I’m delighted to be in San Sebastian-Donostia in the beautiful Basque Country over the next couple of days to speak at the 2019 European Ideas Network‘s Summer University. I am grateful to EIN and the European People’s Party Group in the European Parliament for extending an invitation to meet and discuss with its members about the challenges and next steps in the fight against online disinformation and “fake news” in Europe. In my talk, I will explore the factors that created a ‘perfect storm’ for the growth of disinformation, share some of my latest work on how U.S. organizations and campaigns are trying to contrast it, and offer some ideas for a more proactive approach to this problem.
invited talks
Advocacy and Personal Stories in Australia and the U.S. – Seminar at Melbourne University
I’m currently in Australia on a fieldwork trip for a new project and will present some preliminary insights at the University of Melbourne on Wednesday February 13 together with my colleague and collaborator Ariadne Vromen of the University of Sydney. This new work explores recent changes in how advocacy organizations approach storytelling and reviews the role of digital technology in the ‘datafication’ of storytelling techniques. The seminar will take place between 1:00-2:00pm in the Arts West North Wing building, room 253. We’re grateful to the Media and Communication Program for giving us this opportunity to discuss some of this new work.
Disability and Digital Storytelling Talk at UAB’s Institute for Human Rights
Today (10/11) I am in Birmingham, AL to give a talk on “Using Digital Storytelling to Promote Human Rights: The Experience of Disability Advocates” at the Institute for Human Rights at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. The talk is scheduled for 6-7:30pm CDT in Heritage Hall. Accessible virtual participation with closed captioning will be available for this talk via Blackboard Collaborate using this link: http://tinyurl.com/trevisan-lecture-uab-ihr
In this talk, I will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of using crowd-sourced personal stories to counter negative portrayals of people with disabilities in popular and public discourse, and advocate for disability rights using examples and case studies from both the United Kingdom and the United States.
On Thursday, October 12, I will also be a guest speaker in UAB’s Digital Storytelling course (part of the Media Studies program) and give a lecture on representations of disability and disability rights activism to students in UAB’s School of Medicine.
This visit will conclude with a tour of the Lakeshore Foundation, a leading training, research, and advocacy center that aims to empower people with physical disabilities and chronic health conditions through sports, recreation, and physical activity.
I am extremely grateful to the Director of the Institute for Human Rights, Associate Professor Tina Kempin-Reuter, for this invitation and for organizing such a wonderful program.
Invited Seminar at the University of Newcastle, NSW
Second Australian talk – I will discuss my book “Disability Rights Advocacy Online” during an invited seminar at the University of Newcastle. The event on Monday, July 3rd will start at noon in Room GP2.01 at the Callaghan Campus. Free registration is available here and the seminar will also be streamed live online. Anyone can join remotely by clicking here. The official Twitter hashtag for the event is #DisabilityRightsUON
I look forward to connecting with a wonderful group of scholars that does some great work on multiple aspects of disability and discuss how the book can help us to understand some of the latest developments in disability rights advocacy, including grassroots mobilization in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as U.S. President.
Special thanks go to my colleague Prof. Bronwyn Hemsley for being the driving force behind this event.
Presenting at APSA 2014 Pol Comm Pre-Conference
The paper I proposed for the 2014 American Political Science Association’s Political Communication Section Pre-Conference was accepted as part of a panel on methodological innovation in political communication research put together by Laura Roselle of Elon University. This work discusses the methodology that myself and colleagues at the University of Glasgow and the University of Maryland devised in order to compare online search trends in elections to relevant news coverage on ‘traditional’ media outlets as part of the on-going Voter Ecology project. My presentation will touch upon all the case studies involved in the project (the U.S., the UK, Italy and Egypt) and provide a detailed overview of the different roles performed by search engines in different electoral contexts. I look forward to being back in Washington, DC for this conference, having spent several months there in 2011 doing fieldwork for my PhD. The pre-conference will take place on Wednesday Aug. 27th at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs. The programme can be found here.
Talk at Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland – Nov. 20th, 2013
I will be talking about the Voter Ecology Project at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park on Wednesday Nov. 20th, 2pm. My presentation is entitled “No Laughing Matter: Political Gaffes and Online Information Search in Election Campaigns” and will discuss how publicly available search engine data can help journalists, campaigners, and researchers alike to reach beyond appearances in considering patterns of information consumptions in times of elections. I look forward to discussing this work and how online media are transforming political reporting more generally with students and faculty at the cutting edge of journalism scholarship. The event will take place in Room 1109, Knight Hall.
Filippo Trevisan 