Published: Feb. 21, 2023, 6:23 p.m.
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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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\\n - The book\\u2019s goal (1:12)
\\n - How propaganda initially came to be (2:20)
\\n - Jacques Ellul\\u2019s influence on Sam\\u2019s belief\\u2019s (6:05)
\\n - Defining computational propaganda (8:55)
\\n - Social media bots (12:43)
\\n - ChatGPT (16:06)
\\n - Governments loving Facebook & Reddit for computational propaganda (17:53)
\\n - Propaganda-bred apathy (20:55)
\\n - Democratizing propaganda being bad for democracy (22:39)
\\n - Why social media is bad for civil discourse (24:41)
\\n - What he\\u2019s taken from recent #TwitterFiles & congressional testimony revelations (28:04)
\\n - Treating social media companies as public utilities (31:07)
\\n - If its possible to quantify the number of social media bots (34:02)
\\n - Encrypted messaging like WhatsApp as a propaganda tool (38:23)
\\n - The danger of automated political influencers (41:56)
\\n - How journalists have been crucial in Sam\\u2019s understanding of political bots (45:28)
\\n - Journalists leaning on social media posts for articles (48:33)
\\n - Journalists using bots for good (49:29)
\\n - Bots writing news stories (51:24)
\\n - ChatGPT usage at the college level (52:52)
\\n - China using social media to spread propaganda abroad (57:29)
\\n - Why Sam is still optimistic about the future (59:00)
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