Ed Coper - Facts and Other Lies: Welcome to the Disinformation Age

Ed Coper is a leading communications expert and was on the front lines when the internet collided with democracy, growing Australias first online political movement GetUp to quickly amass more members than every political party combined. He powered Change.orgs global expansion into over eighteen countries and pioneered techniques to bring politics into the digital age, and has been behind the scenes of many of the last decades most prominent social movements. He has advised campaigns on every continent except Antarctica, and highprofile changemakers from Malala to Richard Branson. Ed founded the New Yorkbased Center for Impact Communications, which has led efforts to safeguard US elections from disinformation and overcome vaccine hesitancy. Ed also founded a New York creative agency that serviced multiple Nobel Peace laureates and political and social leaders to scale their social impact. His groundbreaking campaigns have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for causes, won landmark social change and have featured in several museum exhibitions. Ed is based in Sydney and is director of the Populares communications agency.

Praise for Facts and Other Lies

This is a timely account of a growing malignancy affecting all modern democracies, namely disinformation. Democracies have always contended with disinformation, but it has exploded with technological advancement and the consolidation of media power in the hands of Rupert Murdoch. Self-interested actors, both states and non-state actors, are well advanced in developing the science of disinformation. Coper makes a valuable contribution towards a fuller understanding of this problem, and laying the groundwork for the sober national conversations we need to have about protecting our democracy.

Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia

Read this book if you want to save democracy. Disinformation is tearing apart the fabric of our society, and this is the handbook we need to fix it. At threat is the very trust that gives legitimacy to our democratic institutions and governments. I wish Id had this book on my nightstand every time I faced malicious fake news. Ed Coper is a must-read for anyone who shudders every time they hear an anti-vaxxer, a conspiracy theorist or whenever Clive Palmer or Alan Jones opens their mouth.

Wayne Swan, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia

A fascinating and terrifying explanation for how we got into this disinformation mess, and a wise roadmap for how we might get out of it. Coper is both philosopher and pragmatist. This book illuminates so much about the place where humans and social media meet, for better and for worse.

Bri Lee, author of Who Gets to Be Smart

Few have mapped our information dystopia more effectivelyand entertainingly than Coper. From the Ancient Greeks to the lockdown protests, via Hannah Arendt, Donald Trump, the Murdochs and many others, Coper has given us a detailed history of disinformationand of how we used the magnificent connective tool of the internet to magnify our worst, most primitive impulses. Mapping the marching routes of bot armies, tracking the infection vectors of fake media, explaining the mathsand economicsof social media radicalisation, following the tortured logic of QAnon and anti-vaxxers and explaining the psychology of irrationality, Coper has plunged into a dark world indeed, but the analysis he returns with, and the solutions he proposes, are compelling.

Bernard Keane, Politics Editor, Crikey

Exposed: Fiendish liars, fake news tricks, and their unwitting victims. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to cut through the nonsense and get to the truth.

Eason Jordan, former Chief News Executive, CNN

We live in a world that unfolds at a pace, and with the violents twists and turns in the plot, of a thriller. This book captures the intensity of our politics and connects it to the science of misinformation and its correction. Without losing our attention or slowing down, Coper manages to convey the main elements of the science in this page-turner. We learn about why people continue to rely on information they know to be false, why tribal bonds are not a thing of the past, and why we shouldnt try not to think of an elephant, but should inoculate ourselves against disinformation. This is a great read that gets across a lot of science in a hip narrative.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol

First published in 2022

Copyright Ed Coper 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

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To Billie, Juno and the found Summer of 1987

Just remember, what youre seeing and what youre reading is not whats happening.

President Donald J. Trump

Would your slightly younger self, even from as recently as 2015, believe the news of today?

An entire city block of a major American city blown up by a suicide bomber on Christmas Day over his concerns phone towers spread disease. Someone elected to the US Congress on a platform that Democrats secretly harvest an anti-aging chemical from the blood of abused children. Angry rioters in furs and horns overrun the US Capitol in a bloody carnage of insurrection, intent on hanging their very own vice-presidential candidate. The prime minister of Australia employing the wife of his friend who fronts a group the FBI have declared terrorists. A global pandemic which, even as they lie dying from it, people refuse to believe exists.

Many who sat in shocked disbelief as pictures of these events beamed around the world had the same question: How on earth did we get here?

For those rioters adorned in Trump flags, red MAGA hats and various states of fancy dress, it was the culmination of a journey of online radicalisation that began with the weaponisation of disinformation by their political leaders, hyperpartisan commentators and foreign saboteurs.

By charting their journey of radicalisation, we will learn much about the broader social context into which they thrust themselves and their fanciful realities, ones which had no bearing in facts. Well also learn how we can help to halt the process so that your next Christmas dinner isnt ruined by finding out Aunty Jane has been arrested for plotting to free imaginary children from the Victorian Premiers basement.

This book will help explain how disinformation has fractured society, why it is so potent and so hard to stop, and what people can do to help prevent its spread in Australiawhere you may be surprised to discover federal politicians and shock jocks are already operating from the same disturbing playbook. The type of disinformation campaigns you read about happening overseas are dictating our political conversations right here in Australia, far under the radar from our less than observant gaze.