Mis- and disinformation are often viewed as a cause of society’s ills. But a new report from the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder, which studied the global “crisis of trust and truth,” offers a different perspective on how to think about…
Disinformation campaigns are not new — think of wartime propaganda used to sway public opinion against an enemy. What is new, however, is the use of the internet and social media to spread these campaigns. The spread of disinformation via…
There’s a decent chance you’ve had at least one of these rumors, all false, relayed to you as fact recently: that President Biden plans to force Americans to eat less meat; that Virginia is eliminating advanced math in schools to advance racial equality;…
The big lie was planned well in advance. Before he became president in 2016, Donald Trump was saying that U.S. elections were rigged. In 2020, months before voting began, Trump said the only way he’d lose would be because of voter fraud.…
Misinformation / Pandemic Fact-checking and verification were already crucial skills for journalists before the COVID-19 pandemic came along, thanks in part to the rise of Donald Trump and the alt-right’s weaponization of social media. But the coronavirus has made fact-checking and…
