Invisible Rulers The People Who Turn Lies into Reality

An “essential and riveting” (Jonathan Haidt) analysis of the radical shift in the dynamics of power and influence, revealing how the machinery that powered the Big Lie works to create bespoke realities revolutionizing politics, culture, and society.

Renée DiResta’s powerful, original investigation into the way power and influence have been profoundly transformed reveals how a virtual rumor mill of niche propagandists increasingly shapes public opinion. While propagandists position themselves as trustworthy Davids, their reach, influence, and economics make them classic Goliaths—invisible rulers who create bespoke realities to revolutionize politics, culture, and society. Their work is driven by a simple maxim: if you make it trend, you make it true.
 
By revealing the machinery and dynamics of the interplay between influencers, algorithms, and online crowds, DiResta vividly illustrates the way propagandists deliberately undermine belief in the fundamental legitimacy of institutions that make society work. This alternate system for shaping public opinion, unexamined until now, is rewriting the relationship between the people and their government in profound ways. It has become a force so shockingly effective that its destructive power seems limitless. Scientific proof is powerless in front of it. Democratic validity is bulldozed by it. Leaders are humiliated by it. But they need not be.
 
With its deep insight into the power of propagandists to drive online crowds into battle—while bearing no responsibility for the consequences—Invisible Rulers not only predicts those consequences but offers ways for leaders to rapidly adapt and fight back.
 
 

Renée DiResta is the Technical Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching, and policy engagement for the study of abuse in information technologies. She has investigated domestic activists pushing health information and conspiracy theories; geopolitical campaigns created by foreign powers such as Russia. China and Middle Eastern countries;  disinformation and propaganda related to COVID-19; the integrity of elections; and voting-related misinformation that led to the January 6th insurrection. She is a regular contributor at The Atlantic and Wired. Her bylined writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Yale Review, POLITICO,  Slate, and The Guardian.

DiResta has been a Presidential Leadership Scholar; worked with the Presidents Bush,  Clinton, and the LBJ Foundations; named an Emerson Fellow, a Truman National Security Project fellow, Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust, a Harvard Berkman-Klein affiliate, and a Council on Foreign Relations term member.

DiResta has 79.000 Twitter followers (@noUpside).