S1E72 / A World Wide Web of COVID Conspiracies / Graham Brookie, Devin Burghart, Bret Schafer, Judy Twigg

EPIDEMIC with Dr. Celine Gounder

KFF Health News and Just Human Productions

Society & Culture, #Eradication, Medicine, #Covid, Science, Life Sciences, #Sarscov2, Documentary, #Coronavirus, #Covid19, Health & Fitness, #Smallpox

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Disinformation is a deliberate falsehood put out to mislead an audience. But what we see more of are true bits of information where necessary context has been removed or manipulated in a way that makes it technically true but wildly misleading." -Bret Schafer In this episode of EPIDEMIC, we’re going to look at disinformation during the pandemic. Specifically, we’re going to look at how the Russian government and far-right militias are using vaccine disinformation to push their agendas. We’ll look at the motivations behind disinformation campaigns, why they can be so convincing, and what can be done about them. This podcast was created by Just Human Productions. We're powered and distributed by Simplecast. We're supported, in part, by listeners like you. #SARSCoV2 #COVID19 #COVID #coronavirus

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you would sort of boil down Russia's messaging around vaccines, it was a concerted effort
0:15.5	to promote the Sputnik vaccine while denigrating their Western competitors.
0:21.3	COVID vaccines are a multi-billion dollar business and Russia is angling very much for some
0:27.2	of that market share.
0:39.2	You're listening to Epidemic, the podcast about the science, public health, and social
0:43.8	impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. I'm your host, Dr. Selene Gounder.
0:57.2	In 1983, an article appeared one day in an Indian newspaper called The Patriot. The
1:10.6	Patriot was a small newspaper, but the story it published would go on to have a big impact.
1:16.4	It falsely alleged that the US military manufactured HIV as a bioweapon. Soon, the story started
1:22.9	to reappear in other newspapers around the world. This is Graham Brookie. I'm the director of the
1:32.9	Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council and a former employee at the National
1:38.1	Security Council at the White House. Graham studies disinformation campaigns.
1:42.4	The definition of disinformation is really important here. Disinformation is defined as false
1:48.4	information with the intent to mislead. And this one, known as Operation Denver, was one of the
1:54.4	most successful in history. According to KGB defectors, the Soviet Union planted the original
2:01.1	story in that Indian newspaper. It got a lot of traction because they amplified it through other
2:06.4	state-backed sources. So what we would refer to as circular amplification, where source A
2:11.6	puts something out that is false or unverified. Source B, site source A, that says, oh, well,
2:17.1	source A reported this. So we're going to take it as something we're going to report. And then
2:20.8	source A goes back and site source B on the same things. Over the next several years, the false
2:26.5	story spread more and more until one night. It made it on to primetime American television.
2:32.4	A Soviet military publication claims the virus that causes AIDS leaked from a US Army laboratory
	...

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