22: 21st Century United States

The primary explanation of such asymmetric polarization is more likely politics and culture than technology.

Use of disinformation by partisan media sources is neither new nor limited to the right wing, but the insulation of the partisan right-wing media from traditional journalistic media sources, and the vehemence of its attacks on journalism in common cause with a similarly outspoken president, is new and distinctive.

Our data strongly suggest that most Americans, including those who access news through social networks, continue to pay attention to traditional media, following professional journalistic practices, and cross-reference what they read on partisan sites with what they read on mass media sites.

Family members who do not and cannot communicate with one another cease to be part of an intentional community with one another. The family then ceases to be the little school that makes possible virtue, community, and the cooperative pursuit of a common good in other social and political spaces.

Crouch argues that wisdom and courage must be the focus, seeing, as he does, the erosion of both by internet (and other forms of) technology. Knowledge there may be in abundance online (though clearly there is no shortage of ignorance either), but wisdom is not only not to be found there, it is threatened by the short attention spans and constant need for stimulus that social media create.

Courage, the conviction and character to act, is likewise threatened, by the passivity and herd mentality that the internet cultivates. And both virtues, Crouch believes, are jeopardized by the lack of genuine person-to-person connection that the internet creates. Without spending real time with the flesh-and-blood bodies of loved ones who know us and are committed to our true good, we will not learn when we have been foolish and when our wisdom has not been matched by courageous action.

Evidence of organized social media manipulation campaigns which have taken place in 70 countries, up from 48 countries in 2018 and 28 countries in 2017.

A handful of sophisticated state actors use computational propaganda for foreign influence operations. Facebook and Twitter attributed foreign influence operations to seven countries (China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela) who have used these platforms to influence global audience

China’s new-found interest in aggressively using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube should raise concerns for democracies

Around the world, go v ernment actors are using social media to manufactur e consensus, aut omate suppr ession, and undermine trust in the liberal international order.

manipulating public opinion

use computational propaganda for political purposes.

strategies, tools, and techniques of computational propaganda,

The use of computational propaganda to shape public attitudes via social media has become mainstream, extending far beyond the actions of a few bad actors. In an information environment characterized by high volumes of information and limited levels of user attention and trust, the tools and techniques of computational propaganda are becoming a common – and arguably essential – part of digital campaigning and public diplomacy.

As a result, we suggest that computational propaganda has become a ubiquitous and pervasive part of the digital information ecosystem.

(1) to suppress fundamental human rights; (2) to discredit political opposition; and (3) to drown out political dissent.

Although there is nothing necessarily new about propaganda, the affordances of social networking technologies – algorithms, automation, and big data – change the scale, scope, and precision of how information is transmitted in the digital age.

eam size estimates of 300,000-2,000,000 people working in local and regional offices

After the invasion, it was revealed that there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that the United States government’s allegations thereof had been based on unreliable or misinterpreted intelligence.