YouSaid · the spoken record

Dr Julia Ebner

lines on the record: 34
first: 2025-05-27
most recent: 2025-05-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Social media algorithms, I completely agree as well. I think that is the source of a lot of the challenges that we're facing in particular because misinformation can just spread so much more quickly. And we've seen it also with, of course, with the Southport riots, how quickly it was from that first piece of misinformation that was shared on Telegram in the Southport wake-up group after this terrible attack in Southport. But then to the point that people mobilized and went into the streets, it was just, it took not even a day, it took hours for that.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. But it also, I think it shows actually a really well-informed audience because it is very true that not being able to distinguish between that difference of satire and actual misinformation is the trickiest part because that means because a lot of the extremist movements that I look into use satire or humor as a way of circumventing laws and as a way of spreading their misinformation. And we've even seen that on a bigger level with, for example, some of the videos that were created of Camilla Harris, satirical deepfakes were spread with people not realizing that this is actually that this was a deep fake. And it was originally meant to be for satirical purposes and humor, but people took it seriously and actually that was quite a dangerous path because people didn't realize that she didn't say that.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the problem is, even if you then look up the data, they might not believe the source of the data, even if it's a very trusted media source or a statistic from an academic paper, because their conspiracy myth might already cover all of these institutions as part of the bigger conspiracy.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is great. Well, I do hope that everyone goes out and does this with their next dinner table conversations. I do think that also, of course, refuting facts and also laughing it off can sometimes have an important role. But I would say that asking questions are really good starting point. And I do think humor can sometimes be helpful, but sometimes it can also push people further back because people feel like they're being humiliated or not taken seriously. So I do think it can, but in some circumstances it can certainly be a good way of just or just changing the subject can also sometimes be helpful. But I think overall asking questions to understand better why people might hold certain beliefs.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, I think Sander van der Linden at Cambridge University has a really good approach for basically inoculating the wider populations against misinformation, using similar principles as with vaccines, trying to make people understand what are the dynamics underlying the spread of misinformation, what are the manipulation tactics that are being used. And I think really trying to understand how you yourself might be exposed to this or your friends or your families can be a first step in trying to basically inoculate yourself or get the vaccine against misinformation and try to brace yourself for also toxic group dynamics, and also understand how our identities on an individual level, on a group level, on a societal level are changing in the online sphere and of course also how AI plays into that because that's a whole discussion.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. But I think also the ways in which we interact online, but also offline reinforces some of these trends of us drifting further apart and the trends of hyperpolarization, effective or emotion-based polarization. So I would say that empathy is extremely important for us to reverse that. And I think everyone can practice empathy in their own environment, in their own engagements, whether that's online or at a dinner table discussion.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Humanity, imagine people just also no longer date, for example, people on the other side of the spectrum. You see this in other surveys done by OkiCupid, which showed that most people don't want to date someone on the other side of the spectrum. I mean, this is quite bad news for dating.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is exactly also about our own in-group and outgroup thinking, I do think it's really important that we continue to have empathy for people on the other side of the political spectrum or ideological spectrum, people we disagree with. I think without that empathy and understanding of where perhaps people, we disagree with are coming from, it's really difficult to mend some of the societal divisions we're facing. And we see that with things like, I don't know if you saw that, but earlier last year the Financial Times published this statistic about young women and men drifting apart in terms of ideologies. And men on average become more conservative right-wing and women on average. Again, this is average might not be representative for this room, but women on average become more left liberal leaning. And I think it's really important also for the sake of just the future.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that's a really an approach that could be promising. And I think especially if you manage to attach some emotional value to something that is seen as part of the outgroup where you kind of mix up what is considered to be part of the in-group and what is considered to be part of the outgroup. And you just, because often these boundaries between in-group and out-group become so rigid that anything that you can do to break that apart is a really good step in the right direction, I think.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be any type of belief. It can be a political belief. It can be any type of ideological belief. I would even say, I would even go as far as to say that some of the communities that we now see, where the intelligence and security services talk a lot about them at the moment when it comes to youth radicalization, those communities that glorify violence for the sake of just violence or those gore and aggressive online communities, that even they hold types of sacred values that connect them to each other and to this idea that they do everything for these beliefs. I mean, they would go as far as to kill their own pets or go even further when it comes to that glorification of violence. And so I think it can be anything that really becomes deeply entrenched with who you are as a person and also relating to a group that you're.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, sacred values, I mean, Scott Atron is someone who's published a lot on sacred values, and it's all about ideas and belief systems that really have a strong personal, I guess, value that people become really attached to.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would definitely say so. Yeah, in the work that I do in Oxford, we do use sacred values. And it is also closely intertwined with that idea of identity fusion, because sacred values really become a strong part of who you are.