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The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics

ISSN: 2472-7318

Challenging Podcast Bros and Genres of Disinformation: Three Lessons for Teaching Podcasting Against Disinformation

Nick Sanders, Oakland University

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In this lesson plan essay, I argue that podcasting pedagogies in rhetoric and composition must critically interrogate the role of podcasts, and podcasting, in circulating disinformation, campaigns designed to reify white supremacy. Following Tressie McMillan Cottom’s critique of podcast bros roles in white nationalist disinformation political campaigns, I offer a series of sequenced lesson plans and activities to explore how podcasting pedagogies can foster critical conversations and knowledge dispositions around the social consequences of the genre, particularly as it is used by white nationalist actors through disinformation campaigns. 

 

INTRODUCTION: PODCAST BROS ENTER THE DISINFORMATION WARS

In a November 2024 New York Times opinion column, “How an Empty Internet Gave Us Tradwives and Trump,” Tressie McMillan Cottom showcases the rhetorical utility of previously untapped information technologies, such as genre and technology of the podcast, served in the outcome of the 2024 election. McMillian shows us that Trumpism 2.0 developed, in part, through the campaign’s ability to latch onto, and shape, the current information environment. It’s no secret that the current historical moment has been defined and redefined by problematic information’s circulation through networked digital technologies. As Bennet and Livingston (2023) observe in their history of the disinformation age, disinformation is the “intentional falsehoods and distortions to advance political goals” (3). Yet, Mejia and colleagues (2018) argue that the post-truth landscape is not new, demonstrating a history of “truth telling regimes” being deployed as technologies of whiteness that reassert white supremacist subject positions. 

The podcast bro emerges as a key figure in the current disinformation ecosystem, mimicking the white nationalist goals of the tradwives, but through a strong insistence on a white masculinist rhetorical performance. Cottom (2024) observes that Trump’s political strategy was built by “tapping into the information ecosystems– social media, memes and the cultish language of overlapping digital communities– where minority and young voters express their identity” (2). These users, observes Cottom, are “the social media generation’s iteration of the 1950s white, suburban, middle-class housewife. They glorify domestic labor and the wealth that makes a single-income nuclear family seem like a respite from the paid labor market for women” (paragraph 9). Tradwife influencers are in the business of selling an economics of nuclear-patriarchal fantasies that serve as pathways into far-right extremism. They sell beauty serums and performatively clean their homes––a somehow, unironic, pledge toward selling mid-twentieth century iconoclasts of white domesticity. 

The tradwives’ masculine double is the podcast bro, Cottom explains: 

Joe Rogan is the podcast bros’ patron saint, and his brand of infotainment helped create the podcast bro playbook. To be a podcast bro you generally must be marginally famous for some inscrutable reason, making contrarian ideas to be intellectualism, and promote yourself as an independent thinker while booking attention-grabbing, politically extreme guests. Then you can monetize your show, looking entrepreneurial by selling a range of junk goods that cozy up to disinformation about vaccines, health, fitness, and investing. (paragraph 15)  

 

Like their tradwives double, these podcast bros propagate disinformation campaigns that, intentionally or not, represent the recruitment into white nationalist worldviews by leaning on essentialist analysis of gender that reify political and economic nostalgia of the mid-twentieth century. As Cottom observes, anyone can be a podcast bro irrespective of race or political party, guising “ideas like ‘doing your own research’ and ‘being a freethinker,’” as “convenient gateways to political extremism online. Wellness becomes white nationalist when neat brands nudge people toward the idea that the state is the enemy” (paragraph 22). 

 

All this is to say podcast bros represent a dangerous amplification of the current moment’s disinformation landscape. For social justice pedagogues, especially those who teach the genre and medium of podcasting in writing studies, it is integral the field attends to how podcast bros, and podcasting as a situated, circulated rhetorical activity, can be tethered to systems of disinformation, especially those that algorithmically recruit to extremist white nationalisms. In this piece, I explore teaching podcasting through a critical disinformation perspective, offering three lesson plans that invite students to explore the relationships among podcasting, disinformation, and white nationalism.

 

 

LESSON #1: WHAT'S DISINFORMATION HAVE TO DO WITH PODCASTING?

