As the COVID-19 crisis continues to command Americans’ attention, views of the media’s performance and details about what people have seen or heard differ substantially depending on which sources they rely on most for news and information about the pandemic. Among five groups of news consumers examined for this report, […] Read more »
Fake Polls, Real Consequences: The Rise of Fake Polls and the Case for Criminal Liability
… Though most pollsters adhere to sound methodological practices, the dependence of political journalism – and campaigns, independent political organizations, and so on – on polls opens a door for the unsavory. Fake polls have started to proliferate online. Their goal is to influence online political betting markets, so that […] Read more »
Coronavirus, ‘Plandemic’ and the seven traits of conspiratorial thinking
No matter the details of the plot, conspiracy theories follow common patterns of thought. Ranta Images/iStock/Getty Images Plus John Cook, George Mason University; Sander van der Linden, University of Cambridge; Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol, and Ullrich Ecker, University of Western Australia The conspiracy theory video “Plandemic” recently went viral. […] Read more »
A Study Said Covid Wasn’t That Deadly. The Right Seized It.
… Preprints are meant to help scientists find and discuss new findings in real time, which is especially important during a pandemic. They generally carry a warning label: “This research has yet to be peer reviewed.” To a scientist, this means it’s provisional knowledge — maybe true, maybe not. But […] Read more »
Trump Is Staking Out His Own Universe of ‘Alternative Facts’
… A series of recent research papers explore reasons for the appeal of the demagogue; the role of anger in Trump’s ascendance; and the political dark triad of psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism. In “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy,” published in 2018 […] Read more »
Americans Struggle to Navigate COVID-19 ‘Infodemic’
The novel coronavirus pandemic has spawned what the World Health Organization is calling an “infodemic,” an overabundance of information — some of it false — about COVID-19. Americans divide evenly over whether it is harder or easier to be well-informed about the coronavirus because of easy access to a wide […] Read more »