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, very tricky. Probably many people in this room have been there and can relate to this. But I do think, I mean, although our natural inclination will often be to try and control it and try and debate that person, I do think it's actually using a more subtle approach and trying to get themselves to reach a conclusion that is perhaps not as rigid as the one that they're getting to right now is the best way forward, to really trying to make them question their own beliefs, but in a very subtle way. And I do think it's something about prompting them to reflect on their own feelings about something or on their own emotions, their fears, and so on, but without making them feel like they're in the psychologist's chair. And so it's a hard, I think it's a, really difficult balance”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Social media detox, I would say, really just going off social media for a week or two and meeting people in person again. Because I think that really helps us take a step back and reassess who we are, how we engage with others, sometimes our emotions just get caught up in online debates or in the type of media that we consume.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Perhaps not equally, but something I found in my, especially in my undercover investigations for my book Going Dark was that I think everyone can be vulnerable at specific points in their lives. We all have periods of uncertainty, periods where we're just not, yeah, where we might just be more vulnerable because of personal trauma or because of difficult experiences that we're in. And I do think that means that we're more susceptible in those moments. Even when I was doing the research myself, I found myself at some point being quite vulnerable. Perhaps it was because, as we said earlier, I spent my free time instead of spending it with my friends. I spent a lot of time in these very extreme channels and then automatically you become more vulnerable, but it's also about the group being able to tie some of those very deep, traumatic or negative experiences in your own life to”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Experience with the in group. If you break that apart and you actually show them, well, not all of your experiences are shared with that community. They are very different on so many levels and you try to really make a very experience-based point about their identity that can potentially also help them get out of it.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There definitely is, and I would recommend depending on where that person is on the radicalization trajectory, especially if they're very deep down the rabbit hole, then I think it's necessary to seek psychological help and to ask professionals to help or to inform, prevent. But I would say at the beginning of that journey, I do think that family members or friends or relatives can do a lot to help that person get back out of these networks, if you try to highlight, for example, experiences that you share with that person and you try to find those kind of a bridge to them on a very human level, that can often help them to break through some of their very rigid ways of thinking about the world. And equally, sometimes identify fusion comes about because people feel that they've had some traumatizing or deeply emotionally”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And even, and the problem is also, of course, that means that some of these even online subcultures or some of these extremist communities can become part of who you are and can also feel like family and almost replace your biological family. And that means even if you're the mother or sister or daughter of someone who's been radicalized, it's very hard to get through to that person because their identity is all tied up with that other community.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me first say it's extremely difficult to do that, but I would say that the most important thing to keep in mind is that you always need to build an emotional or psychological bridge. You need to understand what is the underlying psychological purpose of, for example, the conspiracy myth that they might believe in or the radical belief that they hold. Because usually that's really, it really depends on the individual. So a lot of them will have some kind of internal grievance about something, frustration, or even trauma that they then relate to a narrative and the conspiracy myth and they kind of connect the personal identity with a collective identity. And that can lead to a phenomenon that we call identity fusion, where your personal identity becomes one with the group identity. And then people start to perceive other members of the in-group as family-like, as kin-like.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it depends on the amount of data that you want. But of course, for a lot of the projects, you need to collect a lot of data in order to make any representative claims or in order to really have meaningful findings. And so for a lot of researchers, I think that's just exceeding their own research budgets.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a combination, but on a legal level, I would say that it would be really important to guarantee researchers full access to platform data. So if we had the guarantee that we're not going to get sued if we analyze data from the big tech platforms, because it's important to shed light on the dynamics, then of course that would enable just researchers to do much better science and to understand a little bit better how do campaigns form on some of these platforms, especially the ones that currently don't allow you to scrape them without paying huge amounts of money.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Example that would criticize Musk's policies, you might face a campaign or you might even face legal threats. So I think a lot of researchers are very careful nowadays.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Been quite scary in the last couple of years because I've seen that a lot of researchers in my field have really been silenced, have really been afraid of doing research into misinformation, into topics related to radicalization and extremism, because they're so emotionally and politically charged that it's very likely that even if you publish something, well, in the academic space, of course, academic papers get less traction usually. But as soon as you publish something with a media outlet or you put yourself out there on social media, it's very likely that you face some kind of smaring or misinformation campaign that some of the people in the extremist communities try to silence these researchers. And even on the legal level, there are more legal threats related to it because as soon as you use any type of evidence-based claims about X for”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, right. No, they still use them, but it's very true that we've seen a complete turnaround when it comes to the platform policies. And I think it started, of course, with Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter now X in 2022, when then there was a whole trend that started with other platforms jumping on that bandwagon and not actually removing misinformation anymore. For example, YouTube then in 2023 announced that they would no longer remove US election related misinformation. And then, of course, we saw what happened in the last couple of years with extremist accounts returning to some of these big tech platforms and the removal policies changing entirely and misinformation, again being completely normalized on these platforms. So there is no longer a real need for these old tech platforms. I would say that they still sometimes use them, for example, when they plan.