The Rhetoric of Disinformation Dan Martin, PhD Project Mentor(s): Dan Martin, PhD
Excessive disinformation has complicated what it means to know something and to deceive someone. The general public needs more complex definitions for disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, and fake news that account for the evolution of post-truth culture and the ways in which bad actors network falsehoods across a range of publication outlets and digital platforms. This presentation will define and redefine these terms to account for their current application across print and media outlets. It is important to understand how these terms connect to, overlap with, and separate from each other and acknowledge their growth in application across contexts. The wider body of research on disinformation and misinformation claims that defining these terms is complicated because they are diffuse and unstable. There are no simple definitions for these terms. Rebolledo (2025), Stasiuk-Krajewska and Wenzel (2024), Bąkowicz (2024), and Echeverría et al. (2025) insist that disinformation is too diverse and varied to define in one specific way. Many scholars reiterate that defining disinformation as intentionally misleading statements fails to capture how disinformation is an organized and structured plan to influence and alter reality over long periods of time for political and financial gain. Some scholars call for adopting new terms like information disorders. This presentation explores how disinformation functions as an umbrella term to deliberately mislead people, and it expands the definition for disinformation to account for the complex systems and digital platforms used to disinform.
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation (May 20, 9:30am–5:00pm) Keywords: Rhetoric, Disinformation, Misinformation, Fake News SOURCE Form ID: 53
1:1 (poems) ‡ Josie Price Project Mentor(s): Maya Jewell Zeller, MFA
This poetry chapbook is a collection of lyric, elegiac, and experimental pieces centered on sibling bereavement, love, and both the limits and freedom of language after loss. These poems address the experience of grief as an ongoing phenomenon that reshapes everyday life, reexamines identity, and reaffirms human connection. This collection was informed by experiential research and immersive studies conducted at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Baltimore in March 2026. This project was partially supported by the Office of University Student Research and foundry10 at Central Washington University. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation (May 20, 9:30am–5:00pm) Keywords: poem, poetry, chapbook SOURCE Form ID: 240
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