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The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread by Cailin O'Connor and James Owen Weatherall (2018)
Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare by Thomas Rid (2020)
Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics—and How to Cure It by Richard L. Hasan (2022)
Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity by Sander van der Linden (2023)
The Machine That Made Us: A look at the story of Johann Gutenberg, inventor of the world's first printing press in the 15th century, and an exploration of how and why the machine was invented.
The Future of Everything Podcast (from Stanford Engineering): The Future of Reading: A professor of education explains why reading is such a challenging skill to learn — and to teach.
Planet Money makes an episode using AI: We used to think some jobs were safe from automation. Though machines have transformed industries like agriculture and manufacturing, the conventional wisdom was that they could never perform what's called "knowledge work." That the robots could never replace lawyers or accountants — or journalists, like us. Well, ever since the release of artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, it feels like no job is safe. AI can now write essays, generate computer code, and even pass the bar exam. Will work ever be the same again? Here at Planet Money, we are launching a new three-part series to understand what this new AI-powered future looks like. Our goal: to get the machines to make an entire Planet Money show.
AI Podcast 1.0: Rise of the machines: In this first episode, we try to teach the AI how to write a script for us from scratch. Can the AI do research for us, interview our sources, and then stitch everything together in a creative, entertaining way? We're going to find out just how much of our own jobs we can automate — and what work might soon look like for us all.
AI Podcast 2.0: The host in the machine: Our next task was to teach the computer how to sound like us. How to read that script aloud like a Planet Money host. On today's show, we explore the world of AI-generated voices, which have become so lifelike in recent years that they can credibly imitate specific people. To test the limits of the technology, we attempt to create our own synthetic voice by training a computer on recordings of former Planet Money host Robert Smith. Then we introduce synthetic Robert to his very human namesake. There are a lot of ethical, and economic, questions raised by a technology that can duplicate anyone's voice. To help us make sense of it all, we seek the advice of an artist who has embraced AI voice clones: the musician Grimes.
AI Podcast 3.0: Dial M for Mechanization: It's the thrilling conclusion to our three-part series on AI — the world premiere of the first episode of Planet Money written by AI. Now, we've put everything together into a 15-minute Planet Money episode. And we've gathered some of our co-hosts to listen along. So, how did the AI do? You'll have to listen to learn what went surprisingly well, where it fell short, and hear reactions from the real-life hosts whose jobs could be at risk of being replaced by the machines.
BBC Academy Podcast: The truth about fake news. The BBC’s media editor Amol Rajan asks James Ball, special correspondent at BuzzFeed News, and Mark Frankel, social media editor at BBC News, about the different meanings of 'fake news' and how journalists should respond to it.
NPR’s Throughline: We the People: Free Speech: The First Amendment. Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been stretched and shaped to fit a world they never could have imagined? It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars. Through the highest courts and the Ku Klux Klan. Today on Throughline's We the People: What exactly is free speech, and how has the answer to that question changed in the history of the U.S.?
This American Life: Letters! Actual Letters!: When the best—and perhaps only—way to say something is to write it down.
To inform the work of the Aspen Commission on Information Disorder, in 2021 Aspen Digital hosted a series of expert briefings on a broad range of essential topics related to mis- and disinformation. “Disinfo Discussions” are designed to help the commissioners and the broader public make sense of the various facets of the information crisis. These discussions are available as videos or podcasts (Spotify, Apple, Google). Topics range from the regulation of disinformation to media literacy to the impact of disinformation on ads and brands. Recommended episodes include
Fundamentals of Mis- and Disinformation: Aspen Digital’s Executive Director, Vivian Schiller, discusses a range of fundamental issues related to mis- and disinformation with danah boyd. boyd is a Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research, the founder and president of Data & Society, and a Visiting Professor at New York University.
Role of News Media: Jay Rosen is a long-time professor of journalism at New York University. He is the author of the PressThink blog, and one of the great thinkers on the changing nature of journalism in the digital age. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Harper’s Magazine, and The Nation. He spoke with Aspen Digital’s Executive Director, Vivian Schiller, on the challenges and opportunities around disinformation within the news industry.
Cognitive Science on the Spread of False Information: Dr. Brendan Nyhan is a political scientist and professor of government at Dartmouth College. He spoke with Ryan Merkley, Commission on Information Disorder project director, about the effectiveness of misinformation countermeasures, like fact checks, on the retention of misperceptions, the US elections, platforms and the YouTube algorithm, and more.
