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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Funding provided by:

Misinformation Wars

In partnership with:
Ford Hall Forum
With support from: Lowell Institute
Date and time
Wednesday, July 1, 2020

How does information, as well as misinformation impact public understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic? Distribution of information in this global crisis is a powerful role: where, how and from whom do people get their information and how does it shape their behavior? A panel of experts look closely at research happening in real time during the pandemic on the rapid decline in trust in public institutions, public figures, and the media. They discuss the resulting impact on the health of democracy. The panel includes Felice J. Freyer, a health policy and public health reporter at The Boston Globe; Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation; Jonas Kaiser, an affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society; and Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, an associate professor of Communication, Journalism, & Media and Suffolk University. **Follow the Course: Week #2 Assignment** Listen: FiveThirtyEight: [One Virus, A World Full Of Responses from FiveThirtyEight Politics](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fivethirtyeight-politics/id1077418457?i=1000475357937) Read: NGA [Coronavirus What You Need To Know](https://www.nga.org/coronavirus/#actions) (compare different actions taken by U.S. States in response to Covid-19) Washington Post: [How Democracies Can Survive Dilemmas like coronavirus](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/13/how-democracies-can-survive-crises-like-coronavirus/) Washington Post: [Which Kind of Democracies Respond More Effectively to a Pandemic?](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/19/which-kinds-democracies-respond-more-effectively-pandemic/) Mischiefs of Faction: [To Crack Down on Dissent in Hong Kong, Beijing is Sidelining Local Democratic Institutions ](https://www.mischiefsoffaction.com/post/to-crack-down-on-dissent-in-hong-kong-beijing-is-sidelining-local-democratic-institutions?postId=5ec828796fa6b600176fd79c) Freedom House Reports:[Democracy During Pandemic](https://freedomhouse.org/issues/democracy-during-pandemic) and [Digital Election Interference](https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-on-the-net/2019/the-crisis-of-social-media/digital-election-interference) **Civic Engagement Activity & Reflection** Engage in at least one civic / political event of your choice during the course and document this with a short reflection essay. Try a virtual town or city hall meeting with local or state representatives, a meeting of an activist group, etc. The reflection should draw on readings from assignments and your own additional research. Members of the public who wish to share their reflections should post a link on Twitter and tag [@GBHForumNetwork ](https://twitter.com/GBHForumNetwork) and [@supolscilegal](https://twitter.com/supolscilegal).

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Felice J. Freyer
Felice J. Freyer covers health policy and public health for The Boston Globe. She joined the Globe in 2014 after years as the medical writer for The Providence Journal, where she was awarded the “Master Reporter” award from the New England Association of Newspaper Editors. She is a board member and treasurer of the Association of Health Care Journalists.
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Jennifer Kavanagh
**Jennifer Kavanagh** is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and director of the Arroyo Center's Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program. Her work focuses on U.S. military interventions, including factors that influence U.S. decisions to intervene and the characteristics that make interventions more or less successful, and U.S. force posture. She also studies military readiness and training, and gender in the military, particularly the integration of women into positions previously closed to them. Outside of her work for the U.S. Army, Kavanagh leads RAND's Countering Truth Decay initiative, a portfolio of projects exploring the diminishing reliance on facts and analysis in U.S. political and civil discourse. She is a faculty member at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and also teaches research methods courses as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Kavanagh graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in government and a minor in Russian language. She earned her Ph.D. in political science and public policy at the University of Michigan.
Jonas Kaiser
**Dr. Jonas Kaiser** is an Assistant Professor for Communication, Journalism, and Media at Suffolk University, Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and inaugural member of the Spotify Safety Advisory Council. At BKC, Jonas heads the Misinformation Working Group. His research is located at the intersection of political communication, digital journalism, and computational methods. Jonas has published on far-right extremism, content moderation, science misinformation, algorithmic recommendation systems, and bot detection. His work has been published in journals like Digital Journalism, PLOS ONE or International Journal of Communication and has been featured in German as well as U.S. news media like Süddeutsche Zeitung or The New York Times.
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Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber
**Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber** was born and raised in Israel to parents of Yemenite descent. She has a Master’s degree in Communication and Journalism from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has worked as a journalist in Israel for several publications including: Yediot Aharonot, Shishi, Hadashot, and Hapatish newspapers, and did research for the investigative show Uvda on Channel Two.
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