#512 Sander van der Linden: Social Media, Fake News, COVID, and Science Communication

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Dr. Sander van der Linden is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. His research interests center around the psychology of human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including social norms and networks, attitudes and polarization, reasoning about evidence, and the public understanding of risk and uncertainty.

In this episode, we talk about social media, fake news, and science communication and denial. We first get into several aspects of social media interactions, like how they change how people communicate; in what ways they resemble real-life interactions; the phenomenon of eco chambers, and political polarization; and fake news and misinformation. We talk specifically about the motivations behind the sharing of fake news. We then discuss the best ways of doing evidence and science communication, and also the idea of inoculating people against misinformation. We go into science denial and the politicization of facts, and how to deal with these phenomena. We dive into misinformation in the context of the covid-19 pandemic, and what governments and health authorities could have done better in communicating about it. Finally, we ask if social media represent a net positive or a net negative in people’s lives.

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