Professor Kate Starbird on the dangers of 'participatory disinformation' and the roots of election denialism
Reliable Sources
CNN
3.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"There's this sort of co-creation of disinformation" about the 2020 election, resulting in a "really powerful false narrative of voter fraud that's going to be very hard to correct," Kate Starbird says. Starbird, an associate professor at the University of Washington and a co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public, calls this "participatory disinformation" and says propaganda is most effective "when it's coming from people you trust." Brian Stelter also asks about Starbird's work studying "crisis informatics" and online rumors.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The outgoing president is still engaged in election denialism more than a month after election day. |
| 0:10.0 | What is it really all about? |
| 0:12.0 | What is he signaling to his supporters? |
| 0:14.0 | What are his supporters signaling back to him? |
| 0:17.0 | Is this a form of participatory disinformation? |
| 0:22.0 | And what does that mean? disciplinary disinformation. |
| 0:23.2 | And what does that mean? |
| 0:25.6 | Those are some of the questions on this week's Reliable Sources Podcast. |
| 0:29.0 | So let's cue the music. |
| 0:31.0 | I'm Brian Stelter and this weekly podcast edition of Reliable Sources is our opportunity to go more in-depth |
| 0:37.8 | with media leaders and newsmakers talking about how the media world works and does not work. And we are seeing a lot of dysfunction |
| 0:46.8 | in right-wing media currently. I'm taping this at the beginning of December, Friday, December 4th, more than a month after election day. |
| 0:57.4 | And all throughout the pro-Trump media, from Fox News shows to NewsMax and O'An, right-wing websites, etc, etc. |
| 1:05.0 | There is still persistent talk about mass voter fraud even though there is no proof of that |
| 1:11.0 | and of course so much proof that contradicts the claims. |
| 1:15.9 | And it's not just the outgoing president who is doing this, who's responsible. |
| 1:20.8 | There's an entire constellation of media that is supporting this, encouraging it, and that's what brings me to my guest this week. |
| 1:28.0 | Every so often the Twitter Swamp shows me a tweet that makes the site worth it. |
| 1:35.0 | That makes the platform worth it. |
| 1:37.0 | And that's what happened this week when I saw a post by Kate Starbird. |
| 1:42.0 | Starbird is an associate professor of human-centered design and engineering |
| 1:46.4 | at the University of Washington. |
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