descriptions of some of the most common forms of propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation, why they’re so difficult to deal with, and how you can best fight them. This class is taught by a journalism industry veteran who has spent the last decade developing a framework for battling a very new and very old problem.

Course Outline
Week 1 Disinformation

What is disinformation? Weaponised propaganda? Misinformation? 

This week we will explore the myriad definitions used by experts on disinformation and work to build a framework for understanding the nuances that help us draw a line  between truth and disinformation.

Week 2 Firehosing

This week will look at how one of the most common disinformation techniques works: firehosing! How does it influence our political discourse, who uses it, and how we can fight it?

Week 3 Weaponised unreality and political gaslighting

How do certain political actors create a new reality for themselves--and for us? Why does this technique work and who is most vulnerable to it? What can we do to keep the actually existing world as the foundation for our political discourse?

Week 4 Public distraction

Squirrel! Squirrel!

Distracting the public is yet another way our political discourse becomes focused on the wrong things. This week we will explore how political distraction works, when it works, and how we can collectively refocus on what really matters. 

Week 5 Signaling and dog whistling

What do you do when your political ideology is so toxic, so odious that you can’t talk about it openly? Well, dogs aren’t the only ones who can be called with a whistle. This week we’ll explore how the worst people organise online, how they find each other, and how we can recognise them when they try to hide in plain sight. 

Week 6 Resilience targeting 

Resilience is our ability to withstand hard things and bounce back. This week we will explore how disinformation actors use resilience targeting on our discourse to weaken our social bonds and make talking to each other nearly impossible–and what we can do to fight back and reclaim our political discourse.