Invisible Rulers
The People Who Turn Lies into Reality
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Narrated by:
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Anna Caputo
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By:
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Renee DiResta
About this listen
A brilliant, original analysis of the radical shift in the dynamics of power and influence, revealing how the machinery that powered the Big Lie works to create bespoke realities revolutionizing politics, culture, and society.
Renée DiResta’s powerful, original investigation into the way power and influence have been profoundly transformed reveals how a virtual rumor mill of niche propagandists increasingly shapes public opinion. While propagandists position themselves as trustworthy Davids, their reach, influence, and economics make them classic Goliaths—invisible rulers who create bespoke realities to revolutionize politics, culture, and society. Their work is driven by a simple maxim: if you make it trend, you make it true.
By revealing the machinery and dynamics of the interplay between influencers, algorithms, and online crowds, DiResta vividly illustrates the way propagandists deliberately undermine belief in the fundamental legitimacy of institutions that make society work. This alternate system for shaping public opinion, unexamined until now, is rewriting the relationship between the people and their government in profound ways. It has become a force so shockingly effective that its destructive power seems limitless. Scientific proof is powerless in front of it. Democratic validity is bulldozed by it. Leaders are humiliated by it. But they need not be.
With its deep insight into the power of propagandists to drive online crowds into battle—while bearing no responsibility for the consequences—Invisible Rulers not only predicts those consequences but offers ways for leaders to rapidly adapt and fight back.
©2024 Renee DiResta (P)2024 PublicAffairsListeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Professor Jeff Jarvis
- Narrated by: Professor Jeff Jarvis
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The age of print is a grand exception in history. For five centuries it fostered what some call print culture – a worldview shaped by the completeness, permanence, and authority of the printed word. As a technology, print at its birth was as disruptive as the digital migration of today. Now, as the internet ushers us past print culture, journalist Jeff Jarvis offers important lessons from the era we leave behind. To understand our transition out of the Gutenberg Age, Jarvis first examines the transition into it.
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Complex and balanced analysis of ideas
- By Michael Sund on 01-01-25
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Wrong
- How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation
- By: Dannagal Goldthwaite Young
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Why are so many of us wrong about so much? From COVID-19 to climate change to the results of elections, millions of Americans believe things that are simply not true—and act based on these misperceptions. In Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, expert in media and politics Dannagal Goldthwaite Young offers a comprehensive model that illustrates how political leaders and media organizations capitalize on our social and cultural identities to separate, enrage, and—ultimately—mobilize us.
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Very informative
- By miltonpat on 09-10-24
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How Minds Change
- The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion
- By: David McRaney
- Narrated by: David McRaney
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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What made a prominent conspiracy-theorist YouTuber finally see that 9/11 was not a hoax? How do voter opinions shift from neutral to resolute? Can widespread social change only take place when a generation dies out? From one of our greatest thinkers on reasoning, HOW MINDS CHANGE is a book about the science, and the experience, of transformation.
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Fascinating, nuanced, well-written, but…
- By Jason J. Gay on 08-13-22
By: David McRaney
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High Conflict
- Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out
- By: Amanda Ripley
- Narrated by: Amanda Ripley
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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High conflict is what happens when discord distills into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them. In this state, the brain behaves differently. We feel increasingly certain of our own superiority, and everything we do to try to end the conflict, usually makes it worse. Eventually, we can start to mimic the behavior of our adversaries, harming what we hold most dear. In this book, New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley investigates how good people get captured by high conflict—and how they break free.
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Perspective and Tools for Conflict-Drenched Times
- By Mark Patterson on 05-19-21
By: Amanda Ripley
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Disaster Nationalism
- The Downfall of Liberal Civilization
- By: Richard Seymour
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The rise of the new far right has left the world grappling with a profound misunderstanding. While the spotlight often shines on the actions of charismatic leaders, the true peril lies elsewhere. Defeating these people will not stem the tide driving them forward. They are merely the embodiment of profound forces that are rarely understood. Propelled through the vast networks of social media and fueled by far-right influencers, enthralled by images of disaster and fantasies of doom, they have emerged from a reservoir of societal despair, fear, and isolation.
