Mis/disinformation and the artifices of authenticity and authentication

It seeks to promote interdisciplinary dialogue among communication and media scholars, digital artists, computer scientists and community organizers through presentations and demonstrations of digital methods.

For this pre-conference, we seek critical explorations of authenticity and authentication as they relate to digital manipulation and digital artifice.

• How is authenticity caught, created, faked, authenticated and managed through digital assemblages?
• How is it both constructed as a felt experience, as well as machinized though automated recognition patterns?
• If authenticity is key to misinformation, then what kind of interventions can we imagine to question, and undermine such articulation?
• What new algorithms of authenticity could we imagine and deploy?

This ICA 2023 pre-conference is sponsored through the 2020-2025 Beyond Verification: Authentication, Authenticity and Fake News project, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and through the 2022-2025 Data Fluencies Project: Critical and Creative Data Studies to Counter Mis- and Disinformation and Foster Multivocal Futures Project, funded by the Mellon Foundation, and the Canada 150 Research Chairs program.

Organizers:

• Ganaele Langlois (Communication and Media Studies, York University)
• Esther Weltevrede (University of Amsterdam)
• Wendy Chun (Digital Democracies Institute, Simon Fraser University)
• Alberto Lusoli (Digital Democracies Institute, Simon Fraser University)
• Anthony Burton (School of Communication, Simon Fraser University)

Photo credits: Robby McCullough