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‘The Problem With Misinformation Is the Problem With Information’

Rafael Holmberg uses a psychoanalytic lens to explore why fact-checking is not enough

A protest against Covid vaccines in Glasgow in 2022

The Trump administration has officially terminated all funding for research aimed at combatting online misinformation, which is distorting public opinion on life-threatening issues such as measles, war, and climate change. But even when factually correct information has been widely distributed through fact-checking campaigns to counter this, it is largely ineffective. The end of anti-misinformation campaigns, then, will likely only have a minor effect on its ubiquity.

What this highlights is an error in the assumption that there is a logical opposition between ‘information’ and ‘misinformation’: that one is self-evidently true, while the other is therefore self-evidently false.

‘Real Democracy Can Counter Division and Hate’

Co-initiator of the 2021 Global Citizens’ Assembly Jamie Kelsey shares his insights on how giving people genuine political agency is the answer to those tempted by more extreme ideas
Jamie Kelsey

‘Where Once There Was God, Now There Is Code’: The Lure of Life In The Matrix

The urge to believe that we may be programmed is, at its heart, a crisis of meaning, writes Iain Overton
Iain Overton