Brian Southwell is director of the Science in the Public Sphere program in the Center for Communication Science at RTI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute. He’s an adjunct professor with Duke University’s Social Science Research Institute, teaching social marketing and behavioral interventions, and a research professor of mass communication and adjunct associate professor of health behavior at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Southwell’s contributions appear in more than 100 journal articles, chapters, and his books, which include Social Networks and Popular Understanding of Science and Health and the forthcoming Misinformation and Mass Audiences. He also hosts a public radio show, “The Measure of Everyday Life,” on WNCU. (Festival Underwriter Presenter)
Previously
Invalid health news comes in many flavors. Some is utterly fake and potentially dangerous: asserting links between vaccines and autism, discrediting the reality of climate cha...