Scott Ruston is a Research Professor with Arizona State University’s Global Security Initiative, a university-wide interdisciplinary hub for researching complex challenges in the global security arena. He directs the Center on Narrative, Disinformation & Strategic Influence, leading research teams that combine humanities, social science and computer science in order to better understand manipulations of the information environment and develop technologies to identify malign influence activities. Also a member of ASU’s Center for Strategic Communication, Professor Ruston’s research focuses on the socio-cultural dimensions of the information domain. He has applied his expertise in narrative theory and media studies to a variety of counter violent extremism and counter violent extremist ideology research contexts, including: analysis of extremist narratives; strategies for counter or alternative narratives; and the neurobiology of narrative comprehension.
He is co-author of Narrative Landmines: Rumors, Islamist Extremism and the Struggle for Strategic Influence (Rutgers University Press, 2012), as well as articles on strategic communication, extremist videos and the narrative potential of new media technologies. He has presented widely on topics intersecting disinformation and propaganda, media, narrative/counter-narrative and terrorism to military, academic and non-governmental organization audiences. Current research projects focus on analysis of propaganda and information operations in so-called Gray Zone operations, as well as narrative-based interventions influencing attitude, belief and behavior in organizational culture.
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Remarks
You hear the expression a lot about “controlling the narrative.” For me I hear it mostly on fictional tv shows, where some character has to make sure that reporters tell the story about that character in a way that’s most advantageous to him. He and his handlers frame any details in such a way that the character is presented as a good guy or has been unjustly accused.
I didn’t really think about the mechanics of it all until my conversation with this week’s guest, Scott Ruston. I invited Scott on the podcast because there is so much controversy in what he calls our information environment. I wanted to understand how others can believe what seems to me to be so patently false. What has gotten us to this place and what can we do about it.
Scott Ruston is an expert in the field of narrative disinformation, and teaches and researches it at the university level. As such, our conversation gets pretty theoretical and cerebral. One of many things I admired in his explanation is how neutral he stays as he describes what’s going on. The rhetorical devices are used by all sides, and thoughtful people from all points of view can learn from him without feeling judged.
My hope is that you will take away a new awareness of the the techniques at work and what you can do to counter them.
Transcript
(Times are approximate)
Liz Sumner 0:00
My guest today is Dr. Scott Ruston, a research professor at Arizona State University and director of ASU’s center on narrative disinformation and strategic influence. His work includes analysis of extremist propaganda, and strategies for counter or alternative narratives. Welcome, Scott. Good morning, Liz. Thank you, thank you so much for having me. So, tell me how you got into this field.
Scott Ruston 0:28
When I was going to grad school, I probably didn’t even think about what extremist narratives might be, or what does information might be or what adversarial influence might be, I was interested in stories. And that’s what I went to grad school to study. So my grad degree focuses on narrative theory and Media Studies. So I was at the time, I was really interested in how new technologies might change how we construct and how we might understand stories. And that’s the narrative theory side of things is pretty much how how we make sense of the world, and how we make sense of entertainment, like movies, and video games and books, or how we understand history, and education, and art, and all that sort of stuff. That’s what I went to grad school for.
But then when I started looking for an academic job in that field, it happened, this is a bit of serendipity. I always had this sort of, of sense about how my, what I studied, be relevant, I have a background also in the Navy. And so there’s a dimension of me that is interested in national security and is interested in service and, and those kinds of things. And a job came open that asked for an expert or somebody with experience with narrative theory and Media Studies. And to apply that to Islamic extremist narratives. The idea was that we needed to study how Islamic extremist groups were garnering their recruits, how they were persuading populations to be to turn a blind eye to them setting roadside bombs and things like that. And, as a general rule, the United States government and NATO and other entities that were engaged in trying to stop the spread, and the activities of global terrorist groups, we’re really struggling to do so with regard to that element of persuasion, that element of what we might call strategic communication. So I saw an opportunity that to join those two interests. So that’s kind of how I got into it.