Lesson Overview

This lesson introduces students to concepts of disinformation as a rhetorical strategy that can be used to reify white nationalist subject positions.  

Learning Goals

Through completing this lesson, students will be able to:

  • Define disinformation as an intentional rhetorical strategy in a networked digital environment  

  • Analyze the features of podcasting, as a grassroots informational technology, that can contribute to disinformation campaigns 

Pre-Work

  • Optional readings: 
    • Jack, “Misinformation and Disinformation” in Lexicon of Lies: Terms for Problematic Information (Data & Society), pp. 2-4. 
    • Cottom, “How An Empty Internet Gave Us Trad Wives and Trump” New York Times. 

Lesson Hook

We’ve been discussing the different features of podcasting, as a product of social and technological shifts (Choong & Bjork, 2023; Rime et al, 2022).  RSS (Really Simple Syndication), for example, provided updates to the circulation of information.

Take a few minutes to write about the following questions:

  1. Do you think that podcasting (as a both a genre and a technology) is impacted by circulation technologies like RSS? What do you think the circulation of sound means for podcasters? 
  2. Do you think that podcast circulation impacts people? What are possible impacts and effects of podcasts being circulated? Think about both potentially helpful and harmful effects of circulation. 

 

Note: This lesson hook can be delivered in different ways, such as an in-class writing activity, a think-pair-share activity. For another in-person option, a gallery walk activity: Post these questions on two different sides of the classroom, and ask students to interact with these questions by responding with writing and replying to each other. In an online discussion, these questions could be set up in a virtual whiteboard, as a text-based discussion, or as a video/audio response in an asynchronous modality.   

Mini-Lecture/ Review Concepts 

Develop a mini-lecture, in-class reading, or discussion based on Caroline Jack’s (2017) Lexicon of Lies (pp. 2-4) and Cottom’s “How an Empty Internet Gave Us Tradwives and Trump” 

  • Misinformation is when inaccurate, partial, or incomplete information is circulated. A famous example, cited by Jack, is when the Chicago Daily Tribune misreported that Dewey had won the 1948 U.S. presidential election.
  • Disinformation is when information being circulated is deliberately false or misleading. Jack cites an example of a September 2014 disinformation campaign that falsely reported an explosion at Columbian Chemicals.

   

Note: Checking for understanding of these two key ideas can be very useful. For example, in an in-person class, it might be helpful to invite students to search for examples of misinformation and disinformation online and explicate the intention of the creator. Additionally, in both in-person and online classes, a short “Is it misinformation or disinformation” quiz could help show these distinctions. The SIFT, a newsletter administered by the News Literacy Project, offers a “Daily Do Now” activity that invites students to practice analyzing media from the perspective of misinformation and disinformation. 

Draw attention to two passages from Jack and Cottom about the roles of circulation. 

  • Jack: “Digitally networked information environments can amplify the circulation of media content, and social media sharing often complicates the question of intent… digital platforms systematize incentives that can drive the spread of problematic information” (3)
  • Cottom: “People afraid of lead in their water start following accounts that show them how to buy a water purifier. Algorithms push them deeper into a web of health influencers who distrust the government. That’s a short trip to disinformation about how the state is most definitely poisoning our water supply and, oh, haven’t you heard that vaccines implant trackers in your arm?” (paragraph 20)

These two touchpoints in these readings show that the role of disinformation is much murkier than a simple declaration of intent or deliberateness. Instead, these perspectives show that algorithms, which are never neutral or innocent (Noble, 2018), incentive or otherwise steer users toward problematic information. For podcasting, this implores podcasters to consider the ethical considerations of viral sound bytes, circulation, and the broader rhetorical goals and impact of a podcast. 

Note: These two passages can be read aloud and could be mapped together. They might also be useful for a short small table discussion. Questions could be: How does Jack and Cottom complicate easy definitions of disinformation? What are the roles of monetizing algorithms in how we think about circulation and disinformation?   

Application Activity 

Listen to a short clip from the podcast Bussin with the Boys. In it, the podcasters say that audiences desire for physicality in sports, declaring that the increase in physicality is what makes football the best.

