178 - How COVID-19's Misinformation Storm May Impact the Election
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 13 October 2020
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Back in April, Dr. Brendan Nyhan, an expert in the politics of misinformation about health, talked with guest host Dr. Colleen Barry, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management, about social media, scientific uncertainty, and COVID-19's misinformation storm. Today, he returns to the podcast to discuss what we've learned about misinformation since then, why—like the virus itself—it's so hard to eradicate, and a new threat: how COVID-19 misinformation may impact the upcoming election. Nyhan also talks about how misinformation may be threatening the very fabric of democracy, and what social media platforms and leaders should be vigilant about in the days and weeks to come to promote the integrity of the election.
KEYWORDS: health communication; political science
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 2 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins |
| 0:11.6 | Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.6 | I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, |
| 0:18.8 | and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:21.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence and experience to the public health news of the day |
| 0:27.6 | through informative interviews with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. |
| 0:35.6 | If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, |
| 0:38.4 | please email us at public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:43.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:49.4 | Today, Colleen Berry, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins, talks with Brendan Nien, a professor of political science at Dartmouth and an expert on the politics of misinformation. |
| 1:03.0 | Back in April, they discussed the issue of misinformation about COVID-19 on our podcast. Now they return to this topic and also discuss concerns about misinformation |
| 1:13.3 | related to the 2020 election. Let's listen. |
| 1:18.9 | Brendan, welcome back to the podcast. You are an expert on misinformation, health, and politics. |
| 1:26.1 | Back in April, we spoke at length about the then-emerging |
| 1:29.3 | challenge that misinformation about COVID-19 posed for combating the pandemic. We are now in the fall of |
| 1:36.1 | 2020 with no immediate end to the virus insight. What have we learned about misinformation on COVID-19? |
| 1:46.1 | Well, like the virus, it's hard to eradicate. |
| 1:50.1 | It's a key part of the public health challenge that we currently face. |
| 1:54.6 | I guess I've been surprised by two aspects of the misinformation problem. |
| 2:00.1 | The first is how quickly we have to worry about misinformation |
| 2:03.0 | around potential COVID vaccines and treatments as well. So even things that we might think would |
| 2:11.0 | operate within the domain of consensus have become politicized and misinformation is already circulating. |
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