Liz Sumner 2:34
I asked Scott to explain a little bit more about narrative theory and how it’s used.
Scott Ruston 2:39
So one of the things that narrative theory would do would be to look at the underlying structure of how a set of stories are told. Other aspects of narrative theory might ask questions about how does the reader or viewer or the audience who is encountering material that they are understanding in a narrative framework, how might they be guided, okay, so the attention of the audience might be focalized in a particular way. So you’re focusing on particular entities, we might call those characters in the literary sense. And there might be manipulations of time. and in what order is the story told you think about lots of movies, start in what we call in media rest in the middle of things. And so you’re sitting there trying to figure stuff out, you know, there’s James Bond skiing down the slopes, and he’s being shot at by bad guys. And then he shoots over a ski jump, and he sails through a barn and then he somehow flies out of his skis and lands in his Aston Martin, and he drives away. And so we’re like, all excited, but we have no idea what’s going on. And then it cuts to a scene in M’s office. And he’s telling about the bad guys that he shot and the secret decoder ring that he stole, and that now that MI6 can defeat the bad guys. So now we’ve got this pause, we have both a pause of the narrative pace, and we have a pause of the emotion and we have a pause to figure stuff out how that works, is part of the domain of, of narrative theory.
Now there’s a bit of a difference when you’re looking at a James Bond movie or Citizen Kane or Star Wars or something like that, which is already constructed with particular narrative goals in mind. And with a limited bounded narrative universe, then when you try to apply those ideas to the messy information environment, all of social media, when you’re talking about contentious issues, then some of those aspects, some of those strict rules become a little fuzzier and that’s really interesting, I think, particularly and one of the ways that I got into this as I started thinking about this as I was studying in grad school I was interested in you know, when you watch the movie Star Wars, for example, or you watch a James Bond movie or you read, you read your favorite novel, you’re doing a lot of meaning making creation work yourself as an as a human engaging with that, with that piece of art with that set of stories. But at the same time, the number of choices you have to make meaning are somewhat limited and somewhat bounded. There’s a limited range of choices. But when you get into interactive media, or you get into other forms of participatory media, like YouTube, like Facebook, like Twitter, now we’ve got a whole bunch of authors all contributing at the same time, including the audience member becomes a producer, him or herself, because they can contribute comments, they can retweet, they can add their own tweet, they can take that meme that somebody sent them, you know, via Facebook, they could very easily alter that meme and send it back out into the information environment. Now they’re a participant in that storytelling system. And so that makes things really challenging to try and understand.
That leads me to another piece of narrative theory, there is a narrative theory that I that I ascribe to referred to as cognitive narratology. That says, what we’re doing in our brains when we are, whether it is we’re watching a movie or reading a novel, or scanning through our social media feed is we’ve got these large categories of information, those that conflict, desire, those different types of actions that might progress towards a resolution, or that might obstruct our self assigned hero. To get there, we’ve got those positions that help us make sense of all this stuff. And as we take in information, whether it’s we take in that opening scene of James Bond shooting down the highway, or the slopes of the Alps being shot up by bad guys, or whether it’s that opening scene of Star Wars when Princess Leia gets captured by Darth Vader, but the droids escaped to the surface of the tween. We’re putting that into one of those categories. And then we’re putting other things into other categories until things make sense. And if things ever stopped making sense, we got to reshuffle the categories.
So to just sort of quickly summarize, cognitive narratology. It takes that core structure that I talked about earlier, and says okay, those are categories of information, those structural elements, conflict, desire goals, complicating actions, progressing actions, resolution, a handful of others, other categories of information, and when we absorb a piece of information, we’re going to try and put it into one of those categories.
