Facts and other Lies: Welcome to the Disinformation Age
Would your younger self believe the news of today? An entire city block blown up by a suicide bomber on Christmas Day because he believed phone towers spread disease. A Representative elected to the US Congress on a platform that Democrats are secretly harvesting an anti-aging chemical from the blood of abused children. Angry rioters in furs and horns overrun the Capitol in a bloody carnage of insurrection. The Prime Minister of Australia employing the wife of his friend who fronts a group the FBI has declared terrorists. A global pandemic which, even as they lie dying from it, people refuse to believe exists.
Many who sat in shocked disbelief as these events beamed around the world asked the same question: 'How did we get here?' For those rioters, it was the culmination of a journey of online radicalisation that began with the weaponisation of disinformation by their political leaders and outrageously biased 'news' commentators.
Facts and Other Lies puts fake news in its historical context and explains how disinformation has fractured society, even threatening democracy itself. It explains why disinformation is so potent and so hard to stop, and what we can do to help prevent its proliferation. It outlines how anyone can defuse disinformation in the home, office or pub, or wherever the deluded gather to spread their nonsense.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ed Coper is a leading communications expert and was on the front lines when the internet collided with democracy, growing Australia's first online political movement to amass more members than every political party combined. He has been behind the scenes of many of the last decade's most prominent social movements, and founded the New York-based Center for Impact Communications. His groundbreaking campaigns have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for causes and won landmark social change. Ed is director of the Populares communications agency.
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