Media
Mediums matter more than content; it’s the common rules that govern all creation and consumption across a medium that change people and society. Oral culture teaches us to think one way, written culture another. Television turned everything into entertainment, and social media taught us to think with the crowd.
Media
Impact, an app that describes itself as “AI-powered infrastructure for shaping and managing narratives in the modern world,” is testing a way to organize and activate supporters on social media in order to promote certain political messages. The app aims to summon groups of supporters who will flood social media with AI-written talking points designed
Conspiracy Theories
Why do some people who support Trump also wind up believing conspiracy theories? There’s a scientific explanation for that. Why do people believe some politicians’ lies even when they have been proven false? And why do so many of the same people peddle conspiracy theories? Lying and conspiratorical thinking might seem to be two different
Propaganda
US police departments spend tens of millions of dollars every year to manipulate the news, flooding the discourse with “copaganda.” These aggressive tactics give the public a distorted view of what public safety means, what threatens it, and how to solve it. According to police department documents provided to the County Board of Supervisors, budget
Agitprop
For every one of the few anti-militarist screenplays that are made into films, far more are reflexively spiked because their defiant content raises objections from military leaders. The military quietly infiltrating a movie studio . . . the idea might seem like a fantastical plot from a film, but Top Gun: Maverick is a reminder that it’s
Propaganda
Over the past year, the US public has been subjected to an avalanche of propaganda attempting to stoke future war with Russia and China. What’s stunning is how few Americans are buying it. The US public’s appetite for war is still remarkably small, despite the best efforts of its elite. A recent survey from YouGov and the