2016 and 2020 ー not exactly our smoothest years in American election history. Mention them to anyone and you’ll likely enter an intense conversation about which side spewed misinformation to unfairly win each election. Misinformation was certainly out there, but did it actually sway these elections? Liberty and Scott investigate if misinformation is a weapon we need to be worried about, or if it’s the new norm of political tools. They’re getting answers from the director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab Adam Berinsky, and former director of public policy at Facebook Katie Harbath, to find out how much misinformation in politics influences our democracy and if anything can be done to prevent widespread damage.
Data Nation is a production of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and Voxtopica.