We very consciously do that when we’re watching a movie or reading a novel. So when we’re watching Star Wars, and Princess Leia gets captured at the opening scene, like, okay, there’s a guy all dressed in black, he’s probably I’m gonna probably slot him into the character of the villain. And there’s a Woman in White, she might be the vulnerable princess that needs rescuing. I’m gonna figure that out a little later, actually. But she’s done something. And those droids are important, and they’ve escaped. Well, now I understand that the guy dressed in black wants something. Okay, I’m slotting that into into these these things. Some people might go into watching Star Wars and think that Darth Vader is the hero. Because he’s been wrong. He’s looking for something that was stolen from the good guy, and this Woman in White might be a super secret spy. And in fact, that’s one of the tensions that set up in that original opening scene. But we can do the same thing to our social media feeds or our as we read a news article, or as we watch to watch the broadcast news is we can take in that information and we can slot it into one of these categories. Maybe that’s articulating a conflict, maybe this is a progressing action that’s going to lead towards a resolution of one of these conflicts. And one of the aspects of cognitive narratology that’s really interesting is that it posits that what we are doing as humans in the comprehension process is that we are constantly putting these pieces of information that we acquire into one of those categories. And then, if it makes sense, from a narrative logic standpoint, if it has coherence, it, it all clicks together, we comprehend what the story is about. And when it doesn’t click together, then we have to reshuffle things. And we either move pieces of information into different categories. So we move Darth Vader from hero who has been wronged by some stolen plans, and we move him into the villain. And now it’s Oh, now it starts to click now it makes a lot more sense. Or we have to apply all completely new categories. And we derive those categories from, from our culture from our communities. So we have stories that have a long time been told. And so that’s why we talk about you know, there is a rags to riches story. And that’s a very common story form. So that helps us understand when we start getting a story, we were like, well, how does this work? Oh, this person is starting an underprivileged kind of position in society. But they’re really smart, or they’re really lucky or they are very dedicated. And then they start achieving success. And then that Ark concludes with some sort of great success. Ah, we might call that a rags to riches story, but we’ve already perceived that along the way. So that’s a little bit more about how sort of narrative narrative theory sort of comes into play in, in this field.
Liz Sumner 10:36
So one way to check your understanding of things is to identify what kinds of categories you’re putting things in, but if you you’ve learned something from your social media, and you’re feeling a certain way about it, you can take a look at what assumptions you have made from the information you’ve received.
Scott Ruston 11:03
Exactly, exactly. So you know, this is very common during political campaigns, one side of the, you know, a politician or a party or an affinity group will decide that the opposition is a villain. And so not only so they’ll start saying, Oh, this candidates policies aren’t good for you, that’s policy analysis, that’s opinion. But then, I’ve already slotted candidate A into the villain, maybe I don’t like their taxation policy, okay, you know, that’s fine, then there’s this sort of growth and development of this person has bad tax policy, then it moves to this person has bad moral fiber, this person has evil intent this person has, and it just escalates and with one aspect of the contemporary 21st century information environment is that there is a relentless speed to it. There’s lots of opportunity for really deep in depth information sharing. But there’s even more opportunity for really rapid information sharing. And one of the things about about narratives is that they tie actions and events and people, that’s what’s happening in those events in that trajectory from a conflicts towards a resolution. But they tie it to values, and they tie it to emotions. And so those get activated as well. So a, a fairly brief piece of information that doesn’t tell a whole story, but it might allude to a story already known. And it reinforces that or activates it, you know, if it positions a person positions them as a villain positions them as a villain that is violating some kind of closely held value. Now you have activated an emotional response, less so a rational, reasoned, well thought out critique response, and then that amps up the emotionality of the whole thing.
