Getting the mechanised sleuths onto online conspiracies

The internet is full of text, images, audio and vision and sorting through it to find specific material related to conspiracies is, well, an impossible task without enlisting some digital assistance. Rand Corporation's Bill Marcellino joins Tom Ravlic in this podcast to explain what machine learning is and how computers are helping humans discover how much material there is on conspiracy theories and in what context posts are being written. This podcast also explores the notions of truth decay and why Rand Corporation has a major project that continues to explore why people fight over what should have been indisputable fact in a previous generation. Rand's studies into election interference also get a mention with an explanation of how some of the research into the way in which Russia and other countries choose to play the role of social media provocateurs in what is already an ideological tinderbox in the United States.

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