By: Richard Seymour
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Cheap Speech
- How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics - and How to Cure It
- By: Richard L. Hasen
- Narrated by: Tim Fannon
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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With piercing insight into the current debates over free speech, censorship, and Big Tech’s responsibilities, Richard L. Hasen proposes legal and social measures to restore Americans’ access to reliable information on which democracy depends. In an era when quack COVID treatments and bizarre QAnon theories have entered mainstream, this book explains how to assure both freedom of ideas and a commitment to truth.
By: Richard L. Hasen
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The Gutenberg Parenthesis
- The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet
- By: Professor Jeff Jarvis
- Narrated by: Professor Jeff Jarvis
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The age of print is a grand exception in history. For five centuries it fostered what some call print culture – a worldview shaped by the completeness, permanence, and authority of the printed word. As a technology, print at its birth was as disruptive as the digital migration of today. Now, as the internet ushers us past print culture, journalist Jeff Jarvis offers important lessons from the era we leave behind. To understand our transition out of the Gutenberg Age, Jarvis first examines the transition into it.
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Complex and balanced analysis of ideas
- By Michael Sund on 01-01-25
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Wrong
- How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation
- By: Dannagal Goldthwaite Young
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why are so many of us wrong about so much? From COVID-19 to climate change to the results of elections, millions of Americans believe things that are simply not true—and act based on these misperceptions. In Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, expert in media and politics Dannagal Goldthwaite Young offers a comprehensive model that illustrates how political leaders and media organizations capitalize on our social and cultural identities to separate, enrage, and—ultimately—mobilize us.
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Very informative
- By miltonpat on 09-10-24
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How Minds Change
- The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion
- By: David McRaney
- Narrated by: David McRaney
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What made a prominent conspiracy-theorist YouTuber finally see that 9/11 was not a hoax? How do voter opinions shift from neutral to resolute? Can widespread social change only take place when a generation dies out? From one of our greatest thinkers on reasoning, HOW MINDS CHANGE is a book about the science, and the experience, of transformation.
-
-
Fascinating, nuanced, well-written, but…
- By Jason J. Gay on 08-13-22
By: David McRaney
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High Conflict
- Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out
- By: Amanda Ripley
- Narrated by: Amanda Ripley
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
High conflict is what happens when discord distills into a good-versus-evil kind of feud, the kind with an us and a them. In this state, the brain behaves differently. We feel increasingly certain of our own superiority, and everything we do to try to end the conflict, usually makes it worse. Eventually, we can start to mimic the behavior of our adversaries, harming what we hold most dear. In this book, New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Amanda Ripley investigates how good people get captured by high conflict—and how they break free.
-
-
Perspective and Tools for Conflict-Drenched Times
- By Mark Patterson on 05-19-21
By: Amanda Ripley
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Disaster Nationalism
- The Downfall of Liberal Civilization
- By: Richard Seymour
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The rise of the new far right has left the world grappling with a profound misunderstanding. While the spotlight often shines on the actions of charismatic leaders, the true peril lies elsewhere. Defeating these people will not stem the tide driving them forward. They are merely the embodiment of profound forces that are rarely understood. Propelled through the vast networks of social media and fueled by far-right influencers, enthralled by images of disaster and fantasies of doom, they have emerged from a reservoir of societal despair, fear, and isolation.
By: Richard Seymour
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American Kleptocracy
- How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History
- By: Casey Michel
- Narrated by: Joe Dwyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, American Kleptocracy offers the first explosive investigation into how the United States of America built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known.
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Brilliant, timely, a cautionary tale
- By Victoria Eriksson on 11-24-21
By: Casey Michel
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Moneyland
- The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World
- By: Oliver Bullough
- Narrated by: Oliver Bullough
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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An investigative journalist's deep dive into the corrupt workings of the world's kleptocrats. Learn how the institutions of Europe and the US have become money-laundering operations, attacking the foundations of many of the world's most stable countries. Meet the kleptocrats. Meet their awful children. And find out how heroic activists around the world are fighting back.
