Network Propaganda

Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics

Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, & Hall Roberts

2018, Beaverton Lib 324.973 Ben

Not read all the way though. The book focuses on misinformation in the 2016 election of Donald Trump, seemingly focusing on illustrating information relationships with "network maps" showing various sized bubbles in a two dimensional pattern. The authors "explain" these bubbles VAGUELY on page 46 and 47 in terms of size and proximity, but don't quantify them. This is vague pseudo-quantification; looks scientific-ish, but don't map the bubbles to quantified measurements.

The matchbook cover summary: The authors view the right wing is an isolated echo chamber. Their lens is a selected subset of online "social media", tweets and thumb-type and reactive top-posting thoughtlessness.

Yes, there are major problems buried in that messaging manure pile - but as McLuhan suggested decade ago, "the medium is the message", hence dumbed-down reactive media (like Twitter - excuse me - X ) fosters dumbed-down reactive messages.