The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health–and How We Must Adapt by Sinan Aral

About the Author

He is a scientist, entrepreneur and investor. He is the David Austin Professor of Management at MIT, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) and a founding partner at Manifest Capital. He was the Chief Scientist at SocialAmp (until its sale to Merkle in 2012) and at Humin (until its sale to Tinder in 2016). He currently serves on the Advisory Boards of the Alan Turing Institute, the British National Institute for Data Science in London, the Centre for Responsible Media Technology and Innovation in Bergen, Norway and C6 Bank, one of the first all-digital banks of Brazil.

About the Book

MIT professor Sinan Aral isn’t only one of the world’s leading experts on social media—he’s also an entrepreneur and investor, giving him an unparalleled 360-degree view of the technology’s great promise as well as its outsize capacity to damage our politics, our economy, and even our personal health.

Drawing on two decades of his own research and business experience, Aral goes under the hood of the biggest, most powerful social networks to tackle the critical question of just how much social media actually shapes our choices, for better or worse.

Aral shows how the tech behind social media offers the same set of behavior-influencing levers to both Russian hackers and brand marketers—to everyone who hopes to change the way we think and act—which is why its consequences affect everything from elections to business, dating to health.

Along the way, he covers a wide array of topics, including how network effects fuel Twitter’s and Facebook’s massive growth to the neuroscience of how social media affects our brains, the real consequences of fake news, the power of social ratings, and the impact of social media on our kids.

In mapping out strategies for being more thoughtful consumers of social media, The Hype Machine offers the definitive guide to understanding and harnessing for good the technology that has redefined our world overnight.

Listen to the Interview...

Links...

• The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--and How We Must Adapt by Sinan Aral (Amazon)

• Sinan Aral (MIT)

• Sinan Aral (website)

• Sinan Aral (LinkedIn)

• An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

• Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian

• Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty

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