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BW Carmel Boyer School of Business executive-in-residence and founder and president of International Strategic Analysis (ISA) Michael Weidokal '94 warns about the growing danger of conspiracy theories and misinformation.
People will believe anything these days, or at least so it seems. I find myself constantly amazed, and often dismayed, by what many people believe. It seems that even extreme conspiracy theories have found large numbers of adherents, even among people with a relatively high level of education. This is a very worrying development and bodes ill for the future of our democracy and our country.
I know my fields well. If someone is going to present a crazy idea pertaining to economics, politics, history or the like, I am going to question their beliefs for I usually know what is true, and what isn't, in the fields where I have spent my life accumulating knowledge and experience. What is frightening is that so many people refuse to shake their beliefs, even when confronted with irrefutable facts that contradict the very belief that they are championing.
There is plenty of evidence that supports the widespread belief of radical conspiracy theories, let alone the misinformation that is being spread across our country. For example, a December 2023 YouGov survey showed that 41% of Americans believe that a single group of powerful people secretly controls the world (and another 15% believe it is possible). Likewise, a small, but vocal, minority of people believe that extreme weather events such as Hurricane Helene are the fault of a small group of people who are controlling the weather. If there was a "shaking my head" emoji in newsprint, I would insert it here.
To be fair, people have long held crazy beliefs. However, in our age of enlightenment and the availability of endless sources of information, this shouldn't be the case anymore, but it is. Too many people are getting their news and information from unreliable or deliberately misleading sources. Most of these are found on social media, which has proven to be an endless source of misinformation and conspiracy. Nevertheless, mass media deserves its share of the blame as well, as much of the mass media spectrum has moved more towards the fringes of society in order to maintain an audience.
This is dangerous for many reasons. For example, it leads to the radicalization of society. This has infected our country's (and many other countries') politics, leading to increasing support for radical positions on the far-right and far-left of the political spectrum. Another danger is that such beliefs lead to poor life choices for many of those who choose to adhere to such beliefs. This has played an underestimated role in the growing discrepancy in life outcomes for many Americans. Altogether, the spread of misinformation threatens to lead our country down a dangerous path, or even to tear our country apart.
How can we slow, or even stop, the spread of misinformation and how easily it infects the minds of so many people today? Clearly, banning social media is a non-starter. TikTok might be banned in this country one day, but there is little doubt that some replacement will quickly emerge. There is simply too much demand these days for the types of media and information supplied by TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms.
Instead, we need to start very early in preparing young people to combat the spread of misinformation, even if it is too late for misinformation's older victims. This has to start in our schools at a very young age. Schools need to focus more of their resources on teaching critical issues such as politics, economics and other subjects that dominate our democratic system of government. Schools also need to teach young people how to use credible sources of information and to identify misinformation. Unfortunately, in our modern political climate, both sides of the political spectrum are using education as a tool to advance their own agendas, something that could jeopardize schools' ability to enact such needed reforms.
If we fail to reduce the impact of misinformation, the United States and the world face a very uncertain future. Will our democracy be able to survive with such a large share of voters who fall victim to misinformation?
We will certainly be tested in just a couple of weeks in an election campaign filled with such misinformation. Can our society survive the increasing level of divisiveness and extremism that is produced, in part, by misinformation?
We can't wait to find out. We must take steps now to better prepare our people to better identify misinformation and not be influenced by it. If we don't, our country's and our world's future is in serious peril.
A version of this column first appeared on cleveland.com. Michael Weidokal '94 is executive-in-residence in BW's Carmel Boyer School of Business, a BW alumnus and the founder and president of International Strategic Analysis (ISA), a leading economic and political research firm. His latest book, "The Coming Decline: A World Without Economic Growth," was published earlier this year.
