Study finds social platforms incentivize spread of mis/disinformation

Watch Jaigris Hodson's presentation on March 10 by registering on the Social Media Lab website.

Anyone with a smartphone has been exposed to misinformation and disinformation as well as polarizing and dehumanizing language that may have stirred anger and outrage.

And you can blame it on capitalism, says Royal Roads University's Jaigris Hodson.

Hodson, a professor and Canada Research Chair in Digital Misinformation, Polarization and Anti-social Media, is giving a guest presentation March 10 at Toronto's Social Media Lab on her research about social media as one of the systemic issues driving societal polarization and division.

Titled "How does the social media-based attention economy contribute to dehumanization and division? A case study of The Joe Rogan Experience," the presentation builds on the work of another researcher, politics professor Jodi Dean, and her concept of communicative capitalism.

'We've commodified our communication'

"Basically, it means that the content of what we're communicating now matters less than its value in the market," Hodson explains.

"The fact that we've commodified our communication… leaves fertile ground for the type of communication that arouses strong responses," she says. "That's why conspiracy theories do so well [on social media]. That's why certain types of misinformation do so well. And that's also why cute cat pictures do so well."

To explore the concept further, Hodson studied the wildly popular Rogan podcast, whose eponymous host signed a US$250 million deal with Spotify in 2024. She used computer-aided analysis to review transcripts for 188 of his podcasts in which transgender issues were discussed, then did deep reading and critical discourse analysis of a sub-sample of those shows.

She found that on those 188 podcasts, Rogan hosted more than 130 guests but only two were transgender, and both were opposed to medical care for trans people.

'Incentivized' to prioritize certain guests

"Joe Rogan, I think, believes in everything he's talking about," Hodson says, "but he is also incentivized to prioritize certain guests and to continue to talk about these issues that are so contentious in a way that gives people strong emotion.

"And most of the people who he has on have no experience with transgender individuals. They're just giving an opinion - like 'trans people are deviant in some way' or 'they're a danger to children'. All of this stuff has no basis in reality but it doesn't matter… because what matters for Joe Rogan and his popularity is the fact that he can say these things that then get clipped and spread across social media.

"And, so, he ends up spreading some misinformation about the trans community that has been debunked in many different cases, but he never has anybody on who can share the actual evidence to the contrary."

'Disinformation by omission'

And because the host isn't incentivized to debunk misinformation, his listeners - including a large audience of impressionable young men - aren't, either, Hodson says, noting the failure to fact-check amounts to "disinformation by omission."

As well, whether it's misinformation or disinformation - i.e., false information spread unknowingly vs. known false information spread with intent - she says it's a distinction without a difference because even unwitting misinformation can be weaponized by bad actors.

Hodson also acknowledges that communicative capitalism makes countering misinformation and disinformation a challenge, noting that information that arouses a strong emotion spreads farther and faster, making it valuable.

"And that's what toxic information does: It arouses strong emotions. It could be anger, it could be strong agreement, but it's got a stronger emotional pull than fact-checking or debunking."

Watch Hodson's presentation

You can watch Jaigris Hodson's presentation "Research Talk: How does the social media-based attention economy contribute to dehumanization and division? A case study of The Joe Rogan Experience" on March 10, 8:15 to 9:30 a.m. Pacific time via Zoom by registering on the Social Media Lab website.