The Multiverse of Misinformation, Episode 4 - Misinformation and Democracy

Welcome to the Multiverse of Misinformation, a podcast about misinformation and the way it affects the many facets of our life, produced by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP” --at Cal Poly Pomona and generously supported by the Cal Poly Pomona Special Projects for Improving the Classroom Experience grant program.

This season, we will explore the many ways in which misinformation affects our everyday lives through influencing, distorting, or driving the discourse in our society.  In the past few years, the idea of misinformation has entered the zeitgeist through the concept of “fake news,” or online conspiracy theories shared by your relatives on Facebook, which is probably what most listeners will think of when they hear the term.  However, misinformation is neither a new, nor a specifically online problem. In these episodes, the CCEP student fellows use examples from our own class discussions as well as their own lived experience to illustrate the many ways in which misinformation influences what we think, how we act, and what we believe.

We are now one month away from the 2024 election, an event for which the topic of misinformation has been central. On February 16, 2024, CCEP hosted a panel titled, "Misinformation and Democracy," which focused on the threat that misinformation poses to democracy, with a special emphasis on the 2024 primary and general elections in the State of California.  The panelists for this discussion were Hannah Cole, the Humanities and Communication Librarian at Cal Poly Pomona, Dr. Hyungjin Gill, Assistant Professor of Communication at Cal Poly Pomona, and Katie Priest, a Philosophy and Communication major at Cal Poly Pomona, journalist with the Poly Post, and one of this year’s CCEP Student Fellows.

We ask that if you like what you hear, if you care about these issues, please share our podcast with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Thanks for listening.