So that’s another way that looking at the information environment through a narrative lens, can help understand what’s going on, you know, particularly for somebody that’s interested in or concerned about, you know, am I an unwitting purveyor of disinformation? I get that question a lot. What can I do? And one step is, you know, when you receive a piece of information, whether it’s a news broadcast, a blog, post, a meme, or a story told on whatever social media site you’re, you’re on, or what have you. Take a pause and ask oneself a question of, am I reacting to this in a highly emotional way? Or am I reacting to this in a, because of some kind of measured critique of what’s being discussed? Do I want to, you know, hit retweet, or hit repost or share super fast, because you want to hit it super fast, taking a pause, taking a deep breath, and then asking a couple of questions like 1am I being you know, manipulated as this association between whatever is in the content of this tweet or meme or blog post. Really sending me off the rails emotionally? Because if so, it probably is doing so intentionally. And do I consciously and agreeably want to ride that wave of emotionality? Sometimes the answer is yes. But a lot of times the answer is no, I don’t really want to be manipulated by somebody activating my emotions. I want to know what’s going on in a situation, then the next thing to ask oneself is, you know, who shared it and what agenda might they have, because all of these narratives, particularly in the category of disinformation, an important aspect to my work about disinformation is that and this distinguishes it from misinformation.
So disinformation is the false or misleading or inaccurate information that is spread with the intent to deceive influence. So a piece of information might be true. In a sense, it might be a photo of a person that was actually taken at a particular location with other people. But it’s taken out of its context. And then it’s positioned in a different way out of its out of its context. And that creates something misleading with the intention to deceive or influence the audience. It might be wholly false, it might be completely a lie or completely, no snow, no connection to any kind of objective truth whatsoever. That’s common and disinformation. But even more common is those inaccurate, slightly true but then positioned in a in a in a certain way. And then packaged to fit into some narratives that are already circulating within community groups, and carrying people along towards towards a resolution. So if you hear story after story after story after story about a particular class of politician and bad acts, and you are inclined to already to believe some of those stories, the news stories are more and more congruent with those stories that you’ve already been believing. And it just reinforces that narrative system. That’s a principle of narrative theory that we call narrative fidelity. The degree to which any new stories fit into the narrative systems that you’ve already accepted that sort of help explain the world.
Liz Sumner 16:26
Wow. So one way to spot it is, am I having a strong emotional reaction? Do I want to take immediate action based on my emotional reaction, other ways to spot it?
Scott Ruston 16:42
Particularly on disinformation, if there is only a single side of an issue, if it’s if it’s issue related, and only a single side is presented. It’s not a one to one, only one side is, is presented then therefore it is disinformation. But that’s another clue. So if there’s a high degree of emotionality, if the information is presented in such a way as to, you know, stimulate the sort of salaciousness or the excitement value, or the outrage reaction, so again, those sort of all of that emotionality, if there is no citing of sources, and there’s a dismissal of of the other side, or there’s not even any acknowledgement that the other other side exists, if it starts with the, here’s what the establishment doesn’t want you to know, you know, and in substitute the establishment for whatever group is, is being sort of denigrated and dismissed, there is a good chance that what’s going to follow is a variety of rhetorical techniques that are designed to do those disinformation all things that are designed to mislead or designed to obfuscate the complexity of a situation or to outright provide false or inaccurate information that is that is designed to to influence you in a particular direction of your conclusion. So emotionality is is a is a key thing to look for the blocking off of alternative interpretations, the appeal to some sort of secret knowledge that the purveyor of this information has that is providing to you.
One of the great things about the internet is that it’s really easy to go gather a ton of information. And there’s pros and there’s cons to that. One of the big cons to that is that not all the information is accurate, some of it is packaged in a certain way to deceive you. That’s the disinformation and the misinformation. The misinformation is very similar to this information. It’s just spread innocuously. There’s there’s no evil intent behind it. But the other advantage of the internet is that there’s a ton of information out there for finding. And so if there is if you get information that says, what I’m about to tell you, is your secret stuff that, you know, the establishment. universities don’t want you to know, the mainstream media doesn’t want you to know that. The government doesn’t want you to know, the church doesn’t want you to know, whatever it happens to be. Well, that’s a clue to say, Oh, I wonder what that entity actually says because it’s accessible. It’s pretty easy to go find out what, here’s what the CDC doesn’t want you to know about vaccines? Well, not only can you go to the CDC website, you wouldn’t go to a wide range of reputable journalistic sites whose specialty and profession is is to monitor the CDC output and report on what’s actually going on.
