Please view a recording of the event below.

Social media platforms’ reluctance to curb misinformation and hate speech has come under fire from activists, academics, and journalists alike. While digital platforms have taken some steps to address such toxicity, loopholes in the platforms’ own policies, as well as in government policy, remain the subject of vigorous debate.

Join us on Wednesday, April 28, 1:00 PM ET as we discuss the ramifications of misinformation and hate speech on social media, and policy ideas to address the spread. How can social media platforms fact check content and eliminate hate speech? Are fact-checking and hate-speech protocols enough? Should there be exceptions for politicians and noteworthy individuals to post without restriction?

After the discussion, stick around for a Q&A with the experts.

Featuring:

  • Malkia Devich-Cyril, founding director and senior fellow, Media Justice
  • Joan Donovan, PhD, research director, Harvard Kennedy’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy
  • Moderator: Elizabeth Dwoskin, Silicon Valley correspondent, The Washington Post

Please register to obtain the Zoom link, which will be sent twenty-four hours before the event.

Presented by NYU Wagner and The Century Foundation.

Speaker Bios

Malkia Devich Cyril is an award winning writer and public speaker on issues of digital rights, narrative power, Black liberation and collective grief; as well as the lead founder and former executive director of MediaJustice—a national hub boldly advancing racial justice, rights and dignity in a digital age.

Dr. Joan Donovan is the research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. Dr. Donovan leads the field in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns.

Dr. Donovan leads The Technology and Social Change Project (TaSC). TaSC explores how media manipulation is a means to control public conversation, derail democracy, and disrupt society. TaSC conducts research, develops methods, and facilitates workshops for journalists, policy makers, technologists, and civil society organizations on how to detect, document, and debunk media manipulation campaigns.

Dr. Donovan’s research and teaching interests are focused on media manipulation, effects of disinformation campaigns, and adversarial media movements.

Elizabeth Dwoskin joined The Washington Post as Silicon Valley correspondent in 2016, becoming the paper’s eyes and ears in the region. She focuses on social media and the power of the tech industry in a democratic society. Before that, she was the Wall Street Journal’s first full-time beat reporter covering big data, AI, and the impact of algorithms on people’s lives. And before that, she covered housing and immigration in D.C. and New York.