Civics Lecture Series: Monsters, Bots, and Misinformation

Just in time for Halloween, this multi-speaker symposium explores the real and imagined “bogeymen” haunting today’s information landscape. From zombie narratives that refuse to die to misinformation spreading from “inside the house,” speakers examine how flawed data, viral rumors, and misleading media shape public understanding, professional practice, and scientific discourse. Presented with CivicCLP, this program highlights why media and scientific literacy are more important than ever.

This event will take place in the Quiet Reading Room of Main Library as well as virtually, and will be recorded for later viewing.

Speaker Bios:

• • Sean Barill, M.A., is a writer and cultural anthropologist whose research engages with topics of ecological violence and political communication in the context of the post-industrial landscape. In particular, this work seeks to expand upon our notion of human agency from the vantage of the environmental sacrifice zone, drawing on ethnographic and archival methods to demonstrate the creative forces of the social body vis-a-vis the deleterious conditions of the present. His current project employs the figure of the monster as both a rhetorical device and analytical category to comment on the psychological, commercial, and cosmological dimensions of economic recovery efforts in rural Appalachia. Outside of his academic commitments, Sean has collaborated on public-facing educational projects through the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Lincoln Park Zoo, and Literacy Pittsburgh. Some of Sean’s public writing can be found here.
  • Samantha Totoni, PhD, MPH, is the Research Director for the Communication Technology Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Communication. She leads research on how communities can learn from one another in responding to online manipulation and propaganda. Samantha was a 2025 Mass Media Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science.