Good morning.

Just adding a little audio component off the cuff.

I have nothing written down here.

But this is an editorial by Kate Starbird in the Seattle Times based on one of her recent chats and her own research that she’s done around the disinformation virality loop, which has really contributed to the right-wing populism that we’ve seen and seen progressives and Democrats be a little flat-footed in terms of how do they respond, how do they build their own media engines.

It is just a brief overview, but I think you’ll appreciate just how it connects the digital space.

How do we see ideas, rumors, conspiracies that come from a 4chan or an 8chan type place and make their way to social media platforms like X, Facebook, whatever.

And how do those ideas gain virality.

And I think it’s really interesting that we talk about social media platforms as this participatory engagement where these ideas gain steam as more people coalesce around them.

And then soon enough you start seeing these ideas pour themselves into the real world, into election campaigns, talking points that you start to see by members of Congress who got elected based off some of these ideas.

And then eventually into the executive orders and policies that are hurting a lot of people today.

I think it is good just to understand that virality loop works.