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Best book I've read (listened to) this year
- By Linda Copeland on 06-26-19
By: Oliver Bullough
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Wild Faith
- How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America
- By: Talia Lavin
- Narrated by: Talia Lavin
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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From school boards to the Supreme Court, Christian theocracy is ascendant in America—and only through exploring its motivations and impacts can we understand the crisis we face. In Wild Faith, Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.
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Rough listen
- By Nick on 12-10-24
By: Talia Lavin
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Offshore
- Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism
- By: Brooke Harrington
- Narrated by: Jennifer Walden
- Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
How do the rich keep getting richer, while dodging the long arm of the law? The ultra-rich seem to live in a different world from the rest of us. That world is called offshore. Hidden from view, the world's ultra-rich can use offshore finance to escape tax obligations, labor and environmental safety regulations, campaign finance rules, and other laws that get in their way.
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fantastic break down
- By Doug Johnson on 12-09-24
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How to Win an Information War
- The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler
- By: Peter Pomerantsev
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat his powerful propaganda machine, crowing victory and smearing his enemies as liars and manipulators over his frequent radio speeches, blasted out on loudspeakers and into homes. British claims that Hitler was dangerous had little impact against this wave of disinformation. Except for the broadcasts of someone called Der Chef, a German who questioned Nazi doctrine, and most importantly, a character created by the British propagandist Thomas Sefton Delmer, a unique weapon in the war.
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fascinating story
- By Mark on 03-19-24
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How to Live Free in a Dangerous World
- A Decolonial Memoir
- By: Shayla Lawson
- Narrated by: Shayla Lawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In their new book, Shayla Lawson reveals how traveling can itself be a political act, when it can be a dangerous world to be Black, femme, nonbinary, and disabled. With their signature prose, at turns bold, muscular, and luminous, Shayla Lawson travels the world to explore deeper meanings held within love, time, and the self.
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Vulnerable and honest
- By Kinga on 11-26-24
By: Shayla Lawson
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Cloistered
- My Years as a Nun
- By: Catherine Coldstream
- Narrated by: Catherine Coldstream
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Cloistered takes the listener deep into the hidden world of a traditional Carmelite monastery as it approaches the third Millennium and tells the story of an intense personal journey into and out of an enclosed life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Finding an apparently perfect world at Akenside Priory, in Northumberland, Catherine trusts herself to a group of twenty silent women, believing she is trusting herself to God. As the beauty and mystery of an ancient way of life enfold her, she surrenders herself wholly to its power, quite unaware of the complexity and dangers that lie ahead.
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The Secret Lives of Nuns
- By IrishB17 on 10-07-24
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Stories Are Weapons
- Psychological Warfare and the American Mind
- By: Annalee Newitz
- Narrated by: Alexandra Cohler
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats have evolved from military weapons deployed against foreign adversaries into tools in domestic culture wars. Newitz delves into America's deep-rooted history with psychological operations, beginning with Benjamin Franklin's Revolutionary War-era fake newspaper and nineteenth-century wars on Indigenous nations, and reaching its apotheosis with the Cold War and twenty-first-century influence campaigns online.
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The Forever Wars
- By idrissa35653 on 12-27-24
By: Annalee Newitz
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The Misinformation Age
- How False Beliefs Spread
- By: Cailin O’Connor, James Owen Weatherall
- Narrated by: Chelsea Stephens
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what's essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.
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Veritas!
- By Charles Henderson on 08-11-20
By: Cailin O’Connor, and others
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Not the End of the World
- How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
- By: Hannah Ritchie
- Narrated by: Hannah Ritchie PhD
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, and that we should reconsider having children.
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Environmental Sustainability Analysis
- By RM on 04-16-24
By: Hannah Ritchie
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Post-Truth
- By: Lee C. McIntyre
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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What, exactly, is post-truth? Is it wishful thinking, political spin, mass delusion, bold-faced lying? McIntyre analyzes recent examples - claims about inauguration crowd size, crime statistics, and the popular vote - and finds that post-truth is an assertion of ideological supremacy by which its practitioners try to compel someone to believe something regardless of the evidence. Yet post-truth didn't begin with the 2016 election; the denial of scientific facts about smoking, evolution, vaccines, and climate change offers a road map for more widespread fact denial.