As you listen to this short clip, consider:

  • What do you think the rhetorical impact of this clip is, as a standalone text that was circulated on the internet? 
  • Who do you think the target audience is for this clip? What do you think this short clip invites audiences to do? 
  • What kinds of content might users end up engaging with if they positively interact with this clip (liking, reposting, sharing, or commenting)? What “pipeline” of information might we anticipate users being exposed to?
  • Do you think this clip represents a particular ideological position and/or recruits users into a specific ideological position?

Note: I am deliberate not to ask if this clip is misinformation or disinformation; instead, it is designed for students to grapple with the questions of rhetorical circulation, how this clip represents political and ideological pipelines. These questions could be engaged in a variety of ways, such as an in-class activity or discussion, an online video or audio reflection, or even a short-form reflective or analytical assignment. Additionally, the sample podcast clip could be adapted.

Lesson Reflection

Invite students to reflect on their learning in this lesson through a low-stakes writing activity or exit slip. 

  • In your own words, what is disinformation and what are the goals of disinformation?
  • Describe how algorithms play a role in circulating disinformation.
  • Pose a question that you think podcasters should take into account when planning, recording, and circulating podcasts. 

 

 

LESSON #2: TRACING CLAIMS AND IDEOLOGIES THROUGH RHETORICAL LISTENING

Overview

Adapted from Ratcliffe (1999) and Ratcliffe & Jensen (2022), this lesson invites students to use rhetorical listening as a feminist approach to disrupting dominant cultural logics, especially through everyday listening practice. 

Goals

Through completing this lesson plan, students will:

  • Analyze their own listening practice to examine how cultural logics are embedded in audio-based composition
  • Practice rhetorical listening to analyze dominant cultural logics in audio composition and narrate its significance to podcasting 

Pre-work

  • Optional Listening: Kuebrich, Ben, Soto, Kerrieann, & Krista Ratcliffe (hosts). “Episode 18: Rhetorical Listening with Krista Ratcliffe” This Rhetorical Life. (21:27)
  • Required: Complete Listening Inventory: 
    • Invite students to select a 48-hour period of your life, and pay attention to all the different types of media that you listen to. This could include podcasts, social media, Tik Toks, music, etc. Create a list of specific media objects you listen to during this period. Be as specific as you can (e.g., “Tik Tok on Grading” instead of “Tik Toks”; Overcompensating, episode 2-3, instead of “TV shows”, etc.). 

Note: This lesson plan is an adapted version of a hybrid upper-division podcasting course that included weekly workbook assignments. This assignment could be adapted to an interactive in-class lesson as well.  

Hook (for in class activity)

Based on the 48-hour period that you used for your listening inventory, you developed a sample of your own listening practice. The point of this activity is to draw attention to how pervasive the sonic can be in our lives.

Take a few minutes to look at your lists, and count the following instances of the following types of media. 

  • Songs on Spotify, Apple Music
  • Radio 
  • TikTok Sounds
  • Podcasts 
  • News Programs 
  • Netflix/Hulu/Youtube Videos 
  • Social Media Audio 
  • Phone Calls 
  • Gaming Audio 

Which of these did you notice most of your time with? What surprised you? What do you think of the role of sound in your everyday life?  

Content/Framing/ Mini-Lecture

In Krista Ratcliffe’s (1999) article, “Rhetorical Listening”, she argues that listening has been underrepresented as a foundational practice in writing and rhetoric studies. Tracing these ideas back through Western rhetorical origins, Ratcliffe showcases that, within a broader history of rhetoric and writing, listening is de-emphasized. Further, drawing on Deborah Tennen’s and Nikki Giovanni’s work, she makes the case that cultural signifiers relating to gender and race (and therefore discursive power) are embedded in a false contrast between listening and speaking.

From this framework, listeners are passive; speakers are active. Speakers know, listeners don’t. Undoubtedly, ideas about listening and power reflect deeper cultural ties to ideas about who knows, who does not know. Further, listening also pulls into focus how individuals engage different perspectives (or don’t), how individuals make up their minds (or don’t).

