PERiTiA Assembles Global Experts in an Upcoming Virtual Conference

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The American University of Armenia (AUA) is happy to announce that the virtual scientific conference on Trust in Expertise in a Changing Media Landscape will take place on March 18-19. The conference is organized within the scope of the Policy, Expertise, and Trust in Action (PERiTiA) project funded by the EU Horizon 2020 program. AUA is a partner in this multidisciplinary project, with the AUA Acopian Center for the Environment as the host of the project at AUA.

The conference will bring together prominent international scholars to discuss how to best assess, establish, and maintain the credibility and trustworthiness of expertise in the rapidly changing media environment. The researchers will present their findings on topics of trust and trustworthiness, expertise, science and technology, policy, and the media. The conference will revolve around climate change, the recent COVID-19 pandemic, conspiracy theories, science-related populism, trust in the media, among others.

There will be four keynote speeches and four parallel panel sessions throughout the two days of the conference. Dr. Arshak Balayan, lecturer at the AUA College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) and PERiTiA project researcher, will be making a presentation during the 2nd Parallel Panel Sessions titled “Psychological and Philosophical Perspectives on Trust in Media.”

In his presentation titled “A Media for Vigilant Social Creatures,” Dr. Balayan will present and evaluate cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier’s work viewing some of his claims in the context of other recent and relevant social, psychological, and communications research. He will also discuss the implications that information producers, consumers, and governments should draw from Mercier’s theory.

Registration to the conference is required and can be done here.

For more on the PERiTiA project, please visit https://ace.aua.am/peritia/.

The AUA Acopian Center for the Environment, a research center of the American University of Armenia, promotes the protection and restoration of the natural environment through research, education, and community outreach. The AUA Acopian Center’s focus areas include sustainable natural resource management, biodiversity, and conservation, greening the built environment, clean energy, and energy efficiency, as well as information technology and the environment.