So it’s all out there does take some work. And that’s something I think that has eroded over time is the convenience of the rapid speed of information exchange in the 21st century information environment is That convenience and speed has a tendency to work against the other opportunity of the 21st century information environment, which is an enormous amount of information available for one’s own critical reading. So that’s an another recommendation that I make, particularly when asked, okay, what can I do? What can I do? That’s a common question that I get asked, okay, what what can I do? If you think it is egregious, and nefarious and deceptive, and it comes over social media, each of the social media platforms has a fairly easily utilized method of reporting. So you can click a button that’s on the Facebook post says, I want to report this and you got to give a reason why is it hate speech? Is it deceptive? Does it violate any number of terms of service, and most of them have, you know, ultimately give you a drop down? Twitter does the same thing. Most of the platforms have some sort of some mechanism. The procedures are not perfect, but they at least there are procedures.
Liz Sumner 21:05
So this might not be your area, but for the people who want to believe something and are just looking for more evidence, let’s leave them aside for the moment. But for those who were sort of neutral, but now are just exhausted by the disinformation, what is your advice for for them?
Scott Ruston 21:31
So one of the things that I recommend is, it does require a slightly higher level of effort, and that is, subscribe, or review or read information from a variety of perspectives. It can be a really interesting exercise to listen to a news broadcast on a particular topic from a particular media outlet that is reasonably well known to have a particular ideological or political bias, then rather than dismissing them, as Oh, they’re biased, listen to how the other side because there’s, there’s gonna be a corresponding media outlet on the other side of the political or ideological spectrum, this simple idea of reading broadly. And then over time, cultivating a number of sources that are in fact, adhering to journalistic ethics, that their content is sourced. They run news stories that are based on multiple verifications before the author actually sends it to the editor and it makes the makes the newspaper or makes the the airwaves. And a good sign that one is probably reputable, is that sometimes you agree with them, sometimes you disagree with them. And often, you’re not left with an emotional reaction at the end of the of the story, but rather you feel informed. And that sometimes they do an interview with somebody, and you’re like God, they didn’t ask all the right questions, but the next time they will ask an interview, like what a fantastic interview. That’s the same same radio station, that’s the same newspaper, it’s the same, what have you, that’s a pretty good indicator that they are aspiring to credibly unpack different, you know, all the sides of an issue.
There’s another sort of distinguishing mechanism, particularly for information that’s crossing one’s social media feed used to be very, very clear in newspapers, as well as broadcast news, when the outlet was engaging in news reporting, which was telling you what’s happening, analysis reporting, where it’s putting together a bunch of news and saying, Hey, this is what I think this means. And opinion reporting, which is putting a particular slant and that opinion reporting has does not have the same level of multiple source verification, that news reporting does. Analysis reporting assumes because it’s built on the news reporting assumes that they that has been completed, but opinion reporting is absolved of those requirements. So opinion reporting that the journalist can just say whatever they think, that used to be really, really clear in a newspaper, there was articles that were analysis reporting usually had a little banner at the top of them that said, news analysis or something along those lines, and certainly the opinion pages, whereas there’s a whole section of the newspaper dedicated to opinion. Well, in today’s environment, you go to go to any major website of a media outlet. Those sections of opinion analysis and news are not nearly as clear. The other thing that’s not nearly as clear is how many of the links and the little little boxes with an image and then a caption are actually sponsored advertisements. Because if it’s a sponsored advertisement, now you have this bit gets back to that part of critical reading about who’s providing you the information, and what is their agenda. So a little box in the bottom of the media website that leads you to something exciting. But it says, ad or says sponsored? Well, you know that there’s somebody has a specific agenda there that has paid money to get you to click on that, which leads there. And here is another clue that that what you might be following is a little suspect. It really does mean that for the average citizen, who wants to execute their sense of civic responsibility of, of being informed about the world around them, so they can make decisions about their lives, as well as make decisions, you know, if they live in a democracy, at the voting booth, and things like that. There’s a bit of work involved. But I think that’s okay, as a citizen in the 21st century, particularly in high functioning democracies, there is an obligation that the citizens put some effort into executing their civic responsibilities that we wish I think so.
