mikerickson reviewed Lie Detectives by Sasha Issenberg
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4 stars
The author dedicates this book to his daughter, with the tagline, "may you live in less interesting times." Seems apt, considering how this book highlights a nascent industry of counter-disinformation firms that have sprung up in what feels like the very recent past. Within the past eight years our electoral systems went through a more significant change than appears on the surface.
This is more of a recap of events that have already happened rather than a set of guidelines to follow or a prognostication of things to come. Approach it more as a postmortem of the post-2016 environment, where Democratic and liberal electioneers were just trying every strategy to see what stuck. Turns out, quite a few different approaches worked, and the chapter detailing the 2017 Alabama special election to fill Senator Jeff Sessions' vacancy was particularly interesting.
Society may seem divided at the moment (and this isn't a …
The author dedicates this book to his daughter, with the tagline, "may you live in less interesting times." Seems apt, considering how this book highlights a nascent industry of counter-disinformation firms that have sprung up in what feels like the very recent past. Within the past eight years our electoral systems went through a more significant change than appears on the surface.
This is more of a recap of events that have already happened rather than a set of guidelines to follow or a prognostication of things to come. Approach it more as a postmortem of the post-2016 environment, where Democratic and liberal electioneers were just trying every strategy to see what stuck. Turns out, quite a few different approaches worked, and the chapter detailing the 2017 Alabama special election to fill Senator Jeff Sessions' vacancy was particularly interesting.
Society may seem divided at the moment (and this isn't a uniquely American phenomenon; there was a good section devoted to the most recent Brazilian presidential election between Bolsonaro and Lula), but there are people who are learning how to penetrate social media echo chambers and introduce content that has real world effects on elections. It's a fascinating intersection of persuasion science and power, and campaigns can't ignore these new tools available to them.