Join us for a virtual lecture that will explore a very brief history of fake news (It’s not new!),  its areas of impact (from politics to commerce and the outcomes for participation in a democracy), strategies for each age (children, teen and adult) when ingesting news, and the role of new media and emerging technologies. Plus, there will be time for audience questions! 

About our presenter: Roger Desmond, PhD, is a Professor in the School of Communication at The University of Hartford (retired 2018). He served as Director of the School from 1999 to 2004. He grew up in Los Gatos, California and obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in an interdisciplinary (psychology, communication) communication studies program at San Jose State University. He was a reporter for the underground newspaper Red Eye. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Communication Research at The University of Iowa in 1977, with a combined emphasis in psychology and psycholinguistics. 

Desmond’s early research addressed such topics as how children understand and respond to advertising, the development of thinking and language in children, and how adults process television programs. He has published research articles in professional journals in communication and psychology, contributed chapters to ten books and authored a textbook in 2015. In 1992, he was awarded a fellowship in media literacy at The Annenberg School of Communication at The University of Pennsylvania. His project involved research on how to increase media literacy in inner-city Philadelphia elementary school students. 

His professional consulting work includes survey research for two P.B.S. TV programs for children (“Mundo Real” and “The New Voice”), a one-year position at Eric Marder Associates in New York where he worked with C.B.S. soap operas “Guiding Light” and “As the World Turns”. He has also served as a consultant to numerous media organizations regarding news, entertainment and public relations. He has received grants from The Annenberg Foundation and The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

At University of Hartford, he taught courses in “Media and Society” “Processes and Effects of Media,” Fundamentals of Journalism” “Investigative Reporting” “Online Journalism” and a variety of other journalism courses. 

In the spring of 2006, Desmond was awarded a fellowship from the American Society of Newspaper Editors, where he trained in Washington, D.C. and served as a full-time reporter for the Connecticut Post in Bridgeport, CT. He wrote features and metro news articles. In the winter of 2008, he was a fellow at the Donald Reynolds Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University. He was awarded an NEH Recognition Award for innovative teaching for his “Business Journalism” course in September of 2009. He received the Roy Larsen Award for Excellence in teaching in 2015, the highest teaching award in the university.  

Please register; Zoom links will be sent out before the event.

Program sponsored by the Friends of the Avon Library.