OODA is pleased to offer this unique online training event with OODA Expert Marc Ambinder. OODA Network Members receive 50% off using this coupon code OODA-HUMINT
Training Date: August 27, 2020 at 13:00 p.m. (EST)
Registration Link: Counter-Disinformation Tradecraft For Professionals And Leaders
Course Description:
Viral misinformation and disinformation campaigns cause otherwise intelligent human beings to make poor choices. You already know that.
But the most harmful consequence is more subtle and more pernicious: civic paralysis. The bad information befuddles our intuitions and teaches us that we can’t really figure out what we need to know in order to make a good choice in any given situation.
That means that voters don’t vote. Consumers turn away from trusted brands. Readers opt for simple confirmation of beliefs, rather than tolerate nuance. Customers won’t take risks on new products. Even leaders in positions of authority, when paralyzed by misinformation, throw up their hands and give up. The problem, as old as human beings, now seems too big, too easily scaled up, too epiphenomenal to try to tackle.
How can decision-makers function in an environment when the barrier of entry to gaming any set of facts is so low? How can you communicate your story clearly, cleverly, and with confidence that your adversaries, competitors, opponents, personal trolls and random enemies, won’t block your way? How can you avoid the traps that make your business, your message, your story uniquely susceptible to a disinformation campaign?
Marc Ambinder, a journalist, historian and professor at USC, has taught counter-disinformation tradecraft to thousands of state and local election officials, political leaders, reporters and civically engaged citizens.
His curriculum is informed by behavioral science, social media best practices and, most importantly, by examples of what has worked – what does work.
His introductory training is full of detail you’ll want to use immediately. You’ll learn:
- Why digital competence is the best defense against disinformation, and the top 3 mistakes that even security-savvy professionals often make (and how to NOT make them
- How to bring open source digital forensics tools to bear – and even how to digitally watermark an important paper
- How to enlist allies and build your own counter-disinformation army
- How to create and use inoculation messages
- How to fact check in a way that actually makes people think
- How to use transparency, humor and psychology to work against the network effects of disinformation.
The training will help executives, organizational leaders, professionals, creative storytellers, researchers, lawyers – anyone whose product, business, career or life’s work centers on a story that needs to be told.
Instructor Bio
At heart a writer and storyteller, Marc Ambinder is a senior fellow at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and its Center for Communication Leadership and Policy.
He has over twenty years of experience in communication fora, with leadership roles at the highest levels of journalism (ABC News, CBS News, The Atlantic), of industry (Disney/ABC, Facebook) and of academia (Penn, USC). He has won several Webby awards, a DuPont Silver Baton, and was nominated for a national news Emmy for editorial producing. His third book, “The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983,” was published by Simon & Schuster in 2018.
A SME on national security, American politics, elections and government, corporate communications, digital and cyber security, and nuclear policy, he developed a counter-disinformation curriculum for USC’s Election Cybersecurity Initiative.
