Fake news is fooling more conservatives than liberals. Why?
As with the coronavirus itself, some people seem to be more vulnerable than others to the infodemic
“DOCTORS NEED three qualifications: to be able to lie and not get caught; to pretend to be honest; and to cause death without guilt.” So wrote Jean Froissart, a diarist of the Middle Ages, after an outbreak of bubonic plague in the 14th century. Fake news then meant rumours that the plague could be cured by sitting in a sewer, eating decade-old treacle or ingesting arsenic.
The “infodemic” around covid-19, declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in February, is not the world’s first outbreak of misinformation. This time the myths include the notion that the disease can be cured by drinking methanol, which has led to more than 700 deaths in Iran, and that it is spread by 5G transmitters, which has convinced arsonists in Britain to carry out more than 90 attacks on phone towers. Just as the virus lodges in people’s lungs, dangerous ideas are infecting their minds.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Return of the paranoid style”
From the June 6th 2020 edition
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