Rhetorical listening, writes Ratcliffe, is when:

we choose to listen also for the exiled excess and contemplate its relation to our culture and ourselves. Such listening does not presume a naive, relativistic empathy, such as “I’m OK, You’re OK,” but rather an ethical responsibility to argue for what we deem fair and just while simultaneously questioning that which we deem fair and just. Such listening, I argue, may help us invent, interpret, and ultimately judge differently in that perhaps we can hear things we cannot see. In this more inclusive logos lies a potential for personal and social justice. (203)

For this week’s listening journal, you will practice rhetorical listening to your own listening practice. In particular, you will work to study and interrogate your own listening practice and examine how cultural logics are embedded in audio-based composition. In doing so, you will use rhetorical listening to analyze dominant cultural logics in audio composition. You will practice creating two rhetorical devices:

  • an enthymeme, an argument with a hidden premise
  • a syllogism, a reasoning device where a conclusion is drawn by stating two assumption presumptions

Application Activity

Part I: Pick one item from below and listen to it. Transcribe (write down word-for-word) one of the following podcast clips.

 

Disclaimer: Please note, these podcast clips are clipped, so they are out of the original context of the episode. This is a deliberate pedagogical choice to do so both for scope and to emphasize the logics of rhetorical listening. 

 

Part II: In this part, you will take the transcribed passage you identified about and, using two different reasoning devices (e.g., an enthymeme and a syllogism) you will work to locate dominant cultural logics.

A syllogism is a reasoning device where a conclusion is developed based on two stated presumptions. These presumptions are called major claim and minor claim. For example,

Major Premise: All men are moral; Minor Premise: Socrates is a man; Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

  • Using the passage you transcribed above, first use the above logical structure to identify the premises of the conclusion drawn in the passage you selected
     
    • Examples:
      • Major Premise: Success is the result of individual effort and determination.
      • Minor Premise: Hard work and ambition are essential and sufficient for success.
      • Conclusion: Failure to succeed reflects a personal shortcoming rather than external or systemic issues.

An enthymeme is a reasoning device where an argument has a hidden premise. To make these premises known, we will use a IF-THEN-THEREFORE logical structure to analyze this kind of reasoning. The following is an example of this kind of rhetorical analysis.

IF: race is defined as biological and hierarchical, THEN: differences in race are used to maintain power structures THEREFORE: white supremacy insists upon oppressive actions by people and social structures

  • Use the following script to analyze the function of that cultural logic. Use the if-then-therefore structure.
    • IF (assumed definition of dominant trope)
    • THEN (associated beliefs)
    • THEREFORE (cultural script)

Closing 

Based on this activity and analysis, record a 1-2 minute audio recording, responding to the following reflective questions

  • Summarize your findings from the previous parts of the assignment. How has your understanding of rhetorical listening evolved through this exercise?
  • What personal insights or revelations did you gain from analyzing your listening practice? What lessons do you take with you as they relate to listening and creating audio texts?
  • Reflect on the ethical dimensions of rhetorical listening as outlined by Ratcliffe. How can this approach to listening contribute to more equitable and just discourses? What responsibilities do you have as a listener and communicator?

 

LESSON #3: Tradwives, Fitness Influencers, and the White Nationalism Pipeline  

Overview 

This lesson invites students to examine how seemingly neutral viral content and their sounds and aesthetics may represent political engagement with white nationalism. 

Goals

In participating in this lesson, students will be able to:

  • Analyze the political performances of sanitized aesthetics such as cleaning, cooking, and fitness
  • Examine how sound clips and hashtags can influence users' perception and engagement   

Pre-Work

  • Reading: Cottom, “How An Empty Internet Gave Us Trad Wives and Trump” New York Times. 

Hook

Consider images of fitness influencers or cleaning videos. Who comes to mind? Do you think that these activities are neutral or politically motivated? Why or why not? 

Content

In Tressie McMillan Cottom’s piece, she shows that sanitized aesthetics reveal more insidious political performances. She talks about how so-called tradwives might sell deep cleaning their homes. As Cottom (2024) writes,
 

There is an underlying white nationalist thread at play here– clean is synonymous with witness– and independence is often associated with liberation from a multiracial state. Wellness influencers merge old about cleanliness with liberal ideas about independence, from the state and from puritanical shame.

