Introduction to Catfish at the IFI/Science Gallery

As part of the Science Gallery exhibition titled Fake, they partnered with the Irish Film Institute to curate a number of films around the theme of Fake. One of the chosen fils was Catfish. The film is credited with originating the term ‘catfishing’, which has seeped into the cultural vernacular, to denote fake social networking presences created for deceptive and mischievous purposes. I was asked to give an introduction to the film from a cyberpsychological perspective. I spoke about connecting online, deception, and why people might misrepresent themselves. But mostly I talked about basic media literacy - looking out for red flags, being aware of our cognitive bias, and not trusting everything we see/read!