Overview: Psychology

Q really seems to act like a virus, finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in each new host is discovers: Germany's far-right groups were the first, and now France's Yellow Jackets, Italy's anti-vaxxers and UK's Brexiteers. Why? Trump's role is at the heart of the Q narrative. Answer (according to Politico): COVID19. "…

Cornell analyzed 38 million English-language articles about the pandemic found that President Trump was the largest driver of the “infodemic.”...Of 11 different narratives ID'd, "miracle cures" - including Trump's anti-malarial drugs, UV and disinfectants - accounted for more than the other 10 combined.Keep it in perspective: a…

counties that had voted for Donald Trump in 2016 exhibited 14% less physical distancing... higher Covid-19 infection and fatality growth rates ...the hormone oxytocin... promotes bonding... plays a role in trust... When participants trusted and felt trusted, oxytocin levels ... jumped... Trust just feels good... But risky if we give it to the w…

foreign pro-Trump troll farm was based in Romania... Facebook... didn’t see “clear evidence of financial motivation” or “clear links to known commercial actors...separate troll operation, tied to pro-Trump media organization Epoch Media Group, featured 303 Facebook accounts, 181 pages, 44 Facebook groups and 31 Instagram accounts... followed by mo…

adrenalin had energised locked-down employees at first. Only at the five-week mark did enforced remote working start to breed anxiety... The prospect of ... a bland diet of videocalls and virtual encounters is draining... It is not hard to achieve commitment ... during a crisis. Doubters’ stock objection ... evaporated under pressure... But ... …

the vast majority of our panel of 200 participants could easily spot fake news... many instead referenced ... government or media misinformation ... less aware ... how the pandemic is being handled ... underestimated the UK’s death toll...many believed a greater emphasis on fact-checking would enhance rather than undermine public trust in journali…

seven distinctive traits of conspiratorial thinking. “Plandemic” offers textbook examples of them all...belief system is internally contradictory ... overwhelmingly suspicious toward the official account ... no limit to the nefarious intent ....may occasionally abandon specific ideas when they become untenable. But ... not overall conclusion that …

Juggling full-time responsibilities, family life, and the stress of confinement makes the risk of burnout greater than ever... time to deconstruct the underlying cultural sources of burnout and ... Work less...our relationship to work ... tied to our ... self-worth ... But ... research says ... for knowledge workers to do their best work, they ne…

For a handful of disinformation researchers, the information crisis that has unfolded around the coronavirus pandemic seemed inevitable... get a sense of what we should be watching for and what the internet might look like after the virus has passed...Joan Donovan... coined "strategic silence," editorial discretion ... notion that users…

coronavirus i... global rallying cry for ... white supremacists and anti-vaxxers in the U.S. to fascist and anti-refugee groups across Europe ... far-right populists on both continents ... using the outbreak to push their political agenda ...barrage of false messages [risk] ... feeding ... “infodemic” that makes it hard to separate fact from ficti…

NewsGuard has been tracking the top hoaxes ... websites that are publishing those false stories... Today, we’re introducing a new data set focused ... on the Facebook Pages that repeat, share, and amplify...31 Facebook Pages that are “super-spreaders”... Combined... reach 21,352,918 followers... publish blatant misinformation about COVID-19 — seem…

While vowing to police COVID-19 misinformation on its platform, Facebook let advertisers target users interested in“pseudoscience” ...The Markup paid to advertise a post targeting people interested in pseudoscience... ad was approved by Facebook. ... boosted a post targeting people interested in pseudoscience on Instagram... ad was approved in min…

The editor-in-chief of The Lancet... I do believe lives could have been saved had we acted earlier"... demanded transparency on the opaque epidemiological models ... included ... “herd immunity”... The idea you can strip out politics from medicine or health is historically ignorant. The medical establishment should be much more politicised...…

some of the main types, sources, and claims of COVID-19 misinformation seen so far... the number of English-language fact-checks rose more than 900% from January to March... coronavirus misinformation has almost certainly grown even faster...most (59%)... various forms of reconfiguration... true information is spun, twisted, recontextualised, or r…

under Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network... more than 100 fact-checkers in 45 countries publishing in 15 languages. In less than two months, they have published 1,000 fact checks, articles and nine weekly reports pointing out misinformation trends and ways to combat it...journalists not only can but should drop competing with each other…