Cultures of Fact Travel

Session Submission Type: Open Panel

Abstract

This panel invites research that addresses how facts and knowledge claims are represented, how they are evaluated and verified, the ways in which they face opposition or reach consensus, and/or how they travel through knowledge infrastructures. A large variety of sites and practices have emerged to host and distribute facts in digital environments. New facts are now born digital in the form of databases, data visualisations, online dictionaries and encyclopaedic entries but facts that existed before the Internet were always subject to structural, social and political forces. In order for a fact to travel, it needs to move from beyond its origins in the lab, the institution, company, field, or community to new audiences. Sometimes this translation happens between institutions, sometimes it happens between fields, or between countries, continents or languages. This panel will host different approaches to the production, evaluation, and distribution of facts in the past, present and future.

Sub Unit

• Papers for Open Panels / Cultures of fact travel

Chair

• Heather Ford, University of New South Wales

Discussant

• Christopher Anderson, College of Staten Island, CUNY

Individual Presentations

• How Wikipedia Works With Facts - Bunty Avieson, University of Sydney; Chao Sun, University of Sydney

• Baidu in Thailand: Have Facts, Will Travel? - Sarah Logan Logan, University of New South Wales

• Audience Understandings of Climate Change News - Emotion, Scepticism, and Uncertainty - Andreas R.T. Schuck, Amsterdam School of Communication Research, Communication Science, Faculty of Social and Behavioural; Catriona Bonfiglioli, University of Technology Sydney

• Facts and Affects in Online Climate Denial: Towards a Model of Tribal Epistemology - Benjamin Glasson, University of Melbourne

Session Organizer

• Heather Ford, University of New South Wales