Good start but very very geneal

This book extends our understand of propaganda to the new era of social media; a phenomenon the author calls computational propaganda. The general gist is that technology has changed propaganda in a number of ways, mostly notably it has decentralised it. Whereas it used to be top-down from the political elite via main stream News channels (BBC, CNN, Fox) and newspapers, now anyone can engage in it through the use of social media by creating bots (automated social media profiles), sockpuppet accounts (fake accounts if real people), partisan nanoinfluencers (paid propaganda with people with around 10,000 followers). These can be used to spread whatever to thousands of people at a time, gaming the algorithm which makes it trend on peoples account. This is then picked up by traditional media thinking that its actually a trending topic of discussion when it isn't giving it a false sense of importance. The book argues that this is now used quite heavily not only by governments and political movements across the world, but individuals with enough fervour to spread their ideology. Some people are now so proficient at it that they turn it into a business.

While the book introduces some novel ideas, it lacks any depth really. It would have been great to see detailed case studies on how theses bots and sockpuppets about were used, its reception, and its impact. I think Channel 4 in the UK did a wonderful job looking at Cambridge Analytica's computational propaganda during the Trump 2016 presidential campaign. This book teases you with examples from Equador, Mexico, Russia, India, and Turkey, but hardly get into any detail all. It just says the ruling party in Turkey uses bots to undermine its opposition, Russia used bot o help Trump win, India's fascist BJP party uses fake stories to spread on Facebook groups and WhatsApp becuase they can't be detected easily. No detail whatsoever, just statements. For this reason, this book could have been 10% its length and we would have lost no substance at all

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