Civic Conversations welcomes Professor Marjorie Hershey on Disinformation in Elections

Civic Conversations welcomed Dr. Marjorie Hershey, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Indiana University, this month. In the podcast, she discusses the impact of disinformation on elections and how it influences election politics. Hershey shares that the definition of disinformation, purposeful misinformation designed to influence elections, has grown in recent years and that election campaigns that use disinformation hope that with enough repetitiveness of the information, people will begin to believe disinformation over the truth.

According to Hershey, the key action that voters can take is to look to the source of that information and disregard it if no source is provided. If a source is given, they should verify that source before taking it as truth. Sources to help with verifying information include PolitiFact, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker.