#1476 The Disinformation War We Are Not Fighting
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2022
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Air Date 3/16/2022
Today we take a look at the dynamics of mis- and disinformation as well as the history of those, primarily Russia, who are actively using it as a weapon of information warfare against the US, The West, and democracies around the world.
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SHOW NOTES
Ch. 1: Are you Disinformed or Misinformed? - Harvard Data Science Review Podcast - Air Date 6-17-21
Harvard Data Science Review digs into the world of disinformation and misinformation, and the difference between them.
Ch. 2: Moving beyond news deserts and misinformation - Democracy Works - Air Date 2-14-22
Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Democracy Without Journalism?
Ch. 3: Why "Cheap Speech" Threatens Democracy - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick - Air Date 3-5-22
Dahlia talks to Rick Hasen about his new book Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics–and How to Cure It.
Ch. 4: The Firehose of Falsehood Effect - The Propwatch Project - Air Date 4-4-21
Dr. Christopher Paul, senior social scientist of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, discusses his seminal work on the "Firehose of Falsehood" propaganda model.
Ch. 5: The long history of Russian disinformation targeting the U.S. - PBS NewsHour - Air Date 11-22-18
From Pizzagate to George Soros conspiracies, “fake news” has become a noxious presence in public discourse, especially since the 2016 presidential election.
Ch. 6: Post-Truth: Lee C. McIntyre - Future Hindsight - Air Date 5-14-20
Authoritarians use post-truth to corrupt our faith in the truth. The end goal is not to make citizens believe lies, but to make them so cynical and uncertain, they think they can never know the truth.
MEMBERS-ONLY BONUS CLIP(S)
Ch. 9: Inside Estonia's approach in combating Russian disinformation - PBS NewsHour - Air Date 1-15-22
Russian disinformation is rife in countries formerly ruled from Moscow. Some ex-Soviet states have tried to suppress it altogether by banning Russian television stations and even limiting the use of the Russian language on their own domestic channels.
VOICEMAILS
Ch. 10: Seeking power from the right and left - Alex from Maryland Old
FINAL COMMENTS
Ch. 12: Final comments on avoiding the nihilism strategy of the Underpants Gnomes
TAKE ACTION!
Media Literacy Now - Advocate for U.S. Media Literacy Bills at State Level (See Existing Media Literacy Bills and Laws)
Tools to Fight Disinformation:
List: Tools That Fight Disinformation Online (RAND.org)
InVID - Browser plug in to help identify and verify shared videos and images
Hamilton 2.0 Dashboard - War in Ukraine (Disinformation tracker)
Orgs Fighting Disinformation:
Content Authenticity Initiative
Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity
Alliance for Securing Democracy
EDUCATE YOURSELF & SHARE
Short Docuseries: Operation InfeKtion (New York Times)
Book: “The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread” by Calin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall
Video Series: Crash Course Media Literacy
Training: First Draft News - Training
Written by BOTL Communications Director Amanda Hoffman
MUSIC (Blue Dot Sessions)
SHOW IMAGE:
Description: In graphic form, the word "TRUTH" is angled and textured in red. A magnifying glass hovers over most of the letter "U" and the word "LIES" can be seen repeated in rows through the circular glass.
Credit: Original design on Pixabay / Changes: angled, text color, background color / Final by Amanda Hoffman
Produced by Jay! Tomlinson
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left podcast in which we shall |
| 0:07.0 | take a look at the dynamics of myths and disinformation, as well as the history of those, |
| 0:13.0 | primarily Russia and the former Soviet Union, who have been actively using it as a weapon |
| 0:18.3 | of information warfare against the US, the West, and democracies around the world. |
| 0:23.9 | Most today are from the Harvard Data Science Review Podcast, Democracy's Work, Amicus, |
| 0:30.5 | the Prop Watch Project, the PBS NewsHour, and Future Hindsight, with an additional members |
| 0:36.6 | only clip from the PBS NewsHour. |
| 0:45.2 | We typically talk about misinformation and disinformation as slightly different things. |
| 0:50.4 | Information is an intentional misleading information. |
| 0:55.5 | That is the person that is posting or amplifying knows that the information is wrong and has |
| 1:03.6 | malicious intent. |
| 1:06.3 | Misinformation is a little bit more innocent. |
| 1:09.5 | Somebody, maybe on Facebook, see something that is incorrect is the result of a disinformation |
| 1:15.5 | campaign and forwards it on to somebody else. |
| 1:18.7 | We distinguish those because, although the end result may be the same, bad information, |
| 1:24.6 | false information is out there, the intent is very different. |
| 1:28.0 | Of course, that just means the strategy to counteract misinformation and disinformation |
| 1:33.2 | are going to be very different. |
| 1:34.6 | In one case, let's call it an innocent bystander, and in the other case, you have a malicious |
| 1:39.2 | after. |
| 1:41.2 | What about fake news? |
| 1:42.5 | Where does fake news fall into these two categories? |
... |
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