Networks boosting coronavirus disinformation seize on new vaccine requirements
Vaccine disinformation content has been circulating on websites that cite and publish each other, creating a self-reinforcing network, sometimes called an echo chamber, that can warp our impression of reality.
Strategic Lies: Deliberate untruths used as a political tactic – new study
It doesn’t matter if the lie is easily rebutted. Indeed in one sense rebuttals are part of the plan because they result in the subject of the lie being amplified and kept on, or near, the top of the news agenda. The ultimate goal of strategic lying is to have an impact on the salience of issues.
‘Deprogramming’ QAnon followers ignores free will and why they adopted the beliefs in the first place
Recent calls to deprogram QAnon conspiracy followers are steeped in discredited notions about brainwashing. As popularly imagined, brainwashing is a coercive procedure that programs new long-term personality changes. Deprogramming, also coercive, is thought to undo brainwashing.
As a professor of religious studies who has written and taught about alternative religious movements, I believe such deprogramming conversations do little to help us understand why people adopt QAnon beliefs. A deprogramming discourse fails to understand religious recruitment and conversion and excuses those spreading QAnon beliefs from accountability.