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A politicallly motivated partisan diatribe!
- By Amazon Customer on 04-06-22
By: Lee C. McIntyre
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Autocracy, Inc.
- The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Anne Applebaum
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents. But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran.
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A Triumphant Work -Puts It All Together With Laser Clarity
- By Sjhoffman on 09-19-24
By: Anne Applebaum
What listeners say about Invisible Rulers
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- Matt
- 06-27-24
Timely and important
Understanding how information travels has never been more important, but the internet often feels like a black box, hidden behind walls constructed by big corporations. Invisible Rulers pulls back the curtains and reveals the ongoing death spiral of our information ecosystem, as well as its history going back over a decade. It breaks down the historical and philosophical origins underpinning the spread of propaganda, as well as how modern propagandists leverage the tools and techniques of virality to influence masses and create the illusion of unanimity.
This book ties together crucial ideas to help us understand viral misinformation and gives us the tools to fight back. It also provides an incredibly up close and insightful analysis of some of the most destructive ideas being spread across the internet today. As we head into another election, in a year marked by the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence, and the bolstering of its usage to fool and deceive, this book could not have come at a better time.
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1 person found this helpful
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- T
- 08-15-24
high quality, very academic.
dense book. we'll researched. unfortunately no one who really needs to hear this book will listen to it. important info nonetheless.
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- Virginia A. Clark
- 10-19-24
Distortions in public opinion on social media
Serious analysis of problems and advantages of new media platforms and how to combat their worse tendencies
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- Anonymous User
- 12-08-24
This booked wrecked me emotionally and I’m grateful it did.
This was an emotional rollercoaster type of experience. At moments, the intensity of my feelings made me want to stop (or throw my airpods away), yet I couldn’t—and I’m so glad I didn’t. The last chapter, left me feeling more informed, self-aware, and, surprisingly, optimistic. I highly recommend it.
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- Todd Blume
- 07-24-24
The best book on the topic
Read this and you’ll understand how we got into this mess, and some steps to take to fix it.
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- Elijah
- 08-30-24
Everyone needs to read this book.
DiResta does a superb job of digging into the ways social media is failing us as a society and how we might go about fixing it.
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- Gina S.
- 07-01-24
the more things change...
Propaganda is not new but has morphed and expanded. Essential insight into the wierding of online and offline communication by lucrative tale-spinning influencers. How propaganda ate the internet. Some helpful hints on doing some things but more on how it unfolded and laying out and connecting the elements than providing a complete set of fixes. Especially valuable for gaining a sense of orientation as to what is going on and what types of responses haven't been working so as to help figure out more options for the future and not dispair. Getting a grip on what is going on is in itself empowering and that is a direct counter to the purpose of the propaganda to disorient, and cause disengagement. So the overall effect of the book feels to me hopeful and a foundation for staying engaged and figuring out better options for future communication world, Kind of like pulling one boot out of the mud and looking for a better place to put it down, while being very aware of the other boot still being deep in the mire. Since the author didn't read the book, I was very glad to hear her voice on the Moderated Content podcast June 12, 2024, during which she discusses the book and interacts with Annalee Newitz, author of Stories are Weapons (apparently not yet available as an audiobook) as well as Alex Stamos and Evelyn Douek on the book's topics. I think on the podcast their interactions add a bit more about what to do. As the two authors respond to one another and to questions, they expand a bit more on some points.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Westanna
- 11-06-24
explains a lot
Cogent analysis explaining a new, near insurmountable, barrier to an informed citizenry. Recommend to your friends buried in social media
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- Pedro Antonio Cartagena
- 10-25-24
Very informative
The best piece is getting know how misinformation is used and how to counter the impact by recognizing the genre.
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- Diana
- 01-06-25
Eloquent prose
Was fascinated by the social media terminology and very impressed with the explanations. I don’t use or much appreciate social media. So found this most enlightening as well as sadly disturbing.
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