Kate Starbird says attacks have made research difficult, and claims of bias arise because of prevalence of lies from the right
A key researcher in the fight against election misinformation – who herself became the subject of an intensive misinformation campaign – has said her field gets accused of “bias” precisely because it’s now mainly rightwingers who spread the worst lies.
Kate Starbird, co-founder of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, added that she feared that the entirely false story of rigged elections has now “sunk in” for many Americans on the right. “The idea that they’re already going to the polls with the belief that they’re being cheated means they’ll misinterpret everything they see through that lens,” she said.
Starbird’s group partnered with Stanford Internet Observatory on the Election Integrity Partnership ahead of the 2020 elections – a campaign during which a flood of misinformation swirled around the internet, with daily claims of unproven voter fraud.
Starbird and her team helped document that flood, and in return congressional Republicans and conservative attorneys attacked her research, alleging it amounted to censorship and violated the first amendment.
It’s true. Even in the comments on this post there’s someone adamantly claiming (without evidence) that masks don’t work, despite being presented with a full literature review of studies showing that they do work.
It shouldn’t even take a full scientific study to convince someone that covering their nose and mouth helps to prevent the spread of airborne illness. Their egos are so fragile that any critical introspective examination of their viewpoints would destroy their entire identity. What even are they without their vitriol and hatred for the truth?
constantly full of fear and weakness