It's A Crazy World
And No One Has a Clue Who to Believe Anymore
Here we go…..
“Is this even real?”
It’s a question I often get from friends and family who are keen to decipher what is fact, what is fiction, and what is designed to manipulate them into a specific belief or action. Tik Tok, X (Twitter), Facebook, Fox News, MSNBC, the neighbor next door, and our friends all create and pass along information, images, and videos that seem to make sense on the surface. But, all too often, what we see, hear, and read is a partial truth or entirely made-up.
It’s frustrating.
It’s hard to know what to trust.
The goal of this weekly - or perhaps twice weekly as Election 2024 ramps up - newsletter is to provide some insights on how you are being misled, who is misleading you, and why it is important. Mixing personal experience, current events, and academic research, my intent is to help you become more aware of the information space and how influence operations turn into campaigns that seek to divide, sow discord, and, yes, even help governments, organizations, or individuals meet a specific goal.
What is important to you?
As this newsletter gets going and matures, covering topics that are of interest to you is important. Please share any feedback or ideas - they’ll help me calibrate over time to what is (and isn’t) hitting the mark.
To help focus early efforts, please take the survey.
About Me
You are probably wondering, “Why does Jennifer know about this stuff?”
Fair question. Outside of academic study around strategic communications, political psychology, social media, and propaganda, I spent time overseas crafting and implementing influence campaigns. They were hard. They were incredibly sensitive to actions and events outside of my control. And they took a lot more time than you may realize to build and grow.
Through all of it in school and in the field, I saw how things came together to make people believe things that may not have been in their best interest and that nothing happens in a vacuum. As a colleague of mine says, “I was on the balcony and on the dance floor.”
And dancing was fun when the strategy built on the balcony was well grounded and goal driven.
I hope you enjoy this journey with me - and are forgiving as I figure out how to make sense of this newsletter.
-Jennifer