Join us in welcoming Jason Steinhauer as he discusses History Disrupted: How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past!
About History Disrupted:
The Internet has changed the past. Social media, Wikipedia, mobile networks, and the viral and visual nature of the Web have inundated the public sphere with historical information and misinformation, changing what we know about our history and History as a discipline. This is the first book to chronicle how and why it matters. Why does History matter at all? What role do history and the past play in our democracy? Our economy? Our understanding of ourselves? How do questions of history intersect with today's most pressing debates about technology; the role of the media; journalism; tribalism; education; identity politics; the future of government, civilization, and the planet? At the start of a new decade, in the midst of growing political division around the world, this information is critical to an engaged citizenry. As we collectively grapple with the effects of technology and its capacity to destabilize our societies, scholars, educators and the general public should be aware of how the Web and social media shape what we know about ourselves - and crucially, about our past.
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Jason Steinhauer is a Global Fellow at The Woodrow Wilson Center and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute; a contributor to TIME and CNN; a past editorial board member of The Washington Post "Made By History" section; former founding director of the Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest; and is currently a Presidential Counselor of the National WWII Museum.
In 2020, he founded the History Club on Clubhouse, which he hosts regularly. The club has more than 100,000 members and averages 2,500 participants per week. In 2021, he founded the first cryptocurrency devoted to history, $JASON coin. The coin will be used to provide grants for public-facing history projects.
In 2014, he coined the term "History Communicators" and has worked with colleagues worldwide to found the new field of History Communication. He is the founder and CEO of the History Communication Institute. His first book, History, Disrupted, examines how history gets communicated on the World Wide Web.
Jason has twice traveled overseas with the U.S. Department of State as part of diplomatic exchanges between the United States and the European Union, meeting with government officials, scholars and students to discuss the effects of the Web and social media on public understandings of news, history and information. He has spoken at events across the United States and Europe and appears frequently in the media. A native New Yorker, he is a long-suffering New York Jets fan.
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This event will be hosted in-person at Lost City Books! Masks will be required of attendees.
Accessibility note: This event will be held up two fight of stairs. Lost City Books does not have an elevator. This event will be simultaneously live streamed on our YouTube page!
History Disrupted: How Social Media and the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past will be available at Lost City Books!