A panel of three experts will discuss disinformation, fake news and social media in a Blank Slate Media community forum next week, sponsored by Northwell Health.
As part of a series of panels on crucial community issues moderated by Blank Slate Media founder and editor Steven Blank, experts Susan J. Drucker, Howard Schneider and Craig M. Burnett will field questions in the chat from attendees.
Drucker, who holds a J.D. from St. John’s University, is the Lawrence Stessin Distinguished Professor of Journalism in the Department of Journalism/Media Studies at the Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University in Hempstead, as well as an attorney and treasurer of the Urban Communication Foundation.
She is the author or editor of 13 books and over 150 articles and book chapters, including two volumes of the Urban Communication Reader, Regulating Convergence (Lang, 2010), “Voices in the Street: Gender, Media and Public Space,” and two editions of “Real Law @ Virtual Space: The Regulation of Cyberspace” (1999, 2005) and “Regulating Social Media: Legal and Ethical Consideration” (2013) with Gary Gumpert. Drucker also co-edited “Urban Communication Regulations: Communication Freedoms and Limits” (Lang, 2018).
Her latest book is “Fake News: Real Issues in Modern Communication,” co-written with Russell Chun (Lang, 2020). Her work examines the relationship between media technology and human factors, particularly as viewed from a legal perspective.
Schneider, the former editor of Newsday, is executive director of Stony Brook University’s Center for News Literacy and previously served as founding dean of the university’s School of Journalism. Under his tenure as managing editor and then editor of Newsday, the paper won eight Pulitzer Prizes.
In 2007, Schneider developed the nation’s first undergraduate course in News Literacy, designed to teach students how to identify reliable news and information. Since that time, the course has been taught to more than 11,000 Stony Brook students and the curriculum has been adopted by more than two dozen other U.S. universities and by academics in 15 countries.
In 2018, Schneider and his colleagues, convinced that instruction had to begin much earlier, created the Institute for News Literacy Education to support the work of the region’s K-12 school districts. In 2012, Schneider received the DeWitt Carter Reddick Award for Public Communications and Journalism Education by the University of Texas. In 2003, he was the recipient of the Outstanding Alumnus Award of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, from which he received his M.S. in 1967.
Rounding out the panel is Burnett, who is associate professor in the political science department at Hofstra University and director of the university’s Kalikow School Poll Program. Burnett received his B.A. in political science and history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego.
His research focuses on state and local government, urban politics, political behavior and electoral institutions, and has appeared in several journals including the Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, Political Communication, Electoral Studies, Urban Affairs Review and the Minnesota Law Review. In addition to teaching courses on research methods and statistics, Burnett instructs in American government, urban politics, state and local government, public opinion, and political behavior.
Blank Slate Media’s community forum on disinformation, fake news and social media will take place on Thursday, Jan. 14, at 7 p.m. Interested parties can register for the free Zoom event at the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89677135562.
