第64回総合防災セミナー

We are pleased to announce the 64th Sogo Bosai Seminar (Dec 2) as follows. We look forward to your kind participation.
Seminar will be delivered in English.
 
[Title]
“Cognitive Arrest in Conspiracism.”
 

[Speaker]
Dr. Jeong-Nam Kim, Professor, University of Oklahoma, United States
 

[Date]
Dec 2 (Fri), 15:30 – 17:00
 

[Venue & Registration]
The seminar will be held in a hybrid manner both via Zoom and onsite. The venue is room S-519D of Uji campus, Kyoto University.
 

Please register here by Dec 1 by noon.
https://forms.gle/LkMD9cPt9q4HFdfZA
 

[Abstract]
Information is a virtue. This assumption has been shaken, however, with the paradox in which a greater amount of information causes greater epistemic incapability among lay publics. In particular, public conspiracism has arisen as a social problem. Conspiratorial publics and their growing epistemic conviction of invalid conclusions result in social schisms, distrust, and doubt in legitimate social processes, all of which incur costs and risks to society. In this talk, I explain conspiratorial publics and the emerging processes of cognitive arrest and epistemic inertia in the digital age and changing information environment. I also discuss the relative effectiveness of counter strategies for lay publics arrested in conspiracism.

[Short bio]
Jeong-Nam Kim is the Gaylord Family Endowed Chair of Strategic Communication at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, at the University of Oklahoma. He serves as a senior editor of the journal “Health Communication,” and was elected as an educator member of the Arthur W. Page Society. Kim was awarded the Jackson Jackson & Wagner Behavioral Science Prize for his research from Public Relations Society of America. Kim investigates “public behavior” and its implications for social dynamics from a communication perspective. He has theorized on people’s communicative actions in individual life and in response to social problems. He applies theories, such as his Situational Theory of Problem Solving, to the fields of public relations, strategic communication, health communication, public diplomacy, corporate and government communication. He founded the Debiasing and Lay Informatics (DaLI) lab, and is currently working to conceptualize the communicative-cognitive interface of publics in personal and social problems. His work identifies both opportunities and challenges generated by lay publics and how their communicative actions either contribute to or detract from a civil society.