Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2017 begins

The Cambridge Festival of Ideas launches today with a focus on truth, post-truth and the everything in between.

The Festival is one of the biggest public engagement events held by the University of Cambridge. It attracts thousands of people and runs from 16th to 29th October.

This year marks the Festival’s 10th anniversary and sees a bumper programme of 234 events for people of all ages, ranging from debates, talks and exhibitions to films and performances, held in lecture theatres, museums and galleries across Cambridge. Most events are free of charge.

Speakers include some of the world’s leading thinkers, such as the philosopher Professor Rae Langton on post-truth as post-democracy, historian Professor Richard Evans, Classics author and presenter Tom Holland, the economist Dr Ha-Joon Chang, Tristram Hunt, former Labour MP and now director of the Victorian and Albert Museum, Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service and Dame Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics.

The main theme of the Festival is truth and many of the events focus on issues around post-truth and fake news, why it has come to prominence and how it can be tackled:

In Post-truth as post-democracy on 16th October, Professor Rae Langton looks at how 'post-truth’, described as speech that manipulates and deceives, in the media and in social media, marks the abandonment of truth. She will argue that this brings the death, not the vindication, of free speech and that a living democracy needs and deserves better.

On 20th October, historians of political thought Annabel Brett, John Robertson and Ben Slingo will take a journey through the history of ideas, exploring the deep questions raised by fake news with a look back at an early modern political genre that manipulated the form of ‘news’ during the event Fake news.

Speaking ahead of the event, Dr Annabel Brett said: “In the 21st century, increasing alienation and ideological division within Western democracies, together with conditions of global insecurity and threat, have fragmented the political consciousness of nations. Simultaneously, the internet has multiplied potential sources of information and consequent claims to authority and authenticity. People have been both forced and enabled to choose their news. From certain points of view, the news is just another form of liberal-elite establishment self-protection. But the idea of ‘fake news’ is nevertheless parasitic upon it. Fake news isn’t just false news as opposed to real or true news.

“Our event explores questions of fake and mock, intention and authenticity, and our own responses and psychological investments, through a look at a past political genre that we might call ‘fake news’, but in the absence of a collective democratic culture of the news.”

If the aim of fake news is to mislead, what happens when genuine news is viewed as fake? One such example was that the Russians were fuelling American nuclear power plants in the 1990s, and is just one of several real and fake stories published following the end of the Cold War. These stories will be explored by Shane Guy from the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Cambridge, during his talk, One in ten American light bulbs are lit by the Russians: fake news? on 21st October.

Commenting on fake news during and after the Cold War, Shane said: “A fertile breeding ground for fake news was the Cold War and within that the nuclear capability of the adversaries. When the Cold War ended, the United States, other countries of the G7, and the EU began 20-year programmes to assist Russia in its nuclear disarmament and to stop nuclear proliferation from the former Soviet Union.

“It is to the success of that programme that much is owed in keeping the peace, preventing terrorist acquisition of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and preventing nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima.  During that time, there was unreliable and fake news about what was going on. There were also accurate accounts that some sought to conceal or deny.”

Fake news goes hand-in-hand with propaganda and one of the Festival's events explores the symbiotic relationship between the state and the media. The talk, Media, the state and propaganda: what is the truth? on 21st October, illuminates some of the key issues of truth versus propaganda.

Speaker, Ian Shields, is a former RAF officer and presently an Associate Lecturer in International Relations at Cambridge University.  In his long military career, he had frequent dealings with the national media, and this has led to a growing interest in the relationship between the State and the Media – and their inter-dependent and symbiotic relationship.  Each need and feeds off the other – but is this always for the best or does it primarily serve the interests of these two sides?  Where is ‘truth’ and how much of what we are told is primarily propaganda?  And are we sufficiently aware of the closeness of the State-Media relationship?  This talk is inspired by both a long interest in these questions, and by Ian's research for his doctorate, which is examining this relationship against the backdrop of the use of military force.

Amid the propaganda and fake news, how do you know when information is fact-based? The rapid growth of information and the numbers of people who can create it means that we need more sophisticated tools to process the news we receive. In the event, Popping the filter bubble: how facts can help you on 23rd October, a panel of experts, senior librarians at the University of Cambridge, describe the different methods people can use to be their own fact checker.

One of the speakers, Katie Hughes, Open Access Research Adviser, Office of Scholarly Communication at the University of Cambridge, said: “Every day we are facing an overwhelming amount of information. The question is 'how can we trust what we are reading?' With traditional news sources under threat, online sources and social media are on the rise. Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have become an important source of news. What people don't realise is that in a way, they are creating their own news 'filter bubble'. The way to combat this is by teaching digital skills and information literacy – an area in which Librarians are greatly skilled. We help students evaluate information for their research and we can help apply those same skills to evaluating news.”