Chatter: Information Ecology with Alicia Wanless
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2023
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alicia Wanless is one of the pioneers of the idea of information ecology, the notion that we should think about information and disinformation as part of a complex ecosystem, the management of which she analogizes to environmental policy. Wanless has been complaining for several years that the war on “disinformation” skates over important question: What are the collateral effects of anti-disinformation policies? How do interventions against information pollution operate in the real world?
In her conversation with Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare’s editor in chief and this week’s Chatter guest host, Wanless talks about how she became interested in information management, what’s wrong with the discussion of disinformation, what a more environmentalist approach to information spaces might look like, and what a useful research agenda for the nascent field would focus on.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
- Wanless’s latest essay on Lawfare: “There’s No Getting Ahead of Disinformation Without Moving Past It.”
- The book Network Propaganda
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.4 | Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair no bull, |
| 0:27.3 | and the aftermath. |
| 0:30.0 | Welcome to chatter. |
| 0:36.9 | I'm Benjamin Whittes, LawFair's editor-in-chief. |
| 0:40.5 | This week, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Alicia Wannluss, on |
| 0:47.1 | disinformation and how little we understand what it is. |
| 0:54.2 | I don't think the US could possibly regulate anything related to disinformation, nor do |
| 1:00.2 | I think it probably should at this point, given our lack of understanding, but that means |
| 1:04.2 | that we're also incapable of doing anything about it. |
| 1:09.2 | There's always going to be a level of information pollution. |
| 1:13.1 | It's just a byproduct of humanity, right? |
| 1:16.0 | The question is, what are the levers for actually doing something about it? |
| 1:23.5 | We don't see the information environment for what it is. |
| 1:25.9 | We can never be strategic in it. |
| 1:27.3 | We will always just be reacting. |
| 1:35.2 | So I want to start before we get to the article that you wrote. |
| 1:39.5 | I want to start with the question of the field that you're critiquing, which is the field |
| 1:48.2 | that has blossomed since 2016, really, the field of fretting about disinformation. |
| 1:59.8 | You have a broader critique of this field, which is that it's never paused to define |
... |
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