Communications

Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center said people can be primed to believe false information through repetition. “What Trump did was take tactics of deception and played to confirmation biases that were already circulating in our culture and embodied them in somebody who is president of the United States. He didn’t change what was available, but he changed its accessibility,” she said. “That crazed content has always been there. But it becomes dangerous when it is legitimized and when it has the power of the state behind it.”

Research by Diana Mutz of the Annenberg School for Communication and School of Arts & Sciences found that people who voted for Trump in 2016 did so because of racial anxieties, not economic distress. “It’s the same old same old. White males have been the group with the most power in our country for a long, long time,” she said. “Change is hard.”

Brian Rosenwald of the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about Cumulus Media, a talk radio company that has instructed employees not to spread misinformation about the presidential election. “Cumulus has a big, broad set of interests—they have advertisers, sports contracts, nonconservative podcasts, dealings with the F.C.C. over station licensing,” Rosenwald said. “They understand that if you get involved in something that risks instigating violence, there’s a serious danger to the bottom line.”

Dan Romer of the Annenberg School for Communications weighed in on how conspiracy theories led to the breach of the U.S. Capitol building. “In a way what happened yesterday is just a further demonstration of how [President Trump’s] supporters have accepted some of his assertions about conspiracies and are willing to act on them,” Romer said.

Yphtach Lelkes of the Annenberg School for Communication spoke about the appeal of centrism to suburban voters. “With Trump out of the White House, and with it, his bombastic rhetoric, I expect Republicans will have an easier time with suburban voters than they had over the past four years,” he said.

Damon Centola of the Annenberg School for Communication joined a conversation about how to promote healthy behaviors amid the pandemic.

Research conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Kathleen Hall Jamieson and postdocs Dominik Stecula and Ozan Kuru found that “a relatively high number of individuals are at least somewhat misinformed about vaccines,” due in part to exposure to anti-vaccine content on social media.