A recent UN survey showed that 85% of people around the world are concerned about misinformation. This concern is understandable. Dangerous conspiracy theories about ‘weather manipulation‘ are undermining proper management of hurricane disasters, fake news about immigrants eating pets in Ohio incited violence against the US Haitian community, false rumours about child kidnappings spurred deadly lynchings in India, and misinformation about health (such as ineffective cancer therapies) can have deadly consequences.
In a recent Skeptic article, Modirrousta-Galian, Higham, and Seabrooke recognise the dangers posed by misinformation but also argue that talk of ‘infodemics’ or comparing the spread of misinformation to that of a virus is a simplistic and misleading analogy that offers little but undue alarmism about the problem.
I believe this view is….
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