Joan Donovan, an award-winning sociologist who founded the Critical Internet Studies Institute, is known for her work studying media manipulation, extremism and disinformation campaigns. We talked to Donovan about how political disinformation has shifted from shadowy social media accounts to an open and brazen strategy.
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Disinformation was never in the shadows … it was always there and we were all taught that we shouldn’t listen to it.
The difference now is that we’ve allowed a few loud obnoxious voices to tell everyone that the disinformation is something we should all listen to.
You’re expected to swallow whatever disinformation is spouted by your “team” while denying even truthful information from the other “team.”
This is somehow descriptive, opinionated and underanalysing. There is a lot of political strategy mentioned, but questions like why, who (societally) and where remain mostly untouched.
Astute observation and well put.
