Podcast Episode Rerelease: So You Think You’re A Critical Thinker

With this year’s election just weeks away, concerns about disinformation and conspiracy theories are on the rise.

We covered this issue in a really enlightening talk in March 2023 with Alice Marwick, the director of research at Data & Society, and previously the cofounder and principal researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

We talked with Alice about why seemingly ludicrous conspiracy theories get so many followers, and when fact-checking does and doesn’t work. And we came away with some ideas for how to identify and leverage people’s commonalities to stem disinformation, while making sure that the most marginalized and vulnerable internet users are still empowered to speak out.

We thought this is a good time to re-publish that episode, in hopes that it might help you make some sense of what you might see and hear in the next few months.

If you believe conversations like this are important, we hope you’ll consider voting for How to Fix the Internet in the “General – Technology” category of the Signal Awards’ 3rd Annual Listener’s Choice competition. Deadline for voting is Thursday, Oct. 17.

Vote now!

This episode was first published on March 21, 2023.

The promise of the internet was that it would be a tool to melt barriers and aid truth-seekers everywhere. But it feels like polarization has worsened in recent years, and more internet users are being misled into embracing conspiracies and cults.

This article has been indexed from Deeplinks