Digital Citizens and Fake News: A Response from Civic Ethics

The next Leibniz Media Lunch Talk will be presented by the Digital Disinformation Hub at HBI. Leonardo Suárez Montoya, Venezuelan-Colombian guest researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans Bredow Institute, will talk about his dissertation project, in which he addresses the moral role of citizens with respect to fake news.

The Lunch Talk is part of the new DigDisHub Series "Political Crisis and Disinformation in Latin America". In this series, the Digital Disinformation Hub takes a closer look at the debate on disinformation practices in Latin America by spotlighting theoretical contributions from Latin American researchers and exploring specific regional contexts.

Dr. Clara Iglesias Keller will provide the introduction. The event will be held in English.

Time

12:30 bis 1:30 p.m.

Registration

The event will take place online via Zoom. After the registration you will receive the dial-in data by mail shortly before the event starts.

About the Talk

There is plenty of literature on fake news that could be grouped into three main blocks: a) journalism (technique, technology, algorithms), b) the media (business perspective, infodemics, news flow, media agendas, alternative platforms) and c) political communication (the 2016 US elections, for example; and the “industry of lies”). However, the focus has not been placed on citizens and their responsibility. These three perspectives are as relevant as they are urgent. They are also insufficient, because it is not only in the media industry or in the political arena that both the generation and the dissemination of fake news occur; they also find an enormous echo among citizens, in their hands and on their smartphones. The aim of this dissertation will be to address the moral role of citizens with respect to fake news. The approach to answer this question is civic ethics, a philosophical proposal by Adela Cortina.

About the Speaker

Leonardo Suárez Montoya is a Venezuelan-Colombian guest researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut from June until October 2021, working with PD Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt in the area of journalistic ethics and its links with democracy, especially concerning the role of citizenry. He is currently a doctoral student at the University of Valencia in Spain, where his dissertation centers on the citizen’s responsibility with respect to fake news.

Leibniz Media Lunch Talks 

At the Leibniz Media Lunch Talk, researchers present current topics, preliminary findings from their research projects or doctoral theses in a relaxed atmosphere. 

About the Digital Disinformation Hub

Considering the Institute’s long tradition in interdisciplinary media studies, the Digital Disinformation Hub is a research project aiming at strengthening the Institute’s contributions to this debate. This is to be achieved by promoting multidisciplinary collaborations between researchers, by gathering and systematically bringing together internal and external research expertise in the field of disinformation, by promoting conceptual and epistemological approaches to disinformation, and by building external collaborations.