IAMCR 2019

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Christian Baden, who shifts our focus to processes of polarisation. Some existing work on polarisation focusses on the themes and content along which groups are polarised, but in itself such differences may not be problematic; rather, the key issue here is whether such polarisation is increasing and results in incompatible perspectives.

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Andrew Iliadis, whose focus is on the role of metadata. Metadata and related terms such as ontology have rocketed to broader attention in recent years; here, philosophical concepts related to ontology have come to be translated to computationally accessible relationship constructs between data entities.

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Asta Zelenkauskaite, whose interest is in micro- as well as macro-perspectives on influence in online contexts. This understands influence as non-linear and context-dependent, mediated by available media and information infrastructures and their affordances.

The final session at IAMCR 2019 for today starts with George Anghelcev, whose focus is on binge-watching. There has been a major shift over the last decade in how audiences view serialised video content, from being constrained to the regular timeslots for TV series to on-demand viewing of multiple episodes in single sittings. Some three quarters of U.S. TV consumers now binge-watch, and the numbers continue to rise – contrary to earlier news coverage, this is not a minority practice.

The final presentation in this IAMCR 2019 session is by Luisa Martinez-Garcia, about a ‘fake news’ event in Spain that involved a widely shared news story claiming that a local town attempted to stop the time. This is an example of a post-truth event, Luisa suggests.

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 session is Scott Wright, who begins with a brief history of the ‘fake news’. There are actually false news stories, news stories that are described as ‘fake’ by politicians such as Donald Trump for political reasons, and false information that is deliberately disseminated by politicians for such reasons.

The next speaker in this entertaining IAMCR 2019 session is Adeyanju Apejoye, whose focus is on ‘fake news’ in the 2019 Nigerian presidential election. ‘Fake news’ has become a critical issue in Nigerian politics, given the highly contested nature of the campaign, the shortcomings of Nigerian mainstream media, and the increasing role of online and social media in the country.

The next speaker at IAMCR 2019 is Imke Henkel, whose focus is on how British news coverage of EU affairs has influenced the outcome of the Brexit referendum in the longer term. She points to the Leave campaigns infamous lie that Britain was sending £350m to the EU every week, which is understood to have played an important role in campaigning, and notes that this is only the latest of a very long history of bizarre stories about purported EU regulations disadvantaging British citizens and businesses.

The next IAMCR 2019 session is on ‘fake news’, and we start with Julio Juarez Gamiz who focusses on ‘fake news’ directed at the national electoral authority in the 2018 Mexican presidential elections.