Our world is awash in mis- and disinformation. Conspiratorial thinking and misguided beliefs and attitudes towards science are widespread. But combatting this deluge of problematic information must be done with care. Too often, argues Whitney Phillips, we dismiss the people who consume or propagate such information as irrational. In fact, given the experiences they may have been having on the internet for many years — or what they may have been encountering via traditional media for decades — their views, troubling as they may be, may in many cases be perfectly rational.

Phillips, an assistant professor of communication and rhetorical studies at Syracuse University, investigates the intersections between media ecosystems, beliefs, and politics. Her research has taken her to some of the internet’s darkest corners, but she argues that it’s futile to treat those virtual spaces in isolation, because the cultural factors that paved the way for their creation are all around us — and in some cases are almost mundanely mainstream.

Phillips’ latest book is You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our Polluted Media Landscape, co-authored with Ryan M. Milner.

Our conversation was conducted over Zoom and by email and has been edited for length and clarity.

Dan Falk: One of the things you describe in your book is how misinformation and disinformation grow and evolve. And you use the metaphor of a hurricane that swallows up smaller storms to create a bigger storm. When thinking of things ranging from anti-vaccine rhetoric to, say, QAnon, what is it that connects them?

Whitney Phillips: Take any conspiracy theory — take QAnon, take COVID stuff, whatever — when you think about what energizes that, so much of what is actually fueling the storm are narratives that have been around for decades. It is not the case that a bunch of people just started going on Facebook, and then magically became radicalized, because the algorithm started feeding them information; that’s just an overly simplistic view of how this happens.

Falk: Where did those narratives come from?

Phillips: In the United States, you have two kind of parallel media ecosystems: You have the sort of center-left mainstream media ecosystem, and then the right-wing media ecosystem, which was built as a reactionary apparatus, essentially, to mainstream media, in the early 20th century, and really became intensified in the post-Cold War era. And within that media ecosystem, narratives around liberal bias, anti-expertise narratives, and the idea that if something was coming out of an institution, you couldn’t trust it — that has been bread and butter within certain media networks for many people’s entire lives.

Read the full article about the media wraparound effect by Dan Falk at Nieman Lab.