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University of Texas at Austin faculty member Sam Woolley, whose expertise focuses on the use of propaganda in new media and emerging technologies, chats with Trey Elling about MANUFACTURING CONSENSUS: UNDERSTANDING PROPAGANDA IN THE AGE OF AUTOMATION AND ANONYMITY. Topics include:

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• The book\u2019s goal (1:12)
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• How propaganda initially came to be (2:20)
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• Jacques Ellul\u2019s influence on Sam\u2019s belief\u2019s (6:05)
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• Defining computational propaganda (8:55)
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• Social media bots (12:43)
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• ChatGPT (16:06)
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• Governments loving Facebook & Reddit for computational propaganda (17:53)
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• Propaganda-bred apathy (20:55)
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• Democratizing propaganda being bad for democracy (22:39)
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• Why social media is bad for civil discourse (24:41)
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• What he\u2019s taken from recent #TwitterFiles & congressional testimony revelations (28:04)
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• Treating social media companies as public utilities (31:07)
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• If its possible to quantify the number of social media bots (34:02)
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• Encrypted messaging like WhatsApp as a propaganda tool (38:23)
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• The danger of automated political influencers (41:56)
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• How journalists have been crucial in Sam\u2019s understanding of political bots (45:28)
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• Journalists leaning on social media posts for articles (48:33)
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• Journalists using bots for good (49:29)
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• Bots writing news stories (51:24)
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• ChatGPT usage at the college level (52:52)
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• China using social media to spread propaganda abroad (57:29)
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• Why Sam is still optimistic about the future (59:00)
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