Author Yochai Benkler sits down with Kelly Born to discuss Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. According to the New Yorker, the Washington conventional wisdom presupposes a kind of symmetry between our polarized political parties. Liberals and conservatives, it is said, live in separate bubbles, where they watch different television networks, frequent different Web sites, and absorb different realities. The implication of this view is that both sides resemble each other in their twisted views of reality. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analyzing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that “the right-wing media ecosystem differs categorically from the rest of the media environment,” and has been much more susceptible to “disinformation, lies and half-truths.”

Register for this free event online at:  pacscenter.stanford.edu/event

6:00—6:30 PM  Doors Open and Pre-Reception

6:30—7:30 PM  Program 7:30—8:00 PM

Q&A 8:00—8:30 PM  Book Signing and Post-Reception
 

This event will be livestreamed. Click here to access the livestreaming page.

ABSTRACT

The clampdown on political dissent inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has attracted intense attention in the wake of the recent murder of journalist and opinion-shaper Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey earlier this month. This panel analyzes the murder of Khashoggi in the context of the foreign and domestic policies of KSA’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It also seeks to understand the implications of this event for freedom of expression in the Arab world, U.S.-Saudi relations, and the future of stability inside the Kingdom.

PANELISTS

Moderator: 
Larry Diamond 
Senior Fellow, FSI; 
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, 
Stanford University

Janine Zacharia 
Journalist; 
Carlos Kelly McClatchy Visiting Lecturer, Communication, 
Stanford University

Hesham Sallam 
Associate Director, ARD, 
Stanford University

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Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. For more than six years, he directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, where he now leads its Program on Arab Reform and Democracy and its Global Digital Policy Incubator. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around in the world, and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy.  His 2016 book, In Search of Democracy, explores the challenges confronting democracy and democracy promotion, gathering together three decades of his writing and research, particularly on Africa and Asia.  He has just completed a new book on the global crisis of democracy, which will be published in 2019, and is now writing a textbook on democratic development.

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Janine Zacharia is the Carlos Kelly McClatchy Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University where she teaches journalism classes, including news reporting and writing fundamentals, and foreign correspondence. She was the Jerusalem Bureau Chief and Middle East Correspondent for the Washington Post from December 2009 through April 2011. During her time at the Washington Post, she reported widely throughout the Middle East beyond Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including assignments in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey. She reported on the uprisings in Egypt and Bahrain as they began in early 2011. From 2005-2009, Ms. Zacharia worked as chief diplomatic correspondent for Bloomberg News based in Washington. During this period, she traveled to more than 40 countries with then U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other senior administration and military officials. Ms. Zacharia’s earlier career included five years as Washington bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post, and five years in Jerusalem working for various news outlets including the Reuters news agency. She was a regular contributor to the New Republic and has appeared routinely as a cable news analyst on MSNBC, CNN and other networks. She was also a regular panelist on Gwen Ifill’s Friday evening roundtable, Washington Week in Review. During the 2008-2009 academic year, Ms. Zacharia was awarded a Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University. She earned her Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Literary Studies from Middlebury College and is originally from Long Island.

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Hesham Sallam is a Research Associate at CDDRL and serves as the Associate-Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. He is also a co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on Islamist movements and the politics of economic reform in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Past institutional affiliations include Middle East Institute, Asharq Al-Awsat, and the World Security Institute. He is editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).

*An earlier list of speakers included Nora Doaiji, who could not participate on the panel due to unforeseen scheduling conflicts.

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ABSTRACT

In 2011, as the Arab uprisings spread across the Middle East, Jordan remained more stable than any of its neighbors. Despite strife at its borders and an influx of refugees connected to the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS, as well as its own version of the Arab Spring with protests and popular mobilization demanding change, Jordan managed to avoid political upheaval. How did the regime survive in the face of the pressures unleashed by the Arab uprisings? What does its resilience tell us about the prospects for reform or revolutionary change?

In “Jordan and the Arab Uprisings,” Curtis R. Ryan explains how Jordan weathered the turmoil of the Arab Spring. Crossing divides between state and society, government and opposition, Ryan analyzes key features of Jordanian politics, including Islamist and leftist opposition parties, youth movements, and other forms of activism, as well as struggles over elections, reform, and identity. He details regime survival strategies, laying out how the monarchy has held out the possibility of reform while also seeking to coopt and contain its opponents. Ryan demonstrates how domestic politics were affected by both regional unrest and international support for the regime, and how regime survival and security concerns trumped hopes for greater change. While the Arab Spring may be over, Ryan shows that political activism in Jordan is not, and that struggles for reform and change will continue. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with a vast range of people, from grassroots activists to King Abdullah II, “Jordan and the Arab Uprisings” is a definitive analysis of Jordanian politics before, during, and beyond the Arab uprisings.

SPEAKER BIO

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Note: This seminar series is open only to Stanford faculty and scholars.

The Project on Democracy and the Internet’s Fall Seminar Series on Free Speech, Democracy, and the Internet is hosted by Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford, and Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, every Tuesday, from September 25 to November 27 (excluding holidays).

The goal of this seminar series is to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing as we address the impact of the internet on democracy and build this new field of study. Guest speakers from academia and the technology sector will cover topics including disinformation, polarization, hate speech, political advertising, media transformation, election integrity, and legal regulation of internet platforms in the U.S. and abroad.

Note: This seminar series is open only to Stanford faculty and scholars.

The Project on Democracy and the Internet’s Fall Seminar Series on Free Speech, Democracy, and the Internet is hosted by Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford, and Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook, every Tuesday, from September 25 to November 27 (excluding holidays).

The goal of this seminar series is to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing as we address the impact of the internet on democracy and build this new field of study. Guest speakers from academia and the technology sector will cover topics including disinformation, polarization, hate speech, political advertising, media transformation, election integrity, and legal regulation of internet platforms in the U.S. and abroad.