CCEP Podcasts - Exploring Policy and Ethics in California

The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 10 - Fake News

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

In this final journey through the misinformation multiverse, student fellow Silas Hood unpacks the origin of the term “fake news,” the rise of its utility following the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and the societal impacts associated with that rise.  Helping him navigate this phenomenon will be Dr. Hyungjin Gill, an assistant professor of Communication at Cal Poly Pomona, who will provide insightful commentary regarding the topic, particularly in the use of the term “fake news” by political elites.  The correlating distrust in mainstream and local media is a matter of concern, and Silas hopes that by drawing attention to and better understanding the term “fake news” we can help move away from its use as a misleading moniker used to counter arguments that conflict with our own personal narratives.

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for our next season!

The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 9 - Combating Misinformation: Psychological and Structural Approaches

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

For this year’s topic of misinformation, CCEP hosted a panel on April 11, 2024 titled Combating Misinformation: Psychological and Structural Approaches, with a focus on what kind of concrete actions could be taken by both individuals and institutions in combating the present iterations of misinformation in the digital age.  The panelists for this discussion were Tiffany Zhu, a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of California Irvine, specializing in the ethics of artificial intelligence; Ian Anderson, a Postdoctoral Scholar in Psychology at Cal Tech, specializing in the effects of social media on psychology; and Shonn Haren, this year’s CCEP Faculty Fellow and Associate Librarian at the Cal Poly Pomona University Library, where I’ve been studying and teaching about misinformation since 2017.

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening.

The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 8 - Misinformation in Higher Education

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

In this episode, student fellow Raven Maxwell takes the multiverse of misinformation to college, to discuss how colleges can improve student services and outreach to support students who are new to higher education, and often bewildered by its complexities.  She will interview her mother, Tanya, a first-generation student and student advisor at California State University, Los Angeles, and compare Tanya’s experiences as a first-generation student with her own as a student who entered college benefiting from her mother’s experience with the system.  Raven also includes data from a case study by Angela Maricela Chavez-Monroy to speak to the current struggles of marginalized and current first-generation students to provide current statistics and data about student needs and the barriers they face.  

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening.

The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 7 - On The Border Of Truth

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we will explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

In this exploration of the multiverse of misinformation, student fellow Luis Gama takes us to the borderlands, in this case the southern border of the United States, where he analyzes some of the political rhetoric surrounding immigration.  He looks at some examples of commentary offered by Former President Donald Trump and other commentators, where migrants are painted as violent criminals and placing Americans in imminent danger.  Instead of taking those harmful contentions as truth, he then provides factual and statistical data to provide the listener with understanding about who exactly it is that is crossing the border, and thus provide a glimpse at how this rhetoric serves a particular political agenda.  He also provides some potential ways to counteract this rhetoric.

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening.

The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 6 - Author Meets Critics With Desiree Lim

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we will explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

Beyond the classroom, CCEP hosts a series of forums, panels and discussions throughout the semester dealing with the chosen topic for that particular year.  On March 18, 2024, CCEP hosted a panel titled “Author Meets Critics” in which Desiree Lim, Assistant Professor in Philosophy and research associate at the Rock Ethics Institute discussed her recently published book Immigration and Social Equality: The Ethics of Skill-Selective Immigration Policy.

Dr. Lim completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy at King’s College London and was a post-doctoral fellow at the McCoy Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University.  

The panel of critics who will review Dr. Lim’s book are as follows:

• Dr. Itzel Garcia, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Cal Poly Pomona
• Leonel Alvarez Ceja, a Ph.D. student in Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine
• And Luis Gama, a Philosophy Major at Cal Poly Pomona and one of the 2024 CCEP Ethics and Policy Fellows.

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening, and Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at CCEP!

The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 5 - Misinformation in Religious Environments

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we will explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

In this exploration of the multiverse of misinformation, student fellows Allen Durghalli, Sebastian Gomez and Connor Ruiz will consider the role misinformation can play in religious environments.  As they describe it, their episode developed into something conversational and humorous.  They felt the best way to put forward something that was analysis-driven was to provide humor instead of a boring stream of facts.  Thus, this episode is semi-informal and follows a conversation without cuts.  The first section starts with a personal narrative, followed by a discussion of the topic of ambiguity when it comes to religious authority.  The next section takes a historical approach where we talk about our experiences within different religious denominations.  The episode concludes through a conversation about the strain that religious environments place on individuals and their families.  Interspersed with the conversations will be interviews with members of religious faiths and religious leaders on this topic.

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening.

The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 4 - Misinformation and Democracy

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we will explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

We are now one month away from the 2024 election, an event for which the topic of misinformation has been central. On February 16, 2024, CCEP hosted a panel titled, "Misinformation and Democracy," which focused on the threat that misinformation poses to democracy, with a special emphasis on the 2024 primary and general elections in the State of California.  The panelists for this discussion were Hannah Cole, the Humanities and Communication Librarian at Cal Poly Pomona, Dr. Hyungjin Gill, Assistant Professor of Communication at Cal Poly Pomona, and Katie Priest, a Philosophy and Communication major at Cal Poly Pomona, journalist with the Poly Post, and one of this year’s CCEP Student Fellows.

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening.

The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 3 - Creepypastas

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we will explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

In this episode of the Multiverse of Misinformation, CCEP student fellow Anna Bachman takes us on a trip down memory lane by exploring the chilling world of Creepypastas.  She’ll dissect the genre’s classics and consider how the phenomenon of creepypastas relate to concept of misinformation.

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening.

The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 2 - Financial Literacy in the Age of Misinformation

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we will explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

Perhaps the one great constant in the multiverse of misinformation is that everyone seems to be interested in either making money, or just taking your money.  In this episode, student fellow Joshua Ramirez will discuss the phenomenon of online financial misinformation with Angel Campos, President of the CPP Student Managed Investment Club, and David Rivera, President of the CPP Finance Society.  They will talk about the state of financial misinformation on social media, and what they believe might actually help an individual better prepare themselves for financial success in the future.

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening.

The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 1 - Scroll For Your Health

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we will explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

In this first episode, student fellows Katie Priest and Charlotte Hill examine the effects of misinformation specifically as it relates to health information in a post-COVID world.  This kind of misinformation has spread rapidly via social media platforms such as TikTok and Reddit.  Join Katie and Charlotte as they analyze perspectives from the student body about where their health information is coming from, before turning to the analysis of Dr. Gyasmine George-Williams, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology and Health Promotion at Cal Poly Pomona.  Dr. George-Williams offers crucial insights as to what gathering information looks like in a technologically driven society and how we can use online spaces to our advantage. 

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening.