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Network Propaganda is the most comprehensive analysis available of American political communications from 2015 to 2018. Combining accessible descriptions of big data analysis, rich case studies of major controversies in American politics, dozens of colourful maps and illustrations, and media history, the book challenges the conventional wisdom that the present crisis in democratic societies is the result of the Internet or social media, fake news, orRussian disinformation. Instead, it argues that the present experience of a post-truth moment is rooted in four decades of American institutional and political dynamics. In the process, the book demonstrates new methods of doing research into political communication and of understanding the dynamics of politicalcommunication and change. For people who are not focused on American politics, it offers a new approach and new tools for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.
List of contents
- Part I Mapping Disorder
- 1. Epistemic Crisis
- 2. The Architecture of our Discontent
- 3. The Propaganda Feedback Loop
- Part II Dynamics of Network Propaganda
- 4. Immigration and Islamophobia: Breitbart and the Trump Party
- 5. The Fox Diet
- 6. Mainstream Media Failure Modes and Self-Healing in a Propaganda-Rich Environment
- Part III The Usual Suspects
- 7. The Propaganda Pipeline: Hacking the core from the periphery
- 8. Are the Russians Coming?
- 9. Mammon's Algorithm: Marketing, Manipulation, and Clickbait on Facebook
- Part IV Can Democracy Survive the Internet?
- 10. Polarization in American Politics
- 11. The Origins of Asymmetry
- 12. Can the Internet Survive Democracy?
- 13. What can Men do against such Reckless Hate?
- 14. Conclusion
About the author
Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Robert Faris is the Research Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Hal Roberts is a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
Summary
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives.
Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment.
The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.
Additional text
"There are a lot of books on networks, social media, propaganda, polarization and American politics. This is the best." - Cass Sunstein,Bloomberg, Best Books of 2018
