Scientific communication in a post-truth society

Shanto Iyengar, Douglas S. Massey

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

171 Scopus citations

Abstract

Within the scientific community, much attention has focused on improving communications between scientists, policy makers, and the public. To date, efforts have centered on improving the content, accessibility, and delivery of scientific communications. Here we argue that in the current political and media environment faulty communication is no longer the core of the problem. Distrust in the scientific enterprise and misperceptions of scientific knowledge increasingly stem less from problems of communication and more from the widespread dissemination of misleading and biased information. We describe the profound structural shifts in the media environment that have occurred in recent decades and their connection to public policy decisions and technological changes. We explain how these shifts have enabled unscrupulous actors with ulterior motives increasingly to circulate fake news, misinformation, and disinformation with the help of trolls, bots, and respondent-driven algorithms. We document the high degree of partisan animosity, implicit ideological bias, political polarization, and politically motivated reasoning that now prevail in the public sphere and offer an actual example of how clearly stated scientific conclusions can be systematically perverted in the media through an internet-based campaign of disinformation and misinformation. We suggest that, in addition to attending to the clarity of their communications, scientists must also develop online strategies to counteract campaigns of misinformation and disinformation that will inevitably follow the release of findings threatening to partisans on either end of the political spectrum.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)7656-7661
Number of pages6
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume116
Issue number16
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 16 2019

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General

Keywords

  • Bias
  • Communication
  • Media
  • Politics
  • Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Scientific communication in a post-truth society'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this