The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity by Lewis Raven Wallace (2019) or The View from Somewhere: Trust in journalists is at an all-time low, but the work of journalism matters more than ever. And traditional “objectivity” may be hurting, rather than helping. All journalists have a view from somewhere, and ”objective” journalism often upholds status quo thinking and reinforces racism, sexism, and transphobia. Host Lewis Raven Wallace was fired from the public radio show Marketplace in 2017 for saying just that. In the years since, Lewis has dug into the history of “objectivity,” who it serves, and who it excludes. The View from Somewhere tells the stories of journalists who have resisted “objectivity” and stood up for justice, and envisions new approaches to truth and integrity in journalism.
How early photography changed the world, Elizabeth Wallace, CNN, October 24, 2019
NOTE: This article contains images that readers may find disturbing.
The 25 Photos that Defined the Modern Age, M.H. Miller, Brendan Embser, Emmanuel Iduma and Lucy McKeon, New York Times, June 3, 2024
NOTE: This story contains graphic images of violence and death.
The Ethics of Seeing: Neeta Satam discusses combating colonialism and sensationalism in photographing “the other” to bring equitable discourse to photojournalism.
Caetlin Benson-Allott: No Such Thing Yet: Questioning Television’s Female Gaze (65-71)
Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures by Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield & Crystal Abidin (2020)
Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing, and the Covert World of the Digital Sell by Mara Einstein (2016)
Looking Through Images: A Phenomenology of Visual Media by Emmanuel Alloa. Translated by Nils F. Schott. (2021)
The Photographic Image in Digital Culture edited by Martin Lister (2013)
The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media by Nathan Jurgenson (2019)
Design is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton (2017)
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Shameless Aquisition Target: After years of seeing friends (and some enemies) get rich, rich, rich selling their shows and companies to other bigger shows and bigger companies, longtime podcast executive Laura Mayer has decided to get hers. To do this, she'll speak to straight-up geniuses in the worlds of podcasting, entertainment, and business to understand what value is in media and how to make it. At the end, Laura will sell the show itself to the highest bidder. Will she make hundreds, millions, or even dozens of dollars? Will she be able to afford the gray house down the street from her rental apartment? Let’s find out together… shamelessly.
Recommended Episode: Ep 2: The Unbearable Sameness of Streaming (Podcasts)
Vocal Color in Public Radio: Chenjerai took the Transom Traveling Workshop on Catalina and suddenly had to reckon with his own voice, his own identity, in the role of a public radio reporter. In his manifesto, Chenjerai confronts this question of how we sound, how we want ourselves to sound, and what’s permitted. Tavis Smiley once said, “Public radio wants me to be black, but not TOO black.” Chenjerai tackles that issue straight on— reading copy in various versions of his “self”—and examining the sound of public media, on the air and in the podcast world. These are key questions for public radio and it’s good to have them right out on the table.
Pew Research Center's 2023 Report: Podcasts as a Source of News and Information
"Forgetting and Being Forgotten in the Age of the Data Subject" from Kate Eichhorn, The End of Forgetting: Growing Up with Social Media (2019)
“’Have any remedies for tired eyes?’: Computer pain as computer history” by Laine Nooney (2022)
“Meet my AI friends” by Kevin Roose, New York Times
Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech by Sara Wachter-Boettcher (2017)
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari (2024)
The Body Electric: Our bodies are adapting and changing to meet the demands of the Information Age. So many of us feel physically drained after a day spent attached to our devices. But why? And what can we do to end this vicious cycle of type, tap, collapse? Body Electric is a 6-part investigation and interactive project with TED Radio Hour host, Manoush Zomorodi. She’ll take you on a journey from head to toe to understand the impact of your tech on your body … and how to live better with your devices.
So much sitting, looking at screens. Can we combat our sedentary lives?
Stressed out? It might not just be in your head. How your muscles affect your mood
Overwhelmed by doom scrolling? Time to check in with your body
Over 20,000 joined the NPR/Columbia study to move throughout the day. Did it work?
On Being with Krista Tippett: danah boyd: The Internet of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Steeped in the cutting edge of research around the social lives of networked teens, danah boyd demystifies technology while being wise about the changes it’s making to life and relationship. She has intriguing advice on the technologically-fueled generation gaps of our age — that our children’s immersion in social media may offer a kind of respite from their over-structured, overscheduled analog lives. And that cyber-bullying is an online reflection of the offline world, and blaming technology is missing the point.