The ‘Death of Expertise’ and the COVID-19 infodemic
The book “The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters” (2017) by Tom Nichols discusses the growing and accelerating wave of anti-rationalism, which manifests in a multitude of ways, from blurring the lines between fact and lies, the ascendance of emotion over reason in public debate, and the encouragement denial of scientific research, from climate change to vaccines, to name a few.
“These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, specifically relating to the misinformation and fake news surrounding the transmission of the virus, masks, vaccination, and so-on, and the concepts Nichols highlights in his book pertaining to the ‘Death of Expertise’ are intricately connected. A global health crisis has been the perfect stage for the mass propagation and spread of fake news and misinformation and there have been countless videos highlighting these outlandish beliefs, but this clip below decently summarizes the ongoing situation.
It has got to the point that the term ‘covidiot’, basically someone who refuses to obey social distancing rules designed to reduce the spread of COVID-19, has been added to the dictionary. The fact that there are so many misguided individuals that an official word has been added to the dictionary for them is quite scary.
There are many experts and professionals who blame the rise of the Internet and social media platforms, shifts in journalism, and the way people consume news, competition in the digital era (these topics will be discussed further in a separate post), which have paradoxically played the primary role in this campaign against established knowledge (Nichols, 2017). Kreps & Kriner (2020) described the issue with the increased use of social media as a primary source of news, which in turn makes readers less likely to be able to identify fake news as misinformation.
The dilemma is that sound governance is hinged on well-informed citizenry, despite most citizens being under-informed about the very policies that they are meant to adjudicate. Citizens could become more informed if they took measures to acquire policy-relevant information but the marketplace of ideas is swarmed with misinformation that can block the information acquisition process. Rather than finding accurate information, citizens are constantly confronted with a barrage of false information that isn’t corrected quickly enough to refute.
Most research in the past was focused on the proliferation of political misinformation, especially in the wake of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, though misinformation in the health domain is comparatively understudied (Kreps & Kriner, 2020). There is also early existing research highlighting the undesirable outcomes of ineffective combatting of health misinformation, such as increased risk in the spread of a virus due to not following guidelines such as masks (Hornik et al, 2021), and lowered vaccination rates (Oliver & Wood, 2014). More research into combating health misinformation is necessary for protecting the public, by equipping them with the knowledge to discern information from misinformation in future health crises, whilst avoiding the pitfalls associated with the ‘insidious political force’ that is rumors, conspiracies, and other forms of unsubstantiated information.
Bibliography:
Hornik, R., Kikut, A., Jesch, E., Woko, C., Siegel, L., & Kim, K. (2021). Association of COVID-19 misinformation with face mask wearing and social distancing in a nationally representative US sample. Health communication, 36(1), 6–14.
Kreps, S. E., & Kriner, D. (2020). Medical Misinformation in the COVID-19 Pandemic. Available at SSRN 3624510.
Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. (2014). Medical conspiracy theories and health behaviors in the United States. JAMA internal medicine, 174(5), 817–818.
Nichols, T. (2017). The death of expertise : The campaign against established knowledge and why it matters. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