Liz Sumner 26:11
Yes, I agree. Is there anything that makes you hopeful?
Scott Ruston 26:19
One thing that that is hopeful is that there’s an increasing level of attention on the problem. And recognizing that the problem is not simply a technological problem. It’s not just that bots exist, and that bots are able to accelerate certain postings more rapidly than a human ever could. And we haven’t even talked about deep fakes, but the idea of a manipulated video that is falsely showing something happening. So there’s lots of research going on an on a lot of the research brings together not only the technology of how does the information environment work from a technological standpoint, and how bots work and how synthetic media creation works, and all of that, but it’s also bringing in the social science of how do the humans work? What is it about a even low fidelity, what we call a cheap fake, like, a video that is very obviously been manipulated, but it’s still really successful and going viral on the, on the internet, and, and influencing a large number of people, even though you might look at it objectively, and say, How can anybody believe that this is this is true, and the and the and there’s a whole range of psychological and sociological reasons why a person would just look past all of the production quality limitations of a cheap fake, and go ahead and believe it because it’s, it’s satisfying some sort of psychological need. It is nesting within those stories that are already believe, things like that. And there’s an increasing level of research being done on that. At ASU, I started in in one center. And I was focused primarily, as I said at the outset, on Islamist extremist narratives and how they used a storytelling for their own recruitment and persuasive purposes. And that sort of evolved into studying disinformation from a variety of different sources. And then ASU founded a center research centers explicitly on this, now I have the great fortune of leading the center, which is, that’s, you know, that’s that fusion of academic interests, national security interests, and a place where that research is needed. The hopeful thing about that is, there were the resources there and the perception of need, not only by myself and my colleagues that I partner with in doing the research that I do, but in the leadership of the Global Security Initiative, which is a strategic initiative at ASU that stimulates research in a variety of areas that relate to national security. You know, if there’s any one hopeful element, it’s that there is a whole lot of research going on, about how to give tools to organizations and all the way down to the everyday citizen tools that will help them triage the information that they receive. And that want to make use of and can make more conscious choices about where they slot that information into those structures that are already sort of existing in their brain that culture has provided. So there’s some degree of hope out there.
Liz Sumner 29:29
If you had a magic wand and could fix some piece of this, what’s the first thing you would do?
Scott Ruston 29:41
That’s, that’s a good question. One of the things that I wish that, that our institutions of journalism, particularly, you know, major newspapers, major cable news networks, major local news networks among local papers, etc. That whole industry would to lessen their dependence on social media as a place of action that is worth reporting on. And as a tool for executing their reporting, there are some reporters who are under such pressure to get content posted to the media entities website, whether it’s a major media outlet or a local newspaper, that they never leave their office. And once they see two tweets on a topic, they’re starting to write an article about that. Some of that’s an economic pressure, some of that’s the changes in the speed with which the media needs to be responsive. There’s a broad section of society, it’s not everybody how big this population is, is open for debate. And media scholars debate it all the time. But how many people that operate their life in a way that what happens on social media really matters. And it really matters to the world. And that’s where, you know, that’s when journalists are reporting on what’s being tweeted about or what’s being posted to Facebook, and what’s going viral. And then they’re creating a sort of what we might call a regular news story about something that’s happening on social media, and the connection between what’s happening in social media and what’s happening in the real world is not a one to one Association.
