When spirituality supports conspiracies

Eva and I have been noting trends of so-called conspirituality since 2020, and finally we have a chance to share what we know on our podcast: Research shows that people who identify as spiritual are disproportionately likely to believe in conspiracy theories. There are several possible explanations for this — spiritual people tend to look for links and bonds everywhere …

Interview with a Swedish journalist who infiltrated the antivaxx movement

Ever since a speaker at Dataharvest mentioned the SVT team’s investigation into the anti-vaccination movement, I wanted to interview someone from this team and ask what it was like. The Swedish team started their investigation at a similar time as Eva and I started ours, but instead of spreading wide in Europe they traced influences all the way to US …

Vaccine ‘space race’

The media reported today that French-speaking ‘influencers’ on social networks have been approached by a dubious PR agency to promote negative messages about the Comirnaty (Pfizer) vaccine (I saw it on Twitter and then it was reported here). In this episode, Eva and I talk to experts who have been collecting data about how false claims about vaccines link to …

Is that post you saw misinformation or disinformation?

Both disinformation and misinformation mix facts with distortions and/ or falsehoods. Disinformation is intentional. But how do we know that when looking at a specific post on social networks? Eva and I try to unpack the terminology in our latest podcast episode. Disinformation is often systematic and sustained over time. And when its spreaders are faced with debunks, they never …