Wes Regan

Well, definitely.

I think that, you know, one of the best, yes, the big story, what can we do?

We can repair trust with each other, in particular, those who hold different viewpoints than us and different worldviews.

We need to really bridge divides in order to ultimately unwind what we've created here.

I'm going to get you out of here, bud.

This is the greatest job in the world.

Firefighter Leon, I need you to make your own risk assessment.

Yeah, it's a great question.

And I think as we have begun to see the effect of misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories on public discourse and on democracy, a lot of research is starting to turn more and more attention to this.

And I think there's some really good research coming out of the U.S.,

Kaylin O'Connor and James Weatherall, for example, had a great book that came out a number of years ago called The Misinformation Age, How False Beliefs Spread.

And they really turned attention to the social aspects of this.

So a lot of times, we tend to believe that people will believe misinformation or spread misinformation because of personal reasons.

But actually, what their work shows and what others have shown is that there are a lot of social factors in this.

It's peer networks, it's belonging, it's professional affiliations, it's political affiliations.

And with social media, we've seen audiences segment and go into little bubbles of affirmation where it feels good to be a part of a group of people who believe a certain belief.

way or have a certain worldview.

And so we're seeing epistemic polarization along with political polarization and people just really finding information that confirms their beliefs often and reaffirms that social connection.

Yeah.

So misinformation will be just factually incorrect or misleading information that is often shared, as you alluded to in the intro, often shared with good intentions.