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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
a listener production. Hey, it's Sasha Barbagat. Welcome to The Weekend Briefing, where we chat with the humans behind the headlines. Do you ever wonder what it is about social media that keeps us coming back? The social connection? The lols? What if I told you it had nothing to do with the ways it can make us feel good and more to do with the fact that it makes us angry and outraged?
Ed Coper is one of the founding strategists behind GetUp. He's now a political advisor and is considered a leading voice and expert in communications. He's written a new book called Angertainment, and it's exposing how our normal emotions are being hijacked to help advance the political and cultural aims of people who know how to game the outrage economy.
He's my guest today on The Weekend Briefing, and it is a fascinating chat, plenty of optimism in there, but I'm confident his analysis on social media and its impact on us both personally and as a society will get you thinking. A little later on in the show, as always, is The Weekend List with Chris Spirou, where we recommend what to watch, see, do, eat and listen to.
But first, here's my chat with Ed Coper.
Chapter 2: What is the impact of social media on our emotions?
Ed Coper, welcome to The Weekend Briefing. Thanks so much, Sasha. You were the lead strategist behind GetUp when it started. Have I got that right?
Yeah, very early days of get up back in the internet dark ages.
Yeah, so for those who don't know, it's considered Australia's first online political movement, definitely progressive, have some pretty big campaigning credits to its name as well. You know, it helped shape the marriage plebiscite debate in 2017. It's also credited with helping get Tony Abbott kicked out of his Warringah seat in 2019. So some big scalps, I suppose you could say.
I'm curious to know, why did you join GetUp? Was it personal or professional or a bit of both?
Well, look, it was really just an accident of history because I just graduated from law school and the last thing I wanted to do was become a lawyer.
A lot of people say that when they finish a law degree. It's interesting.
So I was looking around for things that would prevent me from going down that path. And there are a couple of guys who imported this American model that had just launched in the previous few years. They're an organisation called MoveOn and And they thought it would work really well in Australia.
And I was lucky enough to come across it in its very early stages and joined there having no idea what I was doing. But luckily, nobody had any idea what they were doing using the internet to mobilize people for politics. And it just turned out to be this really exciting moment in time where that was the, you know, back even before social media, back in the days of mass forwarded emails.
Oh, chains. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How did Ed Coper become involved with GetUp?
And so it was my job to really make sure that they knew that Australians did care about this and And it wasn't about him. It was about these basic legal principles that we should all stand up for and our human rights at the end of the day.
And we were able to do that successfully in quite a short amount of time where Australian government had to act and negotiated with the Americans to bring him home, which happened.
Right now, GetUp gets quite a bit of derision, especially from the right side of politics and that spectrum. Would you say that communicates that the organisation is doing its job effectively?
I think we've seen the evolution of that sort of campaign model where people take it for granted now. So the idea that there should be, you know, air quotes, a right wing get up has existed for 20 years plus now. And there's been various different iterations of it. And of course, the current one you see at the moment has been more successful than any of the others.
That's Advance Australia, who a lot of people would have seen during the voice referendum and during elections recently as well. They really have embraced this new form of social media and internet, which, you know, spoiler alert, is a little bit more hateful than hopeful. Success breeds a lot of copycats, and that's what's happened.
And also establishment politics really looked at what GetUp did and said, well, maybe we should be using these new technologies. Maybe we should ask people for small donations and get them to follow our Facebook page and have all of the sorts of things that seem very commonplace now. The whole marketplace of ideas has caught up
And really it's incumbent on everyone, including get up, you know, to evolve ahead of the curve. What's the next big thing? What's the next way that we can leverage technology to make the world a better place? And obviously technology is very rapidly evolving. AI will disrupt everything. So there's a lot of challenges there to see how the evolution of these political movements can handle that.
Well, to kind of segue into Angertainment, your new book, I want to ask, when you started with Get Up, like we said, it was kind of, it is viewed as the first big online political movement. Could you have imagined then the impact that the internet would one day have on politics? And talk us through how that led into you writing this new book.
Well, I thought it would have an enormous historical impact on politics, but I thought that would be a positive impact.
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Chapter 4: What are the main themes of Ed Coper's book, Angertainment?
So hop on SBS On Demand. There's some great flicks on there too. I'm pretty sure I saw Bring It On is on SBS On Demand.
And they can't play that many ads. Yeah, well, I'm having a look now. They've got like a Rambo movie on there. They've got Saturday Night Fever. They've got The Graduate. They've got Totoro. Like, they've got all sorts of stuff. Yeah, that's cool. Oh, and Stand By Me, classic. But that actually flows really well into my recommendation, which was actually an SBS show.
And that was, if you're a listener of The Weekend Briefing, which I'm guessing if you're here, you do listen to us at least regularly. If you're new, welcome. Hello. Is John Safran's documentary called Oh, is that on the SBS? Yeah. He did that through SBS. Shut your big fat mouth, John Safran. I watched it. I spoke to him. I'd watched a bit of it before I spoke to him.
We get sent like a little reel so we can see it ahead of time. But I actually sat and watched it from start to finish in normal speed. And it's really good. I mean, I love John Safran. I love everything he does. He is quite a clever man, if not absolutely insane. But yeah, it's a really good watch. So I highly recommend that one for your weekend if you can get to it.
Yeah, and also the SBS is broadcasting the World Cup.
Well, yeah, that was going to be my other recommendation. Now, this is coming out. Actually, this is probably coming out right around the time the Socceroos are playing.
They're playing the US right now. Listen, this is pre-recorded, obviously. Do I think we're going to beat the US? I don't like, look, the odds aren't stacked in our favor, but, you know, how we performed against Turkey was very surprising to a lot of people. The fact that we won our first opening, you know, opening stage match in the World Cup impressed a lot of people.
Can we pull it off with the US this morning? Maybe at the same time as you're listening to this. I'm hopeful.
Well, the thing with soccer is that you just have to show up at that match. It doesn't matter if you are like, of course, yes, better teams perform better overall. We know that. But it can take one moment in a game that wins it for you. And it's just a moment of brilliance. That's one of the really unique, cool things about soccer is that or football. Football, thank you.
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