I disagreed with the premise of Andrew Keen's book, "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture", when I read his interview on the newshour, but I think he may be right after all.

Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society, has written a critical review of Andrew Keen's 'The Cult of the Amateur' on his blog here: http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003784.shtml

"...a world where the bigger the lie, the better..."

AnimalsForCrackers, your timing is excellent. I was just discussing this very concept moments ago with a friend. I was speculating that while the Internet has made information more available for all of us to fact check public figures and outrageous claims, it has also created a new method for spreading persuasive disinformation on a large scale. I do think that some are incredibly effective at doing this, and it works on even those of us who are wary and perfectly clever.

At the most obvious levels, this is evident to those who pay attention, in viral advertising, product placement and cross marketing methods. I speculate that it runs much deeper than that however. Political and ideological propaganda may be much more sophisticated than many of us realize. Some organizations know how to read the demographics represented on popular interactive sites, as well as the traditional media, and know how to best deliver content that is effective at framing the debate, getting certain buzzwords into the public sphere, informing us how current events make us feel, so on.

Andrew Keen discusses the viral marketing aspect of this a bit in this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN_n7I0PM3w
Though he doesn't get into anything nearly as broad (or arguably, paranoid) as what I've suggested. Though he does question what Google might do with the vast aggregate information collected on users.