Contributing Writers: Azad Ali, Tangerine Clarke,
Nelson King, Vinette K. Pryce, Bert Wilkinson
GENERAL INFORMATION (718) 260-2500
Caribbean Life, N 10 OVEMBER 19-25, 2021
By Noam Titelman
SANTIAGO, Nov. 17
2021 (IPS) – At the United
Nations General Assembly
meeting in September,
Brazilian President Jair
Bolsonaro used his allotted
time at the podium
to recount his views on
COVID-19. He extolled the
virtues of treatments that
have been rejected by scientists
and proclaimed that
he had benefitted from the
anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
Bolsonaro’s support for
such ‘miracle cures’ is well
known. He has appeared
regularly in the Brazilian
press and on social networks
promoting the use
of off-label treatments that
have no basis in scientific
fact. And he is not alone.
During his administration,
former US President
Donald Trump advocated
for a variety of unproven
remedies, and the president
of Madagascar, Andry
Rajoelina, has sponsored a
drink derived from the herb
artemisia to treat COVID-
19.
To the despair of the scientific
community, these
politicians and others have
successfully convinced a
large swath of the public
of such treatments’ efficacy
and safety.
Misinformed people are
not ignorant
Misinformation has run
rampant during the pandemic,
but it is not a new
phenomenon. In their seminal
work on the perception
of welfare in the United
States, the political scientist
James Kuklinski and
his colleagues showed that
significant portions of the
American population held
inaccurate beliefs about
the recipients of state support
and the benefits they
received.
Misinformation is a
prime example of motivated
reasoning.
They also found that the
prevalence of misinformation
prevented accurate
information from gaining
traction. Misinformed people
do not simply have inaccurate
information; they
are heavily invested in their
misconceptions.
And this is what makes
misinformation so powerful:
it combines misperceptions
about the world with
a high degree of confidence
in their accuracy.
People do not believe
false information because
they are ignorant. There
are many factors at work,
but most researchers would
agree that the belief in misinformation
has little to do
with the amount of knowledge
a person possesses.
Misinformation is a prime
example of motivated reasoning.
People tend to arrive at
the conclusions they want
to reach as long as they
can construct seemingly
reasonable justifications
for these outcomes. One
study published in 2017 has
shown that people who have
greater scientific knowledge
and education are more
likely to defend their polarised
beliefs on controversial
science topics because of
‘nonscientific concerns.’
The role of partisan identity
One of the most powerful
of these concerns is
the preservation of identity.
Political leaders are
most effective in pushing
misinformation when they
exploit citizens’ fear of
losing what they perceive
to be defining aspects of
their culture, particularly
its language, religion, and
perceived racial and gender
hierarchies and roles.
In polarised political
environments, the purchase
that misinformation gains
has little to do with low levels
of knowledge or engagement,
but rather with how
information is interpreted
in a way that dovetails with
partisan identity. The ‘us
versus them’ lens means
that the different bits of
information people receive
are processed in a way that
is amenable to their worldview.
This is why individuals
can draw strikingly divergent
conclusions from the
same facts. When political
leaders peddle unproven
treatments for Covid-19,
they are capitalising on this
polarising tendency.
But an excessive focus on
these leaders may obscure
the main reason people buy
into these messages. The
willingness to believe misinformation
is rooted in
underlying aspects of cultural
identity, which politicians
manipulate.
The case of Brazil
Recent research by Mariana
Borges Martins da
Silva, a postdoctoral fellow
at the University of Oxford,
has shown that one reason
Brazilians trust treatments
like the ones promoted by
Bolsonaro is a deep cultural
belief that a ‘serious doctor’
is one who prescribes
medicine.
Bolsonaro didn’t have to
convince Brazilians of the
benefits of ivermectin and
chloroquine. He needed
only to confirm the norm
that potentially serious diseases
always must be treated
with drugs. He provided
a narrative that allowed
segments of the population
to arrive at their desired
conclusion. And that was
enough.
Understanding the drivers
of misinformation is
critical to preventing its
spread. To keep people safe
from COVID-19 and encourage
vaccination, it is not
enough to denounce politicians
who promote false
information. We also must
understand the underlying
motivations that lead people
to believe it.
Noam Titelman is an
associate researcher at the
Center for Public Systems
at the Universidad de Chile,
and a PhD candidate in
social research methods at
the London School of Economics
(LSE).
Source: International
Politics and Society, Bruxelles,
Belgium
By NY Assembly Member
Phara Souffrant Forrest
In a recent visit to Taconic
Correctional Facility, I met dozens
of incarcerated women. We
sat in the visiting room and
walked through other parts of
the facility adorned with handpainted
images of the New York
City skyline on the cold cement
wall—the same skyline I’ve
looked at since I was a child
growing up in central Brooklyn.
The women I met were serving
sentences that will never allow
them to even be eligible to be
considered for release in their
lifetimes.
The women I met are mothers,
grandmothers, sisters, and
daughters. They belong to people
and communities like my
own. Many of those women
were from my community, a
community that has been devastated
by mass incarceration.
Brooklyn has more individuals
serving life sentences than
anywhere else in New York
State. It is my constituents who
are languishing in prison. It is
our community impacted by the
systemic harms of the criminal
legal system, which is not keeping
us safe, and not fulfilling its
mandate to provide justice. As a
legislator and a nurse, I have a
duty and responsibility to work
with my colleagues to end this
suffering.
With the passage of Less is
More, New York took a huge
step toward righting the draconian
parole laws that have
disproportionately harmed New
Yorkers, of color. New York
made the morally right and
life-saving choice in passing
Less is More. When Governor
Hochul signed the bill, nearly
200 New Yorkers were immediately
reunited with their families
after being released from
Rikers Island amid escalating
deaths in the jails. In March of
2022, when Less is More goes
into effect, many more will no
longer be needlessly penalized
for technical parole violations.
This is a step to undoing
the systemic harms integral to
the criminal legal system. But
Less is More is just the beginning.
We can’t declare victory
on parole reform yet. Less is
More, which has yet to be fully
implemented and really address
the current crisis, impacts
those already released to parole
supervision but not the thousands
of New Yorkers still being
denied a fair chance at release
from prison because our unjust
system centers punishment
over everything.
Even with Less is More, thousands
of people still in prison
are routinely denied parole
or never make it to their first
chance at release alive. A new
report by researchers at Columbia
University finds nearly 1,300
people died in prison in the
last decade, more than the
total number of people executed
by New York State during
the more then 350 years of
state’s practice of capital punishment.
Of those 1,300 deaths
41% were Black and 56% were
over 55-years-old. The people
languishing and dying in New
York prisons are the exact same
people I met at Taconic.
This is a crisis that deserves
immediate attention. It is a
matter of life and death for my
constituents and our communities.
An urgent next step we in
the state government must take
is to pass the full parole justice
platform immediately when the
legislative session resumes in
January.
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Why COVID-19
misinformation works
Parole reform isn’t done