Influencers can claim to be apolitical. But they promote ideas like “doing your own research” and “being a free thinker,” convenient gateways to political extremism online. Wellness becomes white nationalist when neat brands nudge people toward the idea that the state is the enemy. Extremists follow that up by telling those people the state is the enemy because it includes ‘others’ like minorities and immigrants. (paragraph 22-23)

 

Take a few minutes to unpack Cottom’s words here: 

  • What do you think about the relationship between fitness, cleanliness, and the critique of white nationalism? 
  • Do you think about these ideas together? 
  • What do you think this might have to do with podcasting and disinformation? 
  • Are there social media examples of wellness influencers or homemaking influencers that might reify, reject, or nuance Cottom’s important analysis here?

Activity

For this activity, you will work on exploring themes of cleanliness or health through a lens of disinformation, drawing on Cottom’s analysis which argues that these ideas are not neutral, but signal engagement with white nationalist ideas. The goal of this activity is to explore how sounds and hashtags represent deeper political commitments and narrate how these deeper meanings might impact how podcasters make choices about clipping, circulating, and remixing audio. 

First, select one of the following short-form videos. As you watch, consider what product or lifestyle is being sold. In small groups, jot down a list of words, phrases, sound, and visual cues about this product or life style. 

Second, click one of the hashtags under this video. Watch 5-7 of the different videos under this hashtag (#trad). As you watch, also look at what kinds of sounds are being linked. For each video or sound, write down specific words, sounds, and/or visual cues that suggest impressions about what product or lifestyle is being sold. The goal here is to develop a long list of attributes of phrases, sounds, and/or visual cues.

Third, using the long list of attributes you and your group have developed, pose connections to the passages from Cottom about the deeper political performances that are at work. 

  • Based on your team’s analysis of sounds and hashtags, what do you think about the relationship between fitness, cleanliness, and Cottom’s critique of white nationalism? Do you think about these ideas together? 
  • What do you think this might have to do with podcasting and disinformation? 
  • What do we take from this activity for podcasting as an ethical practice? 

Closing

End this lesson by asking students to think about the relationship between content and deeper political commitments. If students are working on a larger podcast project, ask them to explain how worldviews are impacted by podcasting. Invite students to articulate a philosophy or theory of podcasting that is responsive to the harm that can be caused by engaging with disinformation ecologies. 

 

 

CONCLUSION

The lesson plans described above advocate for a politically-informed orientation to podcasting pedagogies that explores the function of disinformation in and through the podcast medium. These three lessons can either serve as standalone lessons that focus on currents of disinformation and podcasting, or can be sequenced to larger inquiry and audio composition project(s). In either case, I offer these lessons as antidotes to what I read as commonplaces in podcast pedagogies that overemphasize roles of the rhetorical effectiveness in audio composing that might understate the role of podcasting in contemporary disinformation environments. Doing so, I model that “effective” and “rhetorical” sonic pedagogies must be productively troubled with how sound is part of information ecosystems and can and does contribute to political extremism. 

 

REFERENCES

Bennett, W. Lance, and Steven Livingston. (2023). A brief history of the disinformation age: Information wars and the decline of institutional authority. In Streamlining political communication concepts: Updates, changes, normalcies (43–73). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Choong, Phil, and Collin Bjork. (2023). The student-podcaster as narrator of social change? College Composition & Communication, 74(3): 551–574.

Cottom, Tressie McMillan. (21 Nov. 2024). How an empty internet gave us tradwives and Trump. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/opinion/trump-trad-wives-podcasters-wellness.html 

Jack, Caroline. (2017) A lexicon of lies: Terms for problematic information. Data & Society. https://datasociety.net/library/lexicon-of-lies/ 

Mejia, Robert, Kay Beckermann, and Curtis Sullivan. (2018) White lies: A racial history of the (post) truth. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 15(2): 109–126.

Noble, Safiya Umoja. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. New York University Press.

Ratcliffe, Krista, and Kyle Jensen. (2022). Rhetorical listening in action: A concept-tactic approach. Parlor Press.

Ratcliffe, Krista. (1999). Rhetorical listening: A trope for interpretive invention and a “code of cross-cultural conduct.” College Composition & Communication, 51(2): 195–224.

Rime, Jemily, Chris Pike, and Tom Collins. (2022). What is a podcast? Considering innovations in podcasting through the six-tensions framework. Convergence, 28(5): 1260-1282.