Global Fake News and Defamation Symposium
Event Details
Fake News and Weaponized Defamation: Global Perspectives
January 26, 2018, 9am - 5pm
Southwestern Law School Campus
3050 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90010
Concept Note:
The notion of “fake news” has gained great currency in global popular culture in the wake of contentious social-media imbued elections in the United States and Europe. Although often associated with the rise of extremist voices in political discourse and, specifically, an agenda to “deconstruct” the power of government, institutional media, and the scientific establishment, fake news is "new wine in old bottles," a phenomenon that has long historical roots in government propaganda, jingoistic newspapers, and business-controlled public relations. In some countries, dissemination of “false news” is a crime that is used to stifle dissent. This broad conception of fake news not only acts to repress evidence-based inquiry of government, scientists, and the press; but it also diminishes the power of populations to seek informed consensus on policies such as climate change, healthcare, race and gender equality, religious tolerance, national security, drug abuse, poverty, homophobia, and government corruption, among others.
"Weaponized defamation” refers to the increasing invocation, and increasing use, of defamation and privacy torts by people in power to threaten press investigations, despite laws protecting responsible or non-reckless reporting. In the United States, for example, some politicians, including the current president, invoke defamation as both a sword and shield. Armed with legal power that individuals—and most news organizations—cannot match, politicians and celebrities, wealthy or backed by the wealth of others, can threaten press watchdogs with resource-sapping litigation; at the same time, some leaders appear to leverage their “lawyered-up” legal teams to make knowingly false attacks—or recklessly repeat the false attacks of others—with impunity.
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Scheduled Paper Presenters and Speakers
Russell L. Weaver, University of Lousville
Erwin Chemerinsky, University of California, Berkeley
David Goldberg, University of London and Southwestern Law School
Monroe Price, Cardozo Law School
Kyu Ho Youm, University of Oregon
Elena Sherstoboeva, Moscow Higher School of Economics
Roy S. Gutterman, Newhouse School at Syracuse University
Andrei Richter, Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe
Alexander Heinze, University of Gottingen
Anthony Fargo, Indiana University
Roberto Mastroaianni, University of Naples
Christopher Terry, University of Minnesota
David Acheson, University of Kent
Helen Norton, University of Colorado
Hillary A.N. Young, University of New Brunswick
Teresa Rodriguez de las Heras Ballel, Univerisidad Carlos III de Madrid
Mirela Zupan, University in Osijeck, Croatia
Wesley Pippert, University of Missouri
Rachel L. Jones, University of North Carolina
Wannes Vandenbussche, Yale Law School
Jane Kirtley, University of Minnesota
Joan Barata Mir, Central European University
Jelena Surculija Milojevic, University of Belgrade
Charlie Holt, Greenpeace International
Ahran Park, Korean Press Center
Tommaso Tani, Leiden University
partial list, subject to change
The Journal of International Media & Entertainment Law is a faculty-edited journal published by the Donald E. Biederman Entertainment and Media Law Institute at Southwestern Law School, in cooperation with the American Bar Association’s Forum on Communications Law, and the ABA’s Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries.
The Southwestern Law Review and the Southwestern Journal of International Law are honors publications edited by students at Southwestern Law School.