Maybe America needs a disinformation doctor.

What is the state of media manipulation?

What are researchers learning about how the worldwide web, the technology that connects

all of us, how it's being distorted and used against us?

Those are some of the questions for this week's Reliable Sources podcast.

So let's queue up the music.

I'm Brian Stelter and this weekly podcast edition of Reliable Sources is our chance to go

more in-depth talking about the story behind the story.

And there is so much to analyze and to understand about the information wars that rage each

and every day.

There are meme campaigns and digital disorders, all sorts of media manipulation that unfolds

some of it right in front of us and others other times much more in the shadows.

Dr. Joan Donovan is someone who studies all of this.

She's a research director for the Shore and Steen Center on Media Politics and Public

Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

And she's been front and center recently, jumping to translate these treacherous trends

in information and really disinformation.

So I wanted to talk with her about what she's been learning and how it affects all of us.

Dr. Joan Donovan, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

Excited to be here.

Everywhere I look, you are testifying to this committee or to that council or issuing this paper.

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