by Patrick Appel
Megan Neal summarizes a study on the spread of fake news through Facebook:
[A] team of researchers at Northeastern University, led by Walter Quattrociocchi, decided to study how it is that erroneous information jumps the credibility fence and becomes widely believed to be true. Their theory, published on the arXiv preprint server last week and unearthed by MIT Technology Review, is that it has something to do with the kind of people who read “alternative” news, because they’re generally mistrustful of the mainstream media. …
Logically enough, the folks who were more prone to reading alternative websites (defined as “pages which disseminate controversial information, most often lacking supporting evidence and sometimes contradictory of the official news”) were also more likely to buy into a conspiracy theory. The thinking goes that those radical readers are A) less adept at parsing accurate information and B) already skeptical of mainstream journalism, and looking for an different take.
Relatedly, Mary Elizabeth Williams flags a “a new study from the University of Chicago that reveals that nearly half of all Americans believe medical conspiracy theories”:
The findings, published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, are culled from a study of 1,351 adults who were polled about their beliefs on six popular theories: “The CIA deliberately infected large numbers of African Americans with HIV under the guise of a hepatitis inoculation program,” “Doctors and government still want to vaccinate children even though they know these vaccines cause autism and other psychological disorders,” “The FDA is deliberately preventing the public from getting natural cures for cancer and other disorders because of pressure from drug companies,” “Health officials know that cell phones cause cancer but are doing nothing to stop it because large corporations won’t let them,” “Public water fluoridation is really just a secret way for chemical companies to dump the dangerous byproducts of phosphate mines into the environment,” and “The global dissemination of genetically modified foods by Monsanto is part of a secret program launched by the Rockefeller and Ford foundation to shrink the world’s population.” As the study’s authors write, “49% of Americans agree with at least one medical conspiracy theory and 18% agree with three or more.”
Cass Sunstein lists reasons individuals believe in conspiracy theories:
Here’s an excellent predictor of whether people will accept a particular conspiracy theory: Do they accept other conspiracy theories? If you tend to think that the Apollo moon landings were faked, you are more likely to believe that the U.S. was behind the 9/11 attacks. (With a little introspection, many of us know, almost immediately, whether we are inclined to accept conspiracy theories.)
Remarkably, people who accept one conspiracy theory tend to accept another conspiracy theory that is logically inconsistent with it. People who believe that Princess Diana faked her own death are more likely to think that she was murdered. People who believe that Osama bin Laden was already dead when U.S. forces invaded his compound are more likely to believe that he is still alive.
The second set of explanations points to the close relationship between conspiracy theories and social networks, especially close-knit or isolated ones. Few of us have personal or direct knowledge about the causes of some terrible event — a missing plane, a terrorist attack, an assassination, an outbreak of disease. If one person within a network insists that a conspiracy was at work, others within that network might well believe it.
The Dish 