Dr Travis Coan Inaugural Lecture

'CARDS on the table: Teaching machines to spot climate obstruction' Please join us for Dr Travis Coan's Inaugural lecture:- ' CARDS on the table: Teaching machines to spot climate obstruction' Protecting information integrity is crucial for supporting action on climate change. However, sorting out climate fact from fiction has never been harder. Fact-checking online claims is no longer possible by humans alone, especially as major platforms roll back their previous commitments to tackle misinformation. Drawing on my 15 years of research in this area, I will explore the challenges and opportunities for using AI-assisted approaches to detect and counter climate obstruction, tracing the development of the field from topic models to large language models (LLMs). I will also share some recent work by my team on developing scalable LLM approaches to combat climate obstruction, and how we are turning these approaches into tools to support the work of climate communicators. Please note this is a hybrid event and tickets are available for both in person and online. Please only register for the ticket type you require. Location Streatham Campus - University of Exeter Streatham Court Lecture Theatre B · 15:45 doors open · 16:00 -17:00 Lecture · 17:00 -18:00 drinks reception · 18:00 finish Bio: Dr. Travis G. Coan is a Professor in Computational Social Science at the University of Exeter. He is co-director of the Centre for Climate Communication and Data Science (C3DS), previously directed the Centre for Computational Social Science (C2S2), and is a member of the Centre for Elections, Media, and Participation (CEMaP). While Dr. Coan has published on a wide-range of topics, his core research examines questions in the areas of environmental and political communication. Travis' methodological interests include Bayesian statistics, natural language processing, and computer vision. His work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Climatic Change, Global Environmental Change, Electoral Studies, International Studies Quarterly, and Social Networks, among others. Link to Profile : https://www.exeter.ac.uk/staff-