Tag: own countries
Anne Applebaum: Social Media Made Spreading Disinformation Easy
Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum, an expert on Eastern Europe, has long watched social media’s power with great concern. Yesterday, at Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy, a conference hosted by The Atlantic and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, she spoke with David Axelrod, the founding director of the Institute of Politics, about the dangers these platforms pose to democracy. They discussed Russia’s disinformation efforts, what makes some conspiracy theories so successful, how institutions can rebuild trust, and
What Germany Can Teach America About Polarization
When Edmund Schechter, a Viennese Jew who fled the Nazis, arrived in postwar Germany in 1945, he encountered a “wasteland”—not just physically, he said, but “psychologically.”
All newspapers had ceased publication. Radio stations were destroyed and devoid of their Nazi staff. The “silent” media landscape provided “virgin territory” to “do all sorts of things really from scratch,” recalled Schechter, who had escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp to the United States only to head to Germany after World War II