Lisa Kaplan - “Democracies have generally faced worse, and we can get around this one too”

01/20/22 • 28 min

In this episode of extremely, Oren Segal speaks with Lisa Kaplan, founder of the Alethea Group, which detects and mitigates disinformation and social media manipulation. Lisa explains the difference between disinformation and misinformation and highlights strategies to reduce the consequences of disinformation campaigns, which she says are "fast, cheap and easy to do."

Beyond her love of dogs – repeat, Lisa loves dogs – she describes herself as an “eternal optimist when it comes to these sorts of issues.” She notes that “democracies have generally faced worse, and we can get around this one too” by promoting good information and education to create a more digitally savvy population.

More on Lisa’s work: https://nationalsecurity.gmu.edu/lisa-kaplan-in-the-news/

Stay engaged and follow along for more on Twitter at @OrenSegal @ADL and @PERIL_AU

More on Lisa’s work: https://nationalsecurity.gmu.edu/lisa-kaplan-in-the-news/

Stay engaged and follow along for more on Twitter at @OrenSegal @ADL and @PERIL_AU

Previous Episode

Amy Cooter – “This is not exactly what you think it is”

In this episode of extremely, Oren Segal speaks with Amy Cooter, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Vanderbilt University, about her ethnographic research on the militia movement in the U.S.

Amy, who has interviewed militia members directly and observed their training firsthand, is not “a stereotypical academic.” She says that while most militias “see themselves as fundamentally local,” that started to change when they “became more willing than they had been for a number of years to quite literally bump shoulders with more extreme groups at protests and at other events they thought captured” shared concerns.

Amy tells Oren she initially thought she was going to be a chemist but got bored with it and took a sociology class. She realized “people were more interesting to study because there’s always a bit of an unknown factor” and they are “not as controllable as something that we are putting in test tube and trying to figure out.”

More on Amy’s work: https://as.vanderbilt.edu/sociology/bio/?who=amy-cooter

Stay engaged and follow along for more on Twitter at @OrenSegal @ADL and @PERIL_AU

Next Episode

David Neiwert - "They are against something, and that something is democracy"

In this episode of extremely, Oren Segal speaks with David Neiwert, investigative journalist, and author of, “Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump.” David, who has been reporting on extremism for decades, provides his insight into the evolution of anti-democratic movements in the U.S. and how it culminated with the January 6th insurrection.

In addition to describing how he made extremism reporting a beat, David argues that to truly understand the impact of extremism on communities, media needs to “interview the people who are afraid to even raise their heads in their towns and who feel frightened and intimidated by this wave of thuggery that this tide of right-wing extremism has unleashed in their communities.”

You can follow David on Twitter @DavidNeiwert

Stay engaged and follow along for more on Twitter at @OrenSegal @ADL and @PERIL_AU