Unknown Speaker 0:00
Welcome to stay to the state, the monthly roundup of policy and research for the state of Michigan, brought to you by the Institute of Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University, and our friends here at Wk AR studio, Mr. Al weinfeld, Associate Director for the Institute. I'm joined by co host Institute director, Dr. Matt Grossman, and MSU economist, Dr. Charlie balin. Later on, we'll be joined by our guest, Dr. Dustin Carnahan, and assistant professor in the Department of Communications at MSU College of Communication Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on political information seeking behavior, with an emphasis on the role of the communication processes in forwarding and correcting misinformation. And certainly, Matt and Charlie, there's plenty of that going around today. But But let's start first, this week, an important week. Some have called it a watershed week, some called it just a one off, but the conviction of Minneapolis police officer Derek Shogun, in the George Floyd case, certainly has has dominated the news headlines this week. Matt, what's your take on the implications or long term impacts of the of the jury's decision?

Unknown Speaker 1:21
Well, of course, it's very rare to have a conviction of a police officer on murder charges. It's very rare even to have a prosecution. And so this is an important case. It is also potentially important for thinking about the effects of social movements. there clearly was a very large summer protest movement. There's evidence that it affected what the state of Minnesota did. They put it in, they put the Attorney General in charge of the prosecution, the prosecuting documents changed from their initial sort of more police defensive press releases to obviously a connection here. So that is important, both for for criminal justice policy and our current politics.

Unknown Speaker 2:22
And, and and Matt are truly What do you think, are the long term implications for furthering criminal justice legislation? Whether it be you know, across the states or in Congress, there's a lot of talk now, of some some congressional movement in the next couple of weeks.

Unknown Speaker 2:41
Well, my usual message is don't hold your breath. So that continues. The There is, of course, federal legislation named for George Floyd. But it faces the same prospect says lots of other legislation that's supported by the democrats and not supported by the Republicans, you still typically need support from both parties to pass major legislation. And there's no sign that this will be the breakthrough for that legislation moving forward.

Unknown Speaker 3:14
Given the composition of Congress. I agree with Matt, that I think it's unlikely that won't get federal legislation, although we may get some changes in some individual communities and individual states. One thing to note about the George Floyd, Derek show in case if, if there hadn't been video, I'm pretty sure that Derek shovin was still have his job, that he would never have been charged with a crime and that we wouldn't have had all of this attention. That one one thing and I mentioned Dustin is going to comment on this. One thing that's changed is that we have video evidence in this case, and in several other cases, in the case of falando Castillo laquan. McDonald, although it took a long time for that video to come to light, but that that changes some things if you if you have something that any reasonable person can look at and see that that changes the dynamic. Well, one thing that I think is interesting is that you know, for for better or worse, none of the most highly publicized cases, Trayvon Martin, George wipr, Briana Taylor, and Michael Brown, Eric Garner, none of those happened in Michigan. And yet, I think that the, the tensions about over the black white divide are just as strong in Michigan as they are in lots of other places. And we've seen that I think in the recent past oppose legislation in the state in the legislature to restrict voting rights, which seems very much to be racially motivated.

Unknown Speaker 5:10
Charlie, you've done a lot of work on the income inequality gap between black and white. Especially how the state of Michigan has really fallen off the map on this, over the last few decades. Does an incident like this or a moment in time like this? Does it have any impact on the economy? Do people take a breath and go, Okay, let's get back to work. Now, you know, there's work to do you see any kind of impact on the economy.

Unknown Speaker 5:43
Um, possibly, but I think these things move very slowly. I mean, in my my work, I have documented how African Americans see more in in Michigan than anywhere else, really, really improved their standard of living very, very substantially, from about 1940 to 1980. Part of that was moving from the south to places like Michigan. And all of the public policy, much of the public public policy thrust of that of those decades was toward helping average citizens. There was some reluctance to help black Americans, but then the Civil Rights Act Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, in the 60s all were aimed at helping African Americans. But then, really, in the last 40 years, most of the tide has pushed in the opposite direction toward more income inequality, and certainly toward fewer protections for racial minorities. I'm a big part of it was when President Reagan was elected, he said government is not the solution. It's a problem. But most government institutions he left in place, one that he definitely changed was dismantled much of our architecture of affirmative action, which I think clearly had a racial context there. So we'll see. Why don't we have this conversation again, Arnold in 20 years, and we'll see whether whether much has changed?

