Conspiracy theories and hoaxes have been around for a long time, even well before the advent of the internet, but in recent years it seems more and more Americans are willing to openly embrace them, particularly as high-ranking government officials, including the former president, amplify the voices of those spreading disinformation.
Whether it’s false claims about election fraud, conspiracy theories like QAnon, or the belief that the coronavirus is a man-made hoax, disinformation is having a moment in the national media, and the Biden administration has said it plans to take steps to fight disinformation at the federal level. Some Congressional Democrats want to get in on the effort, too – in December, members of the Congressional Task Force on Digital Citizenship sent a letter to the then-Biden transition team proposing a blueprint for how his administration might combat the flow of disinformation, including creating a multi agency task force whose job would be to better educate Americans on disinformation and ensure that federal agencies have the tools to fight it. But how do you fight disinformation in a deeply-divided American society where many individuals have chosen to believe their own version of reality, and where those individuals who would most likely benefit from a centralized campaign against disinformation are the same people who don’t trust anything the federal government says or does.
Today on AirTalk, we’ll explore some of the things the Biden administration might do to combat disinformation at the federal level as well as the challenges, both legal and policy-wise, that it might face along the way.
Guests:
Joan Donovan, adjunct lecturer in public policy and research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University; she tweets
Ilya Somin, professor of law at George Mason University where his research areas include constitutional law, democratic theory and federalism; he tweets