Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Network Propaganda is the most comprehensive analysis available of American political communications from 2015 to 2018. Combining accessible descriptions of big data analysis, rich case studies of major controversies in American politics, dozens of colourful maps and illustrations, and media history, the book challenges the conventional wisdom that the present crisis in democratic societies is the result of the Internet or social media, fake news, or Russian disinformation. Instead, it argues that the present experience of a post-truth moment is rooted in four decades of American institutional and political dynamics. In the process, the book demonstrates new methods of doing research into political communication and of understanding the dynamics of political communication and change. For people who are not focused on American politics, it offers a new approach and new tools for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.

Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Robert Faris is the Research Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Hal Roberts is a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.