Unknown Speaker 7:20
Well, let's get back to the present and and talk about the state of the economy right now. Things still seem to be picking up a few articles out there. Again, you know, economists seem to be keeping a close eye on various factors related to inflation. Some are saying that, you know, only a couple of them are being impacted and that they're not quite sure if that's going to happen. Michigan's economy as compared to the nation's economy, where do we stand right now, we stand

Unknown Speaker 7:51
in a similar place to most other states that we had devastating losses of employment and economic activity about a year ago. And then since then, we've climbed back much of the way but not all the way to where we were, we were in February of 2020. So you know, there remains substantial unemployment, or, you know, you're only counted officially as unemployed. If you're actually in the labor force. There's people who are unemployed, they're also those who are out of the labor force. Many of those either workers in the hospitality, restaurants and bars sector that haven't fully opened up yet, or people who have childcare issues and are afraid or unable to go to back to work. So we've we've made up it's a whole lot better than it was in April of 2020. Economically, but, you know, I don't think we're gonna get all the way back until we make further progress against the pandemic. The good news is, well, it's kind of a mixed right now, because we've had another surge of infections. But every day, we're vaccinating many 1000s more people. And I think within a couple months, that I'm cautiously optimistic that that'll have a pretty positive effect on the economy.

Unknown Speaker 9:24
And is it fair to say that much like the housing and banking crash of Oh, 809, or the auto bailout, that things are better because of a federal infusion of money through the cares act? And now we've seen food the American rescue plan. I mean, you know, this time around the state of Michigan as a whole is going to get $10 billion, you know, 4.4 to locals and about just over five to the state itself. I mean, it seems to me that if it wasn't for, once again, this infusion Federal money. It would be pretty much doom and gloom what we were talking about last year at this time.

Unknown Speaker 10:07
Sure the the the federal actions have helped to keep the economy afloat when it was sick as a result of the Coronavirus. I think, certainly, let's not, let's not put aside that, you know, the evidence from the great recession of, of 10, a decade ago or a little bit more than a decade ago, the evidence is that those fiscal policy interventions did help to keep the recession from being worse than it would otherwise have been. I think that's definitely true here. You know, the we had the big infusion last spring, and then by last fall, it had kind of run its course and played itself out. And so now we have more, I still remember one of the lone voices in the wilderness, worrying about how much federal debt we have. And I do hope that once we get the economy back to normal that will move in the direction of balancing the federal budget, because, you know, we're now north of $20 trillion of federal debt. And that sounds like a lot of money to me. I don't know if it sounds like a lot to you. But I do wonder whether I worry whether the world credit markets will always be a be eager to to soak up that large amount of debt.

Unknown Speaker 11:40
Matt, any thoughts on this yourself? I mean, the large infusion of cash that's come in to both state and local and businesses. Whatever happens when they turn off the spigot? You know, are people going to be expecting monthly checks now or yearly check every six months from the federal government as we move forward?

Unknown Speaker 12:04
Well, what happened last time is that we had a momentary blip upward and state budgets. And then a year or two afterwards, after the stimulus dollars ran out, we started to see declines. And what happened, of course, as Charlie mentioned, the economy is that it once it ran out, its effects ran out, and the recession was prolonged. Last time, there might be a trade off between Charlie's two interests, because one of the things that seems to be happening now is that the democrats are a lot less afraid of those large deficits. But that's meant that there's going to be a continued infusion of economic stimulus over a longer period of time, if if the democratic proposals go through so we might be sort of paying a bigger doing more now than we did in the Great Recession, maybe making our recovery faster. But But building up debt in the long term.

Unknown Speaker 13:14
Yeah. And of course, we all know there'll be no shortage of opinions. thoughts, views presented? Charlie, you noted, you know, your hope on the COVID vaccines that more and more people will get vaccinated and that will finally be able to flatten this curve. There was a lengthy article this morning that I saw in the Detroit Free Press about black Detroiters hesitancy in in getting the shot. Lots of references to past and justices including the Tuskegee experiment. So, you know, the information that's available to people, and how it's available to people is is very important. And that seems like a good point to bring in. Dustin Carnahan, as I noted, Dustin, is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication here at Michigan State University. And Dustin, why don't you tell us about your work on misinformation, how it comes to be, how it spreads and how to combat it? Sure, so

