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6. Unreal
There is a style of propaganda on the rise that isn’t interested in persuading you that something is true. Instead, it's interested in persuading you that everything is untrue. Its goal is not to influence opinion, but to stratify power, manipulate relationships, and sow the seeds of uncertainty.
Unreal explores the first order effects recent attacks on reality have on political discourse, civics & participation, and its deeper effects on our individual and collective psyche. How does the use of media to design unreality change our trust in the reality we encounter? And, most important, how does cleaving reality into different camps—political, social or philosophical—impact our society and our future?
Read:
MM
Published: Jul 15, 2019
Ethan Zuckerman delves into how the conspiracist community surrounding QAnon represents a hazardous new form of participatory civics and digital storytelling.
MM
Published: Jul 15, 2019
A discussion on the role of Unreality within politics as narrative, negotiation, and loneliness.
Published: Aug 07, 2019
A look at how propaganda has been rewired for the digital age and how this new, “participatory propaganda” mediates conflict, manipulates relationships and creates isolation, both online and offline.
Published: Aug 07, 2019
An exploration of what happens when politically motivated humans impersonate vulnerable people or populations online to exploit their voices, positionality and power.
Published: Sep 05, 2019
Is there room to mix nonfiction and fiction, reality and unreality, on the radio (or anywhere else for that matter) at a moment where unreality has become a political strategy?
Published: Sep 05, 2019
An examination of alt-tech online ecosystems and the dangers these hotbeds of self-reinforcing extremism pose to security, politics and society.
Published: Oct 23, 2019
An examination of the “propaganda of unreality” and why age-old principles of resistance to manipulation don’t work against today’s style of unreality.
Responses
danah boyd responds to Ethan Zuckerman's article on the community surrounding QAnon.
Brandi Collins-Dexter from Color of Change responds to Friedberg & Donovan’s essay “On the Internet Nobody Knows You’re a Bot”
