How has the proliferation of online forms of media affected the spread of political disinformation in American politics? Not as much as you might think, according to Yochai Benkler, a Harvard professor of and co-author of Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics.
While right-wing propaganda and disinformation is a major problem, Benkler argued in a new interview with Columbia Journalism Review’s Matthew Ingraham, it’s nothing new. And though online vectors feed into the propagation of bogus information, the main way this propaganda spreads is via conservative TV news and radio.
To better understand these dynamics, Benkler and his colleagues carried out a study of four million political news stories over the course of three years. They found that “the right wing media ecosystem is distinct and insular from the rest of the media ecosystem.” Continue reading.