Imperfect Paradise: When the disinformation machine comes for you

California Love

LAist Studios

Music

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Renée DiResta joined the Stanford Internet Observatory to analyze how propaganda spreads online. But in 2023, she went from studying the online disinformation machine to becoming its target. We dive into what happened when a right-wing conspiracy made Renée its villain, as well as how disinformation has changed over the last three presidential elections and where Renée is finding hope for a better future online.

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Transcript

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0:34.0	P-R-E-P-P-I-com slash LAist.
0:38.8	Do you think we lost the war on disinformation?
0:41.6	Well, no, see, I wouldn't frame it that way because disinformation is like, it's like a chronic
0:45.1	condition.
0:45.9	It's like, it's always going to be there.
0:47.3	It's, you know, you can talk about disinformation in the ancient Greece if you want to, and
0:50.9	it'll be with us forever.
0:52.1	So I don't think about it in those terms. I think about it more in the terms of, like,
0:55.1	how do we return to like a shared base of facts?
0:57.9	The bigger question is not like, what do we do about disinformation?
1:00.2	It's how do we find ways to create an information environment where consensus is possible?
1:05.1	That I think is the question in front of us.
1:08.9	This is in Perfect Paradise.
1:12.0	I'm Antonia Serejido.
1:19.5	Renee Duresta is a professor at Georgetown, a writer and a researcher who studies disinformation and propaganda online.
	...

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