Yochai Benkler on Mass-Media Disinformation Campaigns

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4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2020

⏱️ 64 minutes

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Summary

On this episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

With only weeks until Election Day in the United States, there’s a lot of mis- and disinformation flying around on the subject of mail-in ballots. Discussions about addressing that disinformation often focus on platforms like Facebook or Twitter. But a new study by the Berkman Klein Center suggests that social media isn’t the most important part of mail-in ballot disinformation campaigns—rather, traditional mass media like news outlets and cable news are the main vector by which the Republican Party and the president have spread these ideas.

So what’s the research behind this counterintuitive finding? And what are the implications for how we think about disinformation and the media ecosystem?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising.
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0:11.2	at patreon.com slash lawfair.
0:14.7	That's patreon.com slash lawfair.
0:18.3	Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, lawfair
0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
0:33.9	I'm not saying that if someone succeeds in buying super-duper-duper carefully tailored
0:40.6	advertising from Facebook to mislead some group of voters in one city about where their
0:48.2	voting booth is that that couldn't in principle happen.
0:50.9	Although by the way, there's no good quantitative evidence to support the claim that these ads
0:56.3	make a difference.
0:57.3	What I am saying is that when you're looking at this broad attack on democracy that shapes
1:04.7	the legitimacy of the election in the eyes of tens or even more than 100 million people,
1:10.7	the action is not on social media.
1:13.4	The action is on mass media.
1:16.6	I'm Grinchadjuressik and this is the LawFair podcast, October 8, 2020.
1:24.2	Today we're bringing you another episode of our Arbordas of Truth series on disinformation.
1:29.4	This week, Evelyn Dwack and I spoke with Yo-Hi Bancler, a professor at Harvard Law School
1:34.7	and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
1:39.6	With the only weeks until Election Day in the United States, you've probably noticed
1:43.4	that there's a lot of myths and disinformation flying around on the subject of mail and
1:47.2	ballots.
	...

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