How can social media influencers help to address the rise of false information and the discord and harassment found on digital platforms?
DATE: Tuesday, January 21, 2025
TIME: 12 PM EST - 1 PM EST
LOCATION: Free and Online. Click here to register.
Learn about how social media influencers have been recruited to address important issues in media literacy related to health and safety. In Croatia, social media influencers have collaborated with media literacy experts to combat online harassment. In this program, we'll discuss strategies to develop partnerships with popular online influencers that could be leveraged to combat dis/mis/malinformation.
PRESENTERS
Igor Kanižaj, PhD is Full Professor at Catholic University of Croatia, Department for Communication Science. From 2001 he taught journalism at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb. He is also Vice President of the Association for Communication and Media Culture (DKMK). Together with his associates he is coordinating the project Djeca medija, the biggest media education project in Croatia with more than 1,600 workshops held for 40.000 participants in Croatia from 2011-2017. This project received the Evens Foundation Special Jury Prize for media education in 2017. He has experience as a communication expert in several EU funded IPA, CARDS and ERASMUS+ projects. He is the co-author of the first public opinion research on Media Literacy in Croatia and co-author of Paris Declaration on Media and Information Literacy (UNESCO). He has also worked as a journalist and expert for public awareness campaigns.
Marshall S. Rich is a pioneer in the emerging and unique field of Forensic Cyberpsychology, the first in the United States and the second in the world to earn a Ph.D. in this discipline. With over 30 years of cybersecurity experience, his research focuses on the psychological aspects of cybercrime and how the digital world influences human behavior.
Scott H. Vlachos is the Executive Director of the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs, an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and national security. His areas of focus include preventing and countering violent extremism, gray zone warfare, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. His current publications include an analysis of social media algorithm exploitation by terrorist organizations, targeting failures in U.S. drone warfare operations, and methods for countering foreign malign influence. He has served as an advisor for Lincoln University's project developing artificial intelligence tools for combating social media hate speech as well as the Director of Data Analysis for the Disinformation Project's Talk With Me initiative aimed at combating radicalization for at-risk high school students. Mr. Vlachos holds a Master of Arts in International Relations from New York University.