Unknown Speaker 14:29
a lot of my research is interested primarily in how we go about trying to correct misperceptions, once misinformation circulates and reaches a mass audience. Largely its strategic and its orientation drawing from social science theory to inform different types of interventions. How can we reverse the damage once something gets out there and reaches a large audience? A lot of interest also in understanding how these beliefs formed in the first place, are these actually a function of misinformation are people engaging And other cognitive processes or social processes that are driving people's beliefs to to accept certain types of claims as true or false. And while I'm primarily focused on the political context, obviously, with with recent events, I've kind of moved into Health and Science matters. And these things become politicized very easily, especially at the national stage. And so once they become politicized, this is where you start seeing divergence as you start seeing different types of claims advanced by each side. And you can see this become a real problem in terms of what people ultimately believe to be true.

Unknown Speaker 15:32
And so what what are the strategies that, you know, we can use to discern the misinformation that's out there?

Unknown Speaker 15:43
Sure. So some of the best strategies involve just minimizing threat. And in other words, when people are confronted with information that tells them they're wrong, it can very easily be construed as as an attack on their character as an attack on their intelligence. And so one of the things that we have to be very mindful of when we try to combat misinformation, when we try to reverse people's false beliefs, is to attack the false flip, but not attack the person, not make them immediately defensive and unlikely to listen. That's one strategy. Also, as I noted earlier, a lot of our beliefs are driven in large part by this this kind of false consensus perception that we believe that these, these claims are believed by larger numbers of people than actually them actually are. And so when we can make people aware that not only is there a scientific consensus that this is true, but but also you've exaggerated to some degree, the extent to which other people harbor this belief, that's kind of a more indirect way that they can then kind of reconsider on their own and recognize that perhaps there is, there isn't this kind of pull like that identity identity plays a really strong role here, that we oftentimes believe things because our group believes them. And when we realize that, there isn't some sort of homogenous kind of belief within the group, that that can make us more open minded, more willing to kind of rethink and examine our own beliefs as losers, a couple of strategies. Again, there's a lot of research, investigating other types of strategies to try to make people more open minded. Obviously, I think the best strategy is getting people to engage with good information to begin with, and to be aware and media literates so that they recognize the good stuff and the bad stuff, no matter how effective we are, in trying to correct misperceptions, we oftentimes can't completely reverse the damage. And so really getting ahead of things at the start making sure that we have an audience that is critical that is skeptical that is willing to do good research, before kind of hanging their hat in one one area or another, is perhaps the best strategy of all.

Unknown Speaker 17:52
So Arnaud mentioned that the that we have vaccine hesitancy among African Americans in Michigan, there's also evidence that we have vaccine hesitancy among white Republicans. Because in part of the different messages coming from the political parties, a lot of people have blamed this on social media or have believed that messages spreading online, are responsible for this. On the other hand, there's also a lot of social reinforcement and social norms happening on platforms like like Facebook, with people trying to publicize the their own vaccination. So what how should we think about the role of social media in that effort?

Unknown Speaker 18:39
Well, when we think about social media, and one thing I'd like to start this conversation off with, and when I teach courses on this, the first thing I always tell them is that this is misinformation isn't a new problem. conspiracies aren't new problems, we can go back to the dawn of the American Republic and find instances which our founding fathers levied outlandish claims toward the other end, where we go back even further, to pre enlightenment era is where our explanations of scientific phenomenon were rooted in mysticism, more than they were any observation. But what social media has done is I think it's really accelerated a lot of these exchanges. It's it's made these previously fringe views and beliefs, more visible to larger groups of people. And thus, I think the primary contributing factor of social media is the potential to sow confusion. I'm going to be a little self promotional here, because we actually have just done a study where we look at this kind of strategy called flooding the zone. And this was a strategy that was invoked by Steve Bannon a few years ago during the Trump administration, which was to basically flood the zone with all types of claims and falsehoods so that people wouldn't know what was true and what wasn't. It's not so much that you're facilitating belief and misinformation but but what you're doing according to the strategy is you're just making people unsure of what the reality of yours. And one of the findings from a study that we did is we did an experimental study where we expose people to a series of different claims. And some of these claims were false, some of them are true. And we found that when people encountered these rather implausible falsehoods, first it made them more skeptical of everything else that followed, that they were less, less confident in their ability to know the truth and not and I think when you think about the role of social media, that plays a really important role here, because we're getting bombarded with so many different claims, especially in during the COVID pandemic, where there was so much uncertainty in those early months, and there continues to be certain degrees of uncertainty To this day, that that's making people of not very confident in what it is that they can believe in what it is that they think could be true. And so I think that's perhaps the primary concern involving social media. But But the thing is, is that it's social media is only a problem insofar as there are actors who are utilizing it for these purposes.

Unknown Speaker 21:00
So you were on our panel, after the the January sex, capital riots to sort of discuss this back and forth between political leaders, and followers? Are people learning information online? So I To what extent is this about information that starts from the top versus information that kind of circulates, among believers online?

Unknown Speaker 21:29
I think it in many respects, it starts from the top when you have leadership that is fast and loose with the facts, I think that could inspire followers to similarly advance different types of claims. I think really what what the question you're asking kind of alludes to is whether this is a top down process, or more organic at the citizen level. I think both processes are in play. But I think really, again, I think the masses, when you see, for example, everyday people or maybe just you know, somewhat well known but not particularly what you would call elite types of actors and forces in the political scene, what you tend to see is they're taking their cues from the top, they're responding to how those at the top of the chain are, are pushing different types of ideas. And they're kind of morphing them. And they're, they're they're they're pushing them to larger audiences through this kind of process of sharing and retweeting and just pushing things out to their larger groups of followers. Any one of these actors is probably not all that influential. But when you think about the fact that you may have 100 200 300 individuals who have follower counts in the 1000s, that's when you can start to see this kind of exponential growth. But again, I think most of them are taking their cues from the top when there's leadership that's uncertain when there's leadership that's fast and free with the facts, that just allows them those opportunities to inject themselves in and kind of twist and mislead and warp the dialogue. This

Unknown Speaker 22:57
top down versus bottom up, issue makes me reminds me that earlier this week, the University of California system and the Cal State system, both announced that for fall classes in 2021, students will be required to be vaccine that to have to be vaccinated. It is so that's, you know, one one action that leaders can take is to try to persuade, another action that they can take is to try to coerce. Now, as I've heard people who are vaccine hesitant, often one of the statements is I want to make up my own mind. I don't want this shoved down my throat. So how do you think that? Dr. Carnahan, how do you think that mandates? Will? Will they advance the course of the vaccine? Or will they cause a bigger backlash?

Unknown Speaker 23:55
The that's a really good question. In terms of mandates, I mean, when you talk about, you know, for example, some of these more well known conspiracies involving what this vaccine does, right, but they're, they're these allegations that they're, this is really just an avenue towards self towards social control or, or that specific actors are profiting off of this entire thing. When you see mandates like this, I think that the concern is, at least from my perspective, is that this could reinforce in the minds of some of these more conspiratorial minded people who then have a platform that it could push these ideas to larger groups of citizens, that it reinforces that, well, if they can't tell us what's good about it, then you're just gonna make us do it. That that can kind of lead to perhaps a some sort of reactance, some sort of backlash response, where it could strengthen or lead some of these individuals who believe these things about the vaccine to dig in and say what's going on. California is an interesting case study because prior to the COVID vaccine, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a few years ago, a much more stringent requirements involving childhood vaccines. back I believe it was in 2015. In response to growing rates of, you know, rate of measles and low vaccination rates with regards to MMR, basically making it much harder to get an exemption. And so it's not terribly surprising to see that type of approach adopted in in California. But I do think there are concerns that when you are in a sense, telling people, they have to do something, that they may feel some sort of pressure or some sort of, you know, some kind of reactance effect where they, they push back, they are unhappy with being forced to do something that perhaps they wouldn't do on their own volition. And I do I do wonder if that could maybe feed perhaps some of this hesitancy could make people who are already skeptical even more so as a consequence.

Unknown Speaker 25:41
My recollection from when I was a child is that there was not much of a anti vaccine pushback against the polio vaccine. It may be that I miss remember that because i was i was little at the time. But my sense is that it was broadly viewed as as a miraculous advance and parents wouldn't have to worry about their children possibly becoming crippled. Is it different now? Or has there always been a vaccine hesitancy?

Unknown Speaker 26:16
I historically, I'm sure there has been some degree of hesitancy in the population. I think anytime you have some sort of new medical treatment, there are always questions are always those, when you when you think