Step two, I think of my magic wand would across all educational curricula, introduce curricula that would stimulate digital information literacy, like we do a lot of our education system does a really good job of teaching people to read that’s and read and write, and all those other aspects of, of the use of language. But we haven’t widely spread deeper understanding of digital information environment, and how that differs from a primarily print information environment. So that would be my second because that would enable some of the critical thinking. And it would enable that everyday users of taking that pause, and asking themselves, are my emotional buttons being pushed? What’s the implications of this particular piece of information that I’ve gotten? Is it exclusively one sided? If so, is it appropriately so? Or is there some sort of an agenda behind this end? And if I take an action of absorbing this into my understanding of the world, or I’m going to take an action of sharing it with my friends, or I’m going to take an action of sharing it even more broadly? What agenda Am I participating in? Am I participating in an in an agenda that I firmly believe in, I want to stake my claim on or am I doing it for some other purpose perhaps, because I’m feeling angry right now. And I just want to add more fuel to the fire. So that would be magic wand. Number two,
Magic wand, number three, I actually think is the more the more achievable. And that is that a variety of lines of research that are going on, some of which I’m involved in at ASU. But there’s lots of other really great research going on, and all kinds of other universities, not only across the United States, but also across the globe, that would develop technologies that would help enable some of those critical analysis, enable and make more visible to the user of digital information technologies, the veracity and authenticity of any piece of information that and that helps people make make a better, better decision. And there’s a whole range of research that’s out there, and so on, we’re on the cusp of of some of those. So those are my three waves of the magic wand. He asked for one and I gave you three.
Liz Sumner 33:47
I’ll give you three. Are there any resources that you can recommend or that we can put in the show notes for listeners who want to find out more about your work, or about how to take some of the actions that you’ve recommended?
Scott Ruston 34:05
Sure, for a little bit more about about the work that we do at GSI, I can send you the website, global security initiative.asu.edu. And that would give insight into the broad range of research that’s sponsored under the under the Global Security Initiative, of which my center is one and there’s a couple of other centers that are once focused on cybersecurity and other is focused on AI robots and human teams, all of what’s very relevant to contemporary national security issues. Then on that page would have there’s a q&a that I’ve done that sort of in a little bit more succinct than today’s conversation. That’s one of the great things about a podcast is you got more time so you can weave your way through a bunch of issues. But there’s a q&a on that website. There’s also a short video that’s kind of a TED talk style video. That covers a little bit the research that I do, and I can send those links to you and you can put them in the show notes.
Liz Sumner 34:57
That’d be great. I’m really glad that you and others are doing this work. It’s so important. And this has been really fascinating. Is there anything that you’d like to say in conclusion?
Scott Ruston 35:09
I think for the average, everyday person, I do this reading critically, trying to absorb information on a particular topic from a couple of different dimensions can be, you know, a huge first step. Yeah. Is it a little bit more work? Absolutely. But I firmly believe that that’s our, our, our obligation as, as citizens, we’ve got a lot of privileges when you you live in the United States, and we have access to a lot of information, and then the, the corresponding responsibility is to engage with that in a measured and thoughtful way. So I would, you know, I would advocate for that. And also, you know, from a personal academic perspective, I think that idea that every piece of information that you absorb, is, is participating in some kind of a story trajectory. And being conscious of what kind of a story trajectory you want to participate in and make sure that that all the values of that story trajectory, actually genuinely line up with a with the values that you believe in. And that will go a long way, I think towards a cleaner or a more manageable information environment and will lower the risks of, of being deceived or, or being influenced in some kind of covert nefarious way by disinformation actors.
Liz Sumner 36:35
Thank you. It’s mighty scary, but you have given me steps and little bit hope.
Scott Ruston 36:44
Well, great. Well, thank you so much, Liz for this for the opportunity to talk with you this morning. It was a it was really, really quite fun. And I look forward to hearing more of your podcasts of other folks. So thanks for bringing all those great stories to us.
Liz Sumner 36:57
Thank you. My thanks to Dr. Scott Ruston. You can find out more about him and his work on disinformation in the show notes. I invite everyone to write and tell me what you’ve always wanted to try. I’m Liz Sumner, reminding you to be bold, and thanks for listening