Podcasts about network propaganda

During the 2016 election season, many U.S. citizens were getting their news from organizations known to neglect professional journalistic standards. Harvard professor Yochai Benkler joins us to discuss Network Propaganda — a new book he has co-authored that examines how exposure to low-quality news during that election cycle was particularly prevalent on the political right, resulting in a distorted presidential campaign based on misinformation.

During the 2016 election season, many U.S. citizens were getting their news from organizations known to neglect professional journalistic standards. Harvard professor Yochai Benkler joins us to discuss Network Propaganda — a new book he has co-authored that examines how exposure to low-quality news during that election cycle was particularly prevalent on the political right, resulting in a distorted presidential campaign based on misinformation.

During the 2016 election season, many U.S. citizens were getting their news from organizations known to neglect professional journalistic standards. Harvard professor Yochai Benkler joins us to discuss Network Propaganda — a new book he has co-authored that examines how exposure to low-quality news during that election cycle was particularly prevalent on the political right, resulting in a distorted presidential campaign based on misinformation.

Erik Martin was a guest on Episode 10 of this show, and I'm pretty excited that he's back. In February this year he wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post titled, We need a PBS for the Internet Age.Erik is a graduate student at the Oxford Internet Institute, and was a policy adviser at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He also worked as Sr Education Program Manager at the game engine company Unity, and was listed on Forbes 30 under 30 in 2018 in the games category. When I read his piece in The Post I immediately started bugging him to join us on the show to say more. I have the feeling that when I look back on the episodes of 2019, this one will land among a handful at the top that really pushed my thinking. Whether or not you agree with his proposal, I hope that you walk away with your own ideas about the responsibility that legislators in the US could one day take for improving the inextricably connected role that the internet plays in our lives and our democracy beyond the whack-a-mole of censorship and regulation. Episode Notes:We Need a PBS for the Internet Age, Washington Post, Op Ed, February 25, 2019: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-internet-has-gone-bad-public-media-can-save-it/2019/02/24/024befd0-36b2-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html?utm_term=.05c7d6fd62e4Oxford Computational Propaganda Project: https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/MIT research on false information retweets more than real news: https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/the-spread-of-false-and-true-info-online/overview/Newton Minnows 1961 speech, Television and the Public Interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_and_the_Public_Interest Network Propaganda, Book, Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/network-propaganda-yochai-benkler/1129078833?ean=9780190923631#/Shoshana Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalismBerkman Klein - talk on Network Propaganda: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018-10-04/network-propaganda See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analyzing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. Authors Yochai Benkler, Rob Faris, and Hal Roberts present their years-in-the-making research on the media ecosystem, and discuss their findings with Martha Minow and Claire Wardle. More info on this event here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018-10-04/network-propaganda

The internet and social media were supposed to radically democratize news and information — yet many observers now worry that they are undermining the preconditions for healthy democracies. Misinformation peddled by conspiracy theorists, unscrupulous clickbaiters, and even intelligence agencies spreads around the globe at the speed of light, while in the United States, citizens increasingly retreat into distinct media ecosystems so divergent as to be mutually unrecognizable. Can liberal democracy function in a world in which voters no longer inhabit the same universe of facts?We’ll take up these questions with renowned scholar Yochai Benkler, coauthor of the important new book-length study Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. We’ll take a close look at the dynamics of how propaganda, misinformation, and “fake news” propagate across modern information networks. Rebecca MacKinnon, author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, and Cato senior fellow Julian Sanchez provide commentary. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.