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Trust and Media

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MRC billboard - Charlotte 2016. Wikimedia, by Emolchan1. CC BY-SA 4.0

 

One of the central issues of our time is how technology and new media are changing how we trust one another and the institutions central to our democracy and society, from fake news and misinformation to trust in the media and on Airbnb. NYC is one of the world’s most powerful media centers and plays a key role in how the media affects trust. This course takes a NYC-centric view of how media is influencing trust by drawing together NYC media, tech and educational organizations that are all dealing with the post-truth era. This course will leverage what is unique about NYC and its position as the world’s media center to understand changes in trust wrought by new media and technologies.

Meet the Instructor

Jeff Hancock

Jeff Hancock, Stanford in New York

Jeff Hancock is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, Founding Director of the Social Media Lab and Director of the Stanford Center for Computational Social Science. A leading expert in social media behavior and the psychology of online interaction, Professor Hancock studies the impact of social media and technology on well-being, relationships, deception and trust, how we form impressions of others and how we manage others’ impressions of ourselves, and more.

His award-winning research has been published in over 100 journal articles and conference proceedings and has been supported by funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense. Professor Hancock’s TED Talk on deception has been seen over 1 million times and his research has been frequently featured in the popular press, including the New York Times, CNN, NPR, CBS and the BBC.

Professor Hancock worked for Canada Customs before earning his PhD in Psychology at Dalhousie University, Canada. He was a Professor of Information Science (and co-Chair) and Communication at Cornell University prior to joining Stanford in 2015. He currently lives in Palo Alto with his wife and daughter, and he regularly gets shot at on the ice as a hockey goalie.