The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health - and How We Must Adapt
London: HarperCollins (2020), xv, 390 pp.
Contains index
ISBN 978-00-827713-0 (pbk); 978-0-525-57452-1 (ebook)
Signature commbox: 70-General-E 2020
"It is paramount, MIT social media expert Sinan Aral says, that we recognize the outsized impact social media has on our culture, our democracy, and our lives in order to steer today's social technology toward good, while avoiding the ways it can pull us apart. Otherwise, we could fall victim to what Aral calls "The Hype Machine." As a senior researcher of the longest-running study of fake news ever conducted, Aral found that lies spread online farther and faster than the truth-a harrowing conclusion that was featured on the cover of Science magazine. Among the questions Aral explores following twenty years of field research: Did Russian interference change the 2016 election? And how is it affecting the vote in 2020? Why does fake news travel faster than the truth online? How do social ratings and automated sharing determine which products succeed and fail? How does social media affect our kids? First, Aral links alarming data and statistics to three accelerating social media shifts: hyper-socialization, personalized mass persuasion, and the tyranny of trends. Next, he grapples with the consequences of the Hype Machine for elections, businesses, dating, and health." (Publisher description)
1 The New Social Age, 3
2 The End of Reality, 24
3 The Hype Machine, 56
4 Your Brain on Social Media, 94
5 A Network's Gravity is Proportional to Its Mass, 112
6 Personalized Mass Persuasion, 131
7 Hypersocialization, 156
8 Strategies for a Hypersocialized World, 169
9 The Attention Economy and the Tyranny of Trends, 200
10 The Wisdom and Madness of Crowds, 225
11 Social Media's Promise Is Also Its Peril, 259
12 Building a Better Hype Machine, 287
2 The End of Reality, 24
3 The Hype Machine, 56
4 Your Brain on Social Media, 94
5 A Network's Gravity is Proportional to Its Mass, 112
6 Personalized Mass Persuasion, 131
7 Hypersocialization, 156
8 Strategies for a Hypersocialized World, 169
9 The Attention Economy and the Tyranny of Trends, 200
10 The Wisdom and Madness of Crowds, 225
11 Social Media's Promise Is Also Its Peril, 259
12 Building a Better Hype Machine, 287
