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How one propaganda researcher went from studying disinformation to becoming its target
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• 39:40
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Clement Mahoudeau
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AFP via Getty Images
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Topline:
As the battle over how to address online disinformation continues, "Imperfect Paradise" host Antonia Cereijido sits down with propaganda researcher Renée DiResta to delve into how she became interested in disinformation and how her work studying election-related falsehoods made her the target of a right-wing conspiracy.
About the episode: DiResta became interested in disinformation when she had her first child and started researching California schools. She started learning about the role of disinformation in California’s declining vaccination rates in 2013 and the anti-vaccine movement. She went on to do research for the Senate on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and in 2019, joined the Stanford Internet Observatory — a multidisciplinary group that studied abuse of information online.
Becoming a target: As the program’s research manager at Stanford University, she worked on a project to identify disinformation in the 2020 election. That’s when she became a villain for various right-wing writers and Republican lawmakers, who claimed that DiResta was responsible for censoring conservative speech online.
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Why you should listen: To find out what happened to DiResta’s work at Stanford, as well as how disinformation has changed over the last three presidential elections and where she's finding hope for a better future online.
Where can I listen? Listen to this episode of Imperfect Paradise wherever you get your podcasts, or here.
Listen
• 39:40
Listen
• 39:40
Renée DiResta joined the Stanford Internet Observatory to analyze how propaganda spreads online. But in 2023, she went from studying the online disinformation machine to becoming its target. We dive into what happened when a right-wing conspiracy made Renée its villain, as well as how disinformation has changed over the last three presidential elections and where Renée is finding hope for a better future online.
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