BCNM 2019 Seed Grant Talks
with Celeste Kidd
Psychology
and William White
Anthropology
BCNM’s seed grant fellowship program aims to identify innovative research incorporating questions of new media, and to support this work across campus, particularly by junior faculty. In keeping with BCNM’s own mission, this research can relate either to explorations of contemporary media in transformation, or to critical questions around the historic transformations and effects of new media on their own time.
Join us to learn about the stunning projects being undertaken by our 2019 Seed Grant recipients!
Celeste Kidd
“The Role of Reasoning and Metacognition During Belief Formation in the Internet Era” seeks to formalize and test theories that can explain why people sometimes believe things that they shouldn’t, and how this potentially destructive tendency might be overcome with the right interventions, using cognitive science, anthropology, and mathematical modeling methods. With a Faculty Seed Grant, the Kidd lab will apply an interdisciplinary approach to testing their hypothesis about the role of confirming feedback via new media in the perpetuation of false ideas. Activities would include (1) writing an ethnography of flat earth beliefs, (2) testing the scientific reasoning abilities of flat-earth belief holders, and (3) conducting lab-based pilot experiments to test whether unjustified certainty can be reduced through interventions designed to highlight knowledge gaps and renew curiosity in the topic via feedback.
William White
“People’s Park Digital Heritage Project” will be an effort to document the evolution of People’s Park as an urban space and its role in Berkeley history. The goal is to create a digital model of what this parcel used to be before it was transformed into a park, and to highlight the central role it played in the anti-establishment uprising in support of the park so publics can digitally experience this part of Berkeley history.A Faculty Seed Grant will help: (1) (re)interpret archival documents; (2) create a 3-D streetscape of the park prior to 1969 using archival photos and drone-based photogrammetry renderings of buildings moved from the park area, and; (3) build a virtual tour of places and events associated with the 1969 uprising.