Countering Disinformation in an Era of Pandemics and Conspiracies | National Humanities Center

Humanities in Class: Webinar Series

Countering Disinformation in an Era of Pandemics and Conspiracies

Disinformation; United States Politics; Pandemics; Conspiracy

Nina Jankowicz (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)

May 6, 2021

Since the start of the Trump era, as coronavirus has become an "infodemic," and in the aftermath of the conspiracy-fueled riots at the US Capitol, the United States and the Western world have finally begun to wake up to the threat of disinformation. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? Nina Jankowicz lays out the path forward in How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict. The book reports from the front lines of the information war in Central and Eastern Europe on five governments' responses to disinformation campaigns. It journeys into the campaigns the Russian and domestic operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.


Subjects

Political Science / Disinformation / United States Politics / Pandemics / Conspiracy /