260. Social Media and Social Irrationality

2025-05-25

A lot of ink has been spilled about the crisis of misinformation, but Henry Farrell thinks we have a much bigger problem: manufactured public opinion.

Audio Version MP3

  1. We’re getting the social media crisis wrong (Farrell, H., 2025) - https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getting-the-social-media-crisis
  2. Ad tech is broken. Here’s how newsrooms can help fix it (Kramer, M., 2016) - https://www.poynter.org/tech-tools/2016/ad-tech-is-broken-heres-how-newsrooms-can-fix-it/
  3. Americans’ Social Media Use (Gottfried, J., 2024) - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/01/31/americans-social-media-use/
  4. Cory Doctorow: Interoperability Can Save the Open Web - IEEE Spectrum (Doctorow, C.) - https://spectrum.ieee.org/doctorow-interoperability
  5. Curious Questions: Can a swan really break your arm? (Fraser, A., 2019) - https://www.countrylife.co.uk/out-and-about/dogs/curious-questions-can-swan-really-break-arm-190943
  6. Disguised Propaganda from Digital to Social Media (Farkas, J. & Neumayer, C., 2018) - http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-94-024-1202-4_33-1
  7. How Propaganda Works in the Digital Era: Soft News as a Gateway (Zhu, Y. & Fu, K., 2024) - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21670811.2022.2156366
  8. Manufacturing Consent in Cyberspace: China’s “Fifty-Cent Army” (Han, R., 2015) - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/186810261504400205
  9. Native advertising (Wikipedia, 2025) - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Native_advertising&oldid=1279301988
  10. Presentation and impact of market-driven journalism on sensationalism in global TV news (Wang, T.-L., 2012) - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1748048512459143
  11. Propaganda Analysis revisited (Bauer, A. J. & Nadler, A., 2021) - https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/propaganda-analysis-revisited/
  12. Reading Between the Lines: The Rise of Native Advertising and the FTC’s Inability to Regulate It (Einstein, B. R.) - https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1206&context=bjcfcl
  13. TV Advertising Effectiveness and Profitability: Generalizable Results from 288 Brands (Shapiro, B., Hitsch, G. J. & Tuchman, A., 2021) - https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3273476
  14. What Facebook Did to American Democracy (Madrigal, A. C., 2017) - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/
  15. X Is The Biggest Source Of Fake News And Disinformation, EU Warns (Suciu, P., 2023) - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2023/09/26/x-is-the-biggest-source-of-fake-news-and-disinformation-eu-warns/

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