Tech Talk:

technology and the 2020 Election

September 21, 2020 10am PT / 1PM ET

A Conversation with the author of 'The Hype machine’

FEATURING:

Sinan Aral, MIT

HOSTED BY:

What should we expect to happen in the 2020 election?

The 2020 Election will be the most vulnerable yet to foreign media interference due to a perfect storm of social media, social unrest, fake news and a pandemic…unless we act now.

In this fireside chat, we sit down with Sinan Aral, MIT professor and Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE). He is the author of the much-anticipated book The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health- and How We Must Adapt, about how social media disrupts our elections, our economy, and our lives, which will be published on September 15th. Sinan is known for his groundbreaking research in social networks and social media, and his recent paper on “The Spread of True and False News Online” was one of the most cited publications of 2018 and 2019. He also has a TED Talk: How we can protect truth in the age of misinformation.

Topics we’ll explore:

• What we know about election interference in 2016 and the new strategies Russia, China and Iran are employing in 2020.

• The spread and impact of coronavirus misinformation worldwide and IDE’s work with WHO on COVIDConnect, a fact-checking WhatsApp channel.

• The nuts and bolts of how fake news works and how cascades of misinformation move through the world.

• The steps we— as individuals, policymakers, or business owners— must take to thwart election influencers and prevent the spread of fake news.

• What social media companies can do to stop fake news on their platforms and whether breaking up Facebook and others will help or make the problem worse.

• What neuroscience tells us about why we are so susceptible to fake news and how we can break the cycle.

More About sinan:

Sinan Aral is a scientist, entrepreneur and investor. He is the David Austin Professor of Management at MIT, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) and a founding partner at Manifest Capital. He was the Chief Scientist at SocialAmp (until its sale to Merkle in 2012) and at Humin (until its sale to Tinder in 2016). He currently serves on the Advisory Boards of the Alan Turing Institute, the British National Institute for Data Science in London, the Centre for Responsible Media Technology and Innovation in Bergen, Norway and C6 Bank, one of the first all-digital banks of Brazil.

watch the video