Kind: captions
Language: en
was a year packed with challenges in the
united states
as the covet 19 virus national uprisings
over police brutality
and a presidential election all took
over the news cycle
and through all of these events the
spread of misinformation played a role
in raising the tensions
from conflicting messages about masks
when i have a mask on i'm
i'm moving it to make it comfortable i
can't help but wonder if that puts some
germs
in the mask to fabricated stories on the
victims of police brutality
but things came to a head on january 6
when supporters of president trump
stormed the capitol building in an
attempt
to overthrow the election results
resulting in the deaths
of five people while people across the
country have been struggling to
understand
how something like this happened a look
at the events and rhetoric over the past
few months
or years reveals that many of the
warning signs were right in the open
and i'm not just talking about the image
boards and forums like 4chan
reddit parlor where plans were being
made to assemble in march on the capitol
i'm talking about the interviews i had
with people on the day of the election
i've heard lots of information about
ballots being discarded
some polling centers are throwing them
in the garbage to the president fake
news
is news that he doesn't agree with you
see
there is a science to how we interpret
information about the world around us
our brains try to make things align with
our existing reality
and basically try to make sense of it
all but this has become more of a
problem in the last decade
simply because we have more choices of
where to go when we seek information
and all president trump needed to reach
his supporters was a twitter account
so misinformation which is a blanket
term for
inaccurate communication can take us
further from what's actually going on in
the world
and when misinformation is spread
intentionally in order to disrupt
political movements or so division among
groups that's called disinformation
and disinformation is not going away
because bad actors can profit from it
and push their causes by sharing it with
the clique
so that's why nova is starting this new
series
it's called misinformation nation we'll
speak with experts and newsmakers and
give real world examples that explain
how misinformation spreads
why it's believed and how our brains
strive to make sense of it all
as part of the nova science studio
program where dozens of young science
communicators across the country
learn the basics of science storytelling
i'm alex clark i invite you to subscribe
to nova
and nova science studio and stay tuned
for the episodes thanks for watching
[Music]
you