282 | Democracy for Sale

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We talk to Peter Geoghegan of openDemocracy and Jennifer Cobbe of the Trust and Technology Initiative about Cambridge Analytica, money, power and what is and isn't corrupting our democracy.  How easy is it to buy influence in British politics? Did Cambridge Analytica break the rules, or show just how little difference the rules make anyway? Who has the power to take on Facebook? Plus we discuss why the British government's failure to handle the pandemic tells us a lot about the corrosive effects of cronyism. Order Peter’s book here…

133 | Talking Politics guide to ... Facebook

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How did Facebook get to be so powerful and what, if anything, can we do to take some of that power back? David talks to John Naughton about the rise and possible fall of Mark Zuckerberg’s social media monolith. 

119 | Democracy Hacked

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We try to uncover the truth about fake news with Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Guardian, and Martin Moore, director of the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power. Why have elections around the world been so easy to hack? Can newspapers survive the age of free? And is anonymity a friend or an enemy to democracy? Big questions, big answers.

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91 | James Williams

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We catch up with James Williams, winner of the Nine Dots Prize, ahead of the publication of his prize-winning book Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy.  What is the relentless competition for our attention doing to our well-being?  How can we fight back against the endless pull of the phone in our pocket?  And what does it all mean for politics?  The book will available free to download from Cambridge University Press on 31 May.

 

87 | Facebook vs the World

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With the help of John Naughton and Jennifer Cobbe we unpick the Cambridge Analytica story and get to the heart of the matter: what is Facebook doing to us and can anything make it stop?  We talk about the business of surveillance capitalism and the difference between a scandal and a crisis.  Plus how working in tech is like working on the Manhattan Project and how Cambridge Analytica is like the Australian cricket team.