#309: Conspiracy Theories and the Internet

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2022

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is social media accelerating the spread of conspiracy theories? It sure feels like it: look at anti-vaxxers, claims about election fraud, and QAnon. Professor Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami, argues that this widespread hunch is not supported by the evidence. He and host Corbin Barthold examine that view, with a focus on what polling data says about the prevalence of conspiracy theories over time. They also discuss how the Internet affects public opinion (or not), when conspiracy theories become dangerous, how people should form beliefs, whether birds are real, whether King James II fathered a “warming pan baby,” and more.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm very excited about today's episode.
0:11.1	I'm sure I'm far from alone in having a guilty pleasure interest in conspiracy theories.
0:17.1	I suppose there's a bit of a watching NASCAR races for the crashes element to this.
0:23.7	But it's more than that.
0:25.5	Conspiracy theories connect to some very deep questions about the human brain, human culture, and the human condition.
0:34.4	On the one hand, we're children of the Enlightenment and the scientific method and even postmodernism.
0:42.6	Each of these movements disenchance the world and stands to some degree or other on a very skeptical frame of mind.
0:50.9	On the other hand, you can argue that we are evolutionarily designed to make meaning,
0:55.9	to create and accept taboo, even to believe in magic. How do we navigate that dichotomy? How do we
1:04.5	find or construct truth? How do we balance skepticism and meaning?
1:14.3	This is the tech policy podcast.
1:16.3	I'm Corbyn Barthold.
1:20.7	My guest today is Professor Joseph Usinski.
1:24.2	I was just working with him before we started on how to pronounce it. I have no idea even now if I've blittered it.
1:27.0	He is a political scientist
1:28.6	at the University of Miami. He studies conspiracy theories and specifically why people believe them
1:35.3	and how they spread. Given that he specializes in conspiracy theories, it is perhaps appropriate
1:42.5	that Professor Usinski is a man with something of a cult following.
1:47.3	I first ran into him on Jonah Goldberg's podcast a couple years ago. I've since seen him pop up
1:53.9	all over the place, including in the recent HBO docu-series Q into the storm. A specific tech policy-related article of his led me to
2:05.0	invite him on the show. That piece appeared in the conversation and is called Don't Blame
2:11.7	Social Media for Conspiracy theories. They would still flourish without it. I look forward to discussing that piece.
	...

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