The Al Jazeera Centre for Studies (AJCS) will organise a public seminar on ‘The Role of the Media in Shaping Representation and Manufacturing Realty’ during the Doha International Book Fair.
The seminar on January 11, at 5pm will explore the role of the media in creating fake news and alternative realities to influence public opinion and steer the audiences’ orientations.
It will throw light into the impact of alternative realities on the falsification of perceptions and distortion of facts pertaining to individuals, groups, states, religious, intellectual, and political ideologies and the promotion of representations that do not correspond to reality on the ground as well as on societies particularly in terms of there political and security stability.
The seminar will also analyse the function of fake news and alternative realities in international conflicts, crises and wars in which they are strategic tools for propaganda and the manufacturing of an alternative political reality that serves political objectives.
As per the concept note, the seminar’s importance emanates from the growing danger of the phenomenon of “alternative realities” in the context of Arab and international political conditions, especially after political polarisation, conflicts, crises and wars that led to the aggravation of division in these societies regarding political, economic, human rights, religious and ethnic issues.
The speakers are Nawaf Altamimi, professor of journalism at Doha Institute for Graduate Studies; Mohamed al-Musfir, professor of international affairs at Qatar University; and Liqaa Maki, senior researcher at AJCS and former professor of media at the University of Baghdad with Al Jazeera presenter Mayada Abdo as moderator.
Al Jazeera Centre for Studies
