I have been invited to give a Keynote on the topic of “truth as event,” sponsored by the Canadian Embassy and the transmediale festival in Berlin at the end of January. I will also participate in a transmediale panel addressing cyberwar.
Also excited to participate in an invited 3-day session at the Modern Language Association Meeting in New York city the first week of January, on the topic of Narrative Empathy, Insecurity, and the Humanities
I am very excited to have been invited to deliver a keynote at the Media Meets Literacy Conference this September organized for media education specialists from across the EU. The other Keynote Speaker is Evgeny Morozov, whose work addresses the limits and risks of using internet and social media as explored in his book The Net Delusion: the Dark Side of Internet Freedom. The conference is preceded by a two-day Propaganda Lab workshop with Prof. Renee Hobbs (Rhode Island University) & Igor Kanizaj (Foundation of Media Culture).
Selected Media Appearances, 2016
On Air/Broadcast:
Boler, M. Featured Expert, CBC News with Dwight Drummond, December 6, 2016 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/is-there-a-trump-effect-with-syrian-refugees-in-canada-1.3884454
Boler, M. Featured Expert, Effects of Social Protest Alberta@Noon CBC Radio One Calgary Thursday, November 17, 2016 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/programs/albertaatnoon/a-noon-for-thursday-november-17-2016-1.3855844
Featured Expert, CBC, The National News, “Facebook Decision to Restrict Fake News” November 16, 2016.
Published News Analyses:
Boler, M. Featured Expert, University of Toronto Experts on U.S. Presidential Election https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-experts-us-election-united-states-deeply-fragmented-nation#Gender
Selected Print Media Appearances, Expert
November 5, 2016 “What will a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton presidency mean for women?” By Patricia Kozicka http://globalnews.ca/news/3047754/what-will-a-donald-trump-or-hillary-clinton-presidency-mean-for-women/
Oct 12, 2016. “Trump video prompts global revelations of sexual assault” Lauren Pelley, Toronto Star, http://www.thespec.com/living-story/6905913-trump-video-prompts-global-revelations-of-sexual-assault/
December 6, 2016: “Is there a ‘Trump effect’ with Syrian refugees in Canada? University professor says people look for something to blame when there is poverty instead of ‘actual roots’ CBC News, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/is-there-a-trump-effect-with-syrian-refugees-in-canada-1.3884454
April 2016, Featured Expert, “Revolution Making” by The Varsity Magazine, University of Toronto by Alex McKeen (pps. 6-16) http://thevarsity.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/THE-VARSITY-MAGAZINE-WINTER-2016.pdf
Jan 25, 2017. “Premier Kathleen Wynne bombarded on social media by homophobic, sexist abuse,” By Mike Crawley, CBC News http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/kathleen-wynne-twitter-abuse-1.3949657
April 1, 2016. “Occupy-style tactics mark shift for Black Lives Matter Toronto,” Luke Simcoe Metro, http://www.metronews.ca/news/toronto/2016/03/31/occupy-tactics-mark-shift-for-black-lives-matter-in-toronto.html
April 5, 2016. “Black Lives Matter co-founder called out for tweet deemed racist”By SARAH-JOYCE BATTERSBY, https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/04/05/black-lives-matter-co-founder-called-out-for-tweet-deemed-racist.html
April 24, 2016. You nude nothing, Jon Snow: Stripping down Game of Thrones’ gender politics by Colin McNeil https://www.ourwindsor.ca/whatson-story/6512226-you-nude-nothing-jon-snow-stripping-down-game-of-thrones-gender-politics/
Many of us are struggling to make sense of the changing relationship of news media, collective emotions, public crisis of trust, and information warfare in this era of Trumpiness. My new research brings together the studies I have pursued throughout my career. In this frightening historical and political moment, I am working hard to bring together my inquiries into emotion, truthiness, and growing crisis of American trust in media since after 9/11, to provide an ontological account of how and when truths are produced, as an alternative to epistemological accounts. In outlining an ontological account of truth, I will be working to show how we can understand truth not as “content” but truth as an event, how truth happens. We can now speak of the “Likelihood of Truth,” the conditions in which truths are produced, taken up.
Ironically, for those who have joined the affect theory bandwagon, excited to see emotion and affect finally given a palce on the Enlightenment stage: hold your seat. Already we are seeing invocations of “reason,” “Enlightenment,” etc. as ways to bring back Truth. Or, as the New York Times reifies in its recent ad, “The Truth” is making a return–arguably, for all the right reasons in an era of Trumpiness. But the progress made since the 1980s by scholars working to show how truths are produced, will now face a backlash not only from committed positivists, but from liberal and even potentially radical left sources seeking to reinstitute common truths to shore up against Trump and company.
Meanwhile, I want to highlight the work I’ve done that speaks to the zeitgeist and history of the evolution of truthiness from the Bush Administration years to the present. It is a mistake to consider “post-truth” a new phenomenon; as Colbert recently told us, “‘post-truth’ is just a rip off of ‘truthiness’.”
Follow me on Twitter as I am striving to note key analyses related to questions of the evolution of truthiness as we make sense of the contemporary crises of trust in credible sources and truthtelling within contexts of liberal democracies.
Here are some of my previous essays that provide backdrop to the current debates regarding “post-truth”:
Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, M. Boler (2008) (Introduction, Megan Boler)
The Daily Show and Crossfire: Satire and Sincerity as Truth to Power (Chapter 17) (from Digital Media and Democracy, ed Boler, MIT Press 2008)
By Ian Reilly and Megan Boler
Boler, Megan. “Feminist Politics of Emotions and Critical Digital Pedagogies: A Call to Action.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 130.5 (2015): 1489 – 1496. DOI:10.1632/pmla.2015.130.5.1489
Boler, Megan. “Motivations of alternative media producers: Digital dissent in action.” The Routledge companion to alternative and community media. Ed. Chris Atton. Routledge, 2015.
Recent publications from Professor Boler’s SSHRC-funded Research Project, “Social Media in the Hands of Young Citizens.” (2010-2014)
Boler, Megan, and Jennie Phillips. “FCJ-197 Entanglements with Media and Technologies in the Occupy Movement.” The Fibreculture Journal 26 2015: Entanglements–Activism and Technology. Eds. Pip Shea, Jean Burgess, and Tanya Notley (2015).
Boler, Megan, and Christina Nitsou. “Women Activists of Occupy Wall Street: Consciousness-Raising and Connective Action in Hybrid Social Movements.“Cyberactivism on the Participatory Web. Routledge, 2014.
Boler, Megan, et al. “Connective labor and social media Women’s roles in the ‘leaderless’ Occupy movement.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 20.4 (2014): 438-460.
Other:
Boler, Megan. “From Existentialism to Virtuality.” Leaders in Philosophy of Education. SensePublishers, 2014. 31-48.
Reilly, Ian, and Megan Boler. “The Rally to Restore Sanity, prepoliticization, and the future of politics.” Communication, Culture & Critique 7.4 (2014): 435-452.
Boler, Megan and Selena Nemorin. “Dissent, Truthiness, and Skepticism in the Global Media Landscape: twenty-first century propaganda in times of war.” Oxford University Handbook of Propaganda. Eds. Jonathan Auerbach and Russ Castronovo. Oxford University Press, 2014.
The publication of our edited collection from MIT Press DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media convened a book launch in March at USC in Los Angeles, hosted by Henry Jenkins Kjerstin Thorson and Mike Ananny from University of Southern California Civic Paths Research Group.
The book then sparked a one-day symposium for the UK book launch of DIY Citizenship, convened by Mandy Rose and Amy Spencer, hosted by UWE Bristol’s Digital Cultures Research Centre at the Pervasive Media Studio, Watershed, Bristol.
Here is Parts 1 and 2 of Henry Jenkins blog interview of Boler and Ratto on DIY Citizenship…
Just out: 2nd Edition of Martha McCaughey’s groundbreaking book for “Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture.” I am so pleased that Christina Nitsou and I were able to contribute a chapter!
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415709033
Other forthcoming and recent publications:
Boler, M. and Christina Nitsou, Women Activists within the Leaderless Occupy Wall Street: Consciousness-Raising and Connective Action in Hybrid Social Movements, in McCaughey, M.(ed), Cyberactivism (second edition) NY: Routledge (2014).
Reilly, Ian and Megan Boler. “Satire and Social Change: The Rally to Restore Sanity and the Future of Politics,” Communication, Culture and Critique (forthcoming 2014)
Boler, Megan and Selena Nemorin. “21st Century Propaganda: the Shifting Landscape of News,” in Oxford University Handbook of Propaganda, eds R Castronovo and J Auerbach. (2013)
Busy time upcoming of travel and talks on recent research. Heading this week to London as one of the invited keynotes for Social Media, the fourth international Transforming Audiences conference
In September, myself and two members of our Research Team (Averie Macdonald and Christina Nitsou) presenting at Social Media conference at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
In October, I am presenting at the World Social Science Forum in Montreal.
On October 31 I will be delivering the invited Kneller Lecture at the American Educational Studies Association October 31 in Baltimore.
Then flying to Monash University in Melbourne as invited Visiting Scholar for month of November!
Plus exciting news: Our DIY Citizenship edited book is forthcoming in January, huzzah!
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/diy-citizenship
Saturday May 11, Plenary Roundtable: Gender and Censorship
11.00 am – 12.15 pm Oakham Lounge
Osgoode Law School Annual Conference, University of Toronto
http://glsa.osgoode.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/final-sched.pdf
Moderator: Savitri Gordian, LLM Candidate, Osgoode Hall Law School
Panelists:
