On Podcasts and Radio, Misleading Covid-19 Talk Goes Unchecked
False statements about vaccines have spread on the “Wild West” of media, even as some hosts die of virus complications.
Social media follows us everywhere we go. Your phone, your laptop, and even your car. This article discusses how podcasts through iHeart radio reach nine out of ten Americans, all with hosts who have similar views on the COVID-19 vaccination efforts. The hosts have made many claims such as the vaccine killing over 45,000 people and accusing the government of “acting like Nazis” for enforcing the vaccines. Although very controversial, their deaths set off an information cascade through some of their audience. Other podcast hosts were able to use this to their advantage to spread more false information about the vaccine.
This relates directly to the topic of information cascades we learned in lecture. Information cascades are about following the crowd and to what extent an individual will follow the crowd even if their personal information suggests otherwise. The information cascade here begins with the podcast hosts who have a very strong belief that the vaccines are harmful for their health. They then go on their podcasts and attempt to spread this information to some of their audience. Although this is not a sequential process, the more the audience surrounds themselves with hosts with similar views, the more likely they are to follow the crowd. This directly relates to the “look up in the sky” experiment we learned in lecture, where the more people that looked up at the sky, the more people that also followed, which led to the power of conformity. This is what this article focuses on and is what is most likely happening with the covid vaccination efforts.