By Dave Dahl
In trying to figure out what is going on in the world, you not only need to tell the difference between “true and false,” but also between “fact and opinion.” A new You of Eye study suggests we’re not doing too well on that last part.
How stupid are we?
“People have some agency here,” said researcher Jeff Mondak, a political science professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, “but they are also restricted by the information environment and by the political climate. It is a problematic situation, and if there is to be effort to correct it, it has to be in the hands of both the people themselves thinking more critically, and people who are providing information trying to make starker distinctions between fact and opinion.”
How much of this has to do with Donald Trump? Mondak says Trumpism is less an influence on the blurring of fact and opinion than it is the rise of misinformation.
Mondak says one factor at work here is the trend away from old-fashioned newspapers, radio, and television as information sources in favor of social media.
Mondak’s work is published in the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.
Fact-opinion differentiation | HKS Misinformation Review (harvard.edu)
Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].
