“Fake News!”: Facts, Information, Disinformation, Misinformation (Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan, Nov. 2018)

Course Description

Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan, Nov. 2018

The “Fake News!”: Facts, Information, Disinformation, Misinformation course takes a creative fiction and nonfiction approach to understanding and recognizing information, disinformation, and misinformation. The course explores the elements of information, such as details, particulars, facts, figures, statistics, and data; the differences between primary and secondary sources including those found in traditional media, social media, and new media; the ways in which misinformation and disinformation are used; a history and overview of propaganda; and the roles of mythbusters, debunkers, fact-checkers, and individuals in countering disinformation. Course participants read fact and fiction, including creative nonfiction from writers such as John D’Agata and Angela Pelster-Wiebe, and fiction by George Saunders and Jennifer Egan, among others. Participants also write creative works during the course, including several new media projects involving both text and visualized information in order to understand how these elements work together in a multimedia world.

Happening Now

  • Congratulations to our colleagues Jennifer Croft and Aron Aji, who are among those serving as judges for the National Book Awards this year, in their case in the category of translated literature.

  • Ranjit Hoskote’s speech at the 2024 Goa Literary Festival addresses the current situation in Gaza.

  • In NY Times, Bina Shah worries about the state of Pakistani—and American—democracy.

  • “I went to [Ayodhya] to think about what it means to be an Indian and a Hindu... ”  A new essay by critic and novelist Chandrahas Choudhury.

  • In the January 2024 iteration of the French/English non-fiction site Frictions, T J Benson writes about “Riding Afrobeats Across the World.” Also new, a next installment in the bilingual series featuring work by students from Paris VIII’s Creative Writing program and the University of Iowa’s NFW program.

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