The Best Way to Fight Disinformation and Conspiracy Theories in a Post-Trump World? Raise a Reader

Lower levels of literacy are linked to a tendency to embrace simplistic explanations for complex events.

“Bill Gates admitted the COVID vaccine will change our DNA forever”

“The government knows masks don’t work. They’re trying to control you.”

“Secret suitcases full of ballots appeared in the middle of the night! #StopTheSteal”

“Photo of a doctor standing in front of empty hospital beds proves that coronavirus pandemic is a hoax.”

Why do millions of people actually believe this stuff?

It’s easy to label anti-vaxxers, COVID-19 deniers, QAnoners, and people who think the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump as uneducated or stupid, but that’s not always fair. They’re often quick-witted and charming people who may run their own successful businesses, who went to school, and who are able to articulate their arguments. So why do they, again and again and again, believe things that are blatantly untrue? We all have access to the same facts, so what’s missing?

Unreliable sources of information are often to blame, but is it possible that it’s not only what we’re reading, but how we’re reading it?

Everyone likes to think they’re highly literate, but there’s more to literacy than being able to read and comprehend the sentences on a page. The degree to which we are able to search for information in a complex text, interpret and synthesize different points of view, identify bias and rhetorical devices, make inferences, and evaluate evidence can vary dramatically among adult readers, and only 13 percent of Americans fall into the highest categories (Level 4/5) of literacy.

Higher levels of literacy are associated with the ability to think critically, analytically, and with increased cognitive complexity (our ability to detect nuances and think about issues, arguments, and judgments in a complex way). Lower levels of literacy can predict a tendency to embrace more simplistic explanations for complex events. Research on intuitive versus analytic thinking styles and has shown results consistent with the theory that increased cognitive complexity predicts decreased belief in conspiracy theories. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265608142_Analytic_thinking_reduces_belief_in_conspiracy_theories)

Anecdotally we’ve seen that anti-vaxxers often adhere to other widespread conspiracy theories as well, such as birtherism, “The Covid Hoax”, or that mask mandates are nefarious mechanisms of government control, and some studies have even shown statistical evidence of this correlation. Although research shows that high education levels predict a decreased likelihood that people believe in conspiracy theories, there are still a few college-educated folks out there buying into the “Democrats stole the election” myth, and other disproven conspiracy theories, but perhaps this is because a post-secondary education doesn’t always guarantee a higher level of literacy.

A literacy crisis exists in the United States, even among college graduates. According to a report from the “The National Assessment of Adult Literacy,” the percentage of college graduates with proficient literacy on the “prose” scale (indicating the knowledge and skills needed to perform prose tasks, i.e., to search, comprehend, and use information from texts) decreased from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003. In 2019, Pew Research Center found that 27 percent of U.S. adults said they had either not read or completed a single book in the previous year. One fifth of all Americans are currently illiterate or functionally illiterate.

The uncontrollable spread of “fake news” across social media platforms this past year has exposed an urgent need for universal and comprehensive media literacy education. The proliferation of disinformation campaigns fuels a dangerous distrust in science, expertise, legitimate governments, and public institutions, posing a very real threat to liberal democracies and to public health. But our kids can’t truly be media literate until they attain higher levels of basic literacy.

Even in a post-Trump world, conspiracy theories and disinformation are here to stay, and the campaigns will only become more insidious. It’s never been more important to raise our children and students to be readers.

Here’s how: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/books/how-to-raise-a-reader