Preface

There were two catalysts for the Immersive Truth project—or two game-changing responses to countless catalysts if you count the barrage of disinformation all of us involved were facing at the time.

One game changer was a generous donor, working on behalf of their family and their family history. The rise of disinformation and propaganda leading up to the 2016 presidential election was alarming for many in America, but it was devastating for those whose families had come to America after experiencing the slide from witnessing hateful rhetoric to fleeing genocide. So it was for this donor and their spouse, as the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors.

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What frightened the donor most was the ease with which their fellow Americans and neighbors could be led to believe the lies. The donors family were deprived of so many kin, but also inheritors of a terrible knowledge. they knew how disinformation and propaganda could sound and look and feel. They understood the patterns.

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The other catalyst, particularly for the media produced for this project, was a study by Google and their research arm, Jigsaw. Drying on inoculation theory, they had used videos for pre-bunking disinformation and seen considerable success. At that time this project had just been funded. we knew we would be producing media, but we were still sure what form that would take yet. When we saw the Google jigsaw study, we recognized two things. One was that these prebunking ads constituded an essential model for teaching people to be critical the strategies used in disinformation and propaganda.

The other thing I recognized was that in the context of misinformation spread, Google Jigsaw’s ads were missing something. By producing videos, they were addressing the spread of disinformation on YouTube and other platforms with video content. But I knew audio was a special and intractable conduit for disinformation. I knew that ads for audio content we’re less likely to be skipped, listeners engaged in multitasking like doing dishes or going for run. More crucially, I also understood the way in which audio content was uniquely positioned to build listener trust in content creators. if the impact of videos came through multisensory connection, the impact of audio came through intimacy. People are literally talking in our ears when we listen to podcasts. When I was growing up, I remember a common trope in cartoons was a person making a decision having an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. These were richly visual characters, and yet if they were to exist in our world today, I believe they would be podcasters.