Renee DiResta studies abuse in information technologies at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She has also been the target of these abuses. First, when supporting the California bill SB277 to remove personal belief exemptions, and later, for work looking into the online narratives about the integrity of the 2020 election.
Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality is “not a book about social media,” according to DiResta; instead, its focus is on the “profound transformation in dynamics of power and influence.” (p. 11) The book is divided into two parts. The first part discusses social media platforms as a collision between the historical means of getting information: (local) rumor mills and (national) propaganda machines. The former population-driven but limited in reach; the latter, controlled by those in power and wide reaching; the new: population-driven and wide reaching.
DiResta then turns attention directly to the new platforms, focusing on the influences that come together to enable the creation of social movements and leave portions of society living their own versions of reality. According to DiResta, at the heart of these alternative realities — and related social power — is the trifecta of influencers, algorithms and crowds. She spends the remainder of part one detailing each. Briefly, influencers learn to work the algorithms to maintain or grow their following, particularly as their influence may be tied to not only their identity but also their income. Algorithms are manipulated by platform owners to promote messages that increase engagement and revenue, often favoring emotion to align with human interest and behaviors. Crowds, particularly when working cohesively among groups with formal or loosely associated agendas, elevate particular issues to a seeming reality. When the trifecta is successful, these trending topics, which may have no basis in reality or which may have limited support among the population at large, appear so pressing that reporting spills out to traditional media and people on the streets, that is to the propaganda machines and rumor mills of old.
Part two of the book examines specific incidents, like the events leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, to demonstrate how the power and influence discussed in part one is playing out in reality. In describing well-known events or widespread beliefs associated with these incidents, DiResta guides readers to consider issues like content moderation, political gain, distrust of institutions and expertise, and the role of the medium (as in Marshall McLuhan’s “The medium Is the Message”). Because the framework of the rumor mill and the propaganda machine was established in part one of the book, DiResta is able to adeptly bring to fore historical issues that parallel some of what we are experiencing today. One example is the story of Father Coughlin, which opens the last chapter of the book, “The Path Forward.” Father Coughlin was a Catholic priest “who became a propagandist for Nazism in the 1930s” (p. 309). DiResta describes how Father Coughlin’s influence was addressed in the late 1930s, and she uses that to compare and contrast what might be done today as we adapt to a changed reality with new messengers and new ways of getting information. As DiResta writes, “There will be no return to a handful of media translating respectable institutional thinking for the masses. Nor should we pine for that … But the pervasive, acrimonious dissensus we find ourselves in is simply untenable for democratic society … Something has to change.” (pp. 358-359).
Renee DiResta studies abuse in information technologies at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She has also been the target of these abuses. First, when supporting the California bill SB277 to remove personal belief exemptions, and later, for work looking into the online narratives about the integrity of the 2020 election.
Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality is “not a book about social media,” according to DiResta; instead, its focus is on the “profound transformation in dynamics of power and influence.” (p. 11) The book is divided into two parts. The first part discusses social media platforms as a collision between the historical means of getting information: (local) rumor mills and (national) propaganda machines. The former population-driven but limited in reach; the latter, controlled by those in power and wide reaching; the new: population-driven and wide reaching.
DiResta then turns attention directly to the new platforms, focusing on the influences that come together to enable the creation of social movements and leave portions of society living their own versions of reality. According to DiResta, at the heart of these alternative realities — and related social power — is the trifecta of influencers, algorithms and crowds. She spends the remainder of part one detailing each. Briefly, influencers learn to work the algorithms to maintain or grow their following, particularly as their influence may be tied to not only their identity but also their income. Algorithms are manipulated by platform owners to promote messages that increase engagement and revenue, often favoring emotion to align with human interest and behaviors. Crowds, particularly when working cohesively among groups with formal or loosely associated agendas, elevate particular issues to a seeming reality. When the trifecta is successful, these trending topics, which may have no basis in reality or which may have limited support among the population at large, appear so pressing that reporting spills out to traditional media and people on the streets, that is to the propaganda machines and rumor mills of old.
Part two of the book examines specific incidents, like the events leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, to demonstrate how the power and influence discussed in part one is playing out in reality. In describing well-known events or widespread beliefs associated with these incidents, DiResta guides readers to consider issues like content moderation, political gain, distrust of institutions and expertise, and the role of the medium (as in Marshall McLuhan’s “The medium Is the Message”). Because the framework of the rumor mill and the propaganda machine was established in part one of the book, DiResta is able to adeptly bring to fore historical issues that parallel some of what we are experiencing today. One example is the story of Father Coughlin, which opens the last chapter of the book, “The Path Forward.” Father Coughlin was a Catholic priest “who became a propagandist for Nazism in the 1930s” (p. 309). DiResta describes how Father Coughlin’s influence was addressed in the late 1930s, and she uses that to compare and contrast what might be done today as we adapt to a changed reality with new messengers and new ways of getting information. As DiResta writes, “There will be no return to a handful of media translating respectable institutional thinking for the masses. Nor should we pine for that … But the pervasive, acrimonious dissensus we find ourselves in is simply untenable for democratic society … Something has to change.” (pp. 358-359).