Left vs Right vs Wrong
Along with the pandemic that has swept the globe, there has been a dangerous “infodemic” running parallel. In the age of the bubonic plague, fake news meant rumours of cures for the “Black Death” — from sitting in a sewer to eating arsenic. But in the age of ultra-fast information spread, misinformation can cause more harm than ever before.
This infodemic is not the world’s first instance of false fact spreading but is surely the most dangerous. The most popular pandemic conspiracy theory in the Western world was that the disease was spread by 5G transmitters — causing attacks on more than 90 phone towers. An early and deadly suggestion that ingesting methanol would help cure the coronavirus caused more than 700 deaths in Iran. While the virus sticks in people’s lungs, hazardous ideas poison people’s minds.
The biggest difference between the plague of the Middle Ages compared to 2020 is the instant transmission of today’s foolishness. A poll in March by Gallup International across 28 countries showed that anywhere between 16–58% of a country’s citizens believe covid-19 is being spread deliberately.
Social media is the biggest culprit for the growing groups of pandemic-sceptics. For example, research has found that while there is a greater number of pro-vaccine Facebook members than anti-vaccine; anti-vaxxers were better at recruiting non-aligned users to their way of thinking. WhatsApp hoax messages have an alarmingly high success rate (given the number of believers is greater than zero). And Twitter has begun putting fake news warning labels on certain tweets — including those of the US president. A recent Harvard paper reveals a positive correlation between social media usage and the belief that the pandemic is government created or exaggerated.
The politicisation of misinformation is not new, though it may be more divisive today than ever before. In March, the Pew Research Centre showed that 30% of Republicans believed the virus was deliberately circulated, almost twice as many as Democrats. Last month a YouGov poll conducted in the USA displayed that 44% of Republicans think Bill Gates wants to use the covid-19 vaccine to implant microchips in people, 19% of Democrats agree. There is a similar trend in the right-wing groups of France and the Netherlands, with at least double traditional “conservative” voters believing in the man-made virus conspiracy than liberal ones. Conservatives also seem more likely to accept the official line on the pandemic. In late March, a poll showed that a quarter of Tories in Britain but only 15% Labour supporters believed that the coronavirus was just “like the flu”.
There are a few reasons for this statistical phenomenon. Now more than ever, conservatives are hugely distrusting of the establishment. Their politicians openly encourage doubt towards scientists, academics, and journalists. This apprehension towards the official line has led conservatives to rely on their own news sources — these news sources have in turn realised that it is more lucrative to spread sensationalist propaganda than moderate headlines. It triggers a vicious cycle: confirmation of misinformation within this very narrow prism of inaccurate news.
Another potential cause for this liberal-conservative divide may be the electorate systems of certain countries. Liberals tend to be condensed into cities, while conservatives are more widely spread. In winner-takes-all systems, this puts liberals at a disadvantage, as conservative voters can win more seats in more areas by lower margins. A need to appeal to a wider base gives right-leaning politicians an incentive to instigate polarisation. In America, Republicans can win the electoral college with a minority of the popular vote. Recent benefactors of this circumstance have been George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Such an election structure means that while liberals have to fight to win the votes of moderates, conservatives can win elections by directly appealing to their base. As politics continues to divide citizens, engaging swing voters becomes harder — while motivating core groups becomes easier.
All the evidence points to the fact that conspiracy theories are getting more popular, not less. Combining this with a polarising political landscape; the gap between liberals and conservatives will continue to widen. History has shown that catastrophes can push political ideologies out towards their extremes, reverting behaviours to type. Educating the entire population with the same facts seems a reasonable solution, but an impossible one. For now, if you ask liberals and conservatives the same question — you will always get two different answers.