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, it's definitely changed a lot, and it's still evolving rapidly, but it used to be, so just a few years ago in 2017 to 2019, a lot of the big tech platforms started to take down content, radical content and the radical accounts that were spreading hateful messages or misinformation. And then unfortunately, there was a whole that what emerged was almost an alternative tech space or alternative tech old tech platforms, as we call them, with parlor, truth, social, mines, gab, even alternative to YouTube like BitShoot and Odyssey, and all of these platforms were used by extremists, sometimes under the banner of unlimited free speech, sometimes also explicitly trying to provide a safe haven for extremists. And they were used very often to coordinate campaigns that would then be carried out on the bigger platform.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The problem with misinformation is they often build on things that people are very emotionally attached to or that they have a grievance about and sometimes this might also build on half-truths. So of course there are a lot of problems with some of the pharmaceutical products where perhaps some of the side effects have not been studied enough, but they take it completely out of context. They take it out of the scientific consensus about the product and they benefit from it by then also potentially selling their own products which have zero scientific evidence behind it.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of, I think it's actually when you look into, I mean, my expertise is mostly on the extremist movements, but of course there's also an added layer, the tech firms themselves profit from it because they maximize, as I said, they maximize the amount of time people spend on the platform because the content becomes more and more radical and misinformation is actually something that generates a lot of interaction, a lot of it just means that they can make people stay on the platforms longer. But the extremist movements also have turned this into something that's monetarily interesting for them. So for example, some of the conspiracy myth gurus and conspiracy myth infants.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Algorithms, of course, reinforcing radical content, incredible content, apocalyptic content, all of the content that our human minds have always been fascinated in. But now on social media, that's exactly what the algorithms are tailored to in order to maximize our attention on the platform, which is essentially the business model of the tech firms. But we've always been fascinated by gladiators fighting or by bloody content or by incredible apocalyptic predictions.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say it's a combination of different factors. One of them is, of course, that our attention span has decreased, that we're exposed to such a huge, hugely overwhelming amount of information and misinformation, but also our trust is much more individual-based, and that is really amplified on social media. A lot of us will just probably listen to whatever the influences that we're following are saying. And research has shown that trust in institutions is dropping and trust in individuals that we just rely on in terms of our news consumption, our media habits, is actually increasing. And that also means that misinformation can be spread more easily by some of these individual influences that people trust in. And the established institutions have less credibility to some extent. And then you have the whole added layer of the”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I definitely think so. It's so interesting how, of course, social media has not just, I think it's also tapping in something deeply human. I do think misinformation has always been around, but with every new invention and every new technology, there is, it seems like there is an increase in misinformation that this facilitates. And I mean, even with the invention of, even the invention of the radio has been exploited, as were other human inventions were also exploited to spread misinformation in earlier times. But I do think the internet and social media in particular have also just unfortunately accelerated these dynamics and have really made us more prone to not really being able to distinguish the lines between what is fabrication, what is fabricated content, and what is real.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so to be honest, this was before my academic career. I would have not gotten this through the ethics committees. I did have my own, of course, I did it in my personal capacity, and I also did have some ethical boundaries that I wouldn't want to cross, which was. So, for example, I would never want to help any extremist movement create propaganda or spread propaganda or help them with any of their recruitment efforts. And I also always forwarded any plots or anything that looked like it might be a credible threat to national security. I forwarded that to the authorities. And sometimes I was also, I wrote a memo to the FBI, depending on the geography, because sometimes you also just don't really know, is this UK-based or are these users now talking about something for the US?”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Groups as well as jihadists, ISIS affiliated groups. And joining means in some of the cases I was able to also go to some of their meetups and I actually interviewed with some of them in person and joined their secret strategy meetings, for example in a London Airbnb in Brixton. For some of the groups, I wasn't able to join them offline. For example, I joined misogynistic, violent misogynistic subcultures online. It would have been very difficult for me to pretend to be a man in an offline setting, obviously. The same is true to some extent for the jihadist movements. I think going to an ISIS meeting was also apart from being very difficult. It would have also just been too dangerous.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so of course that was all about setting up an identity and in that case it was still very much I just went along to their protests but I then did it more systematically and actually spent months setting up credible online accounts a presence to be able to get recruited by some of these movements so for example in 2020 or leading up to 2020 I joined a whole range of different extremist groups across the spectrum. I joined for example the white nationalist group Generation Identity which is a pan-European movement they believe in the great replacement idea that supposedly white Europeans are being replaced by non-whites in a kind of concerted plot by the global elites and I also joined some conspiracy myth movements for example QAN and some neon”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did a small undercover investigation as part of that first book, but that was the first time so I joined Islamist organization, Hisbot Tahrir, at one of their meetings. And I also joined the English Defense League, the far-right movement here in the UK.”
2025-05-27 · Intelligence Squared · Truth Hurts: From Conflict to Connection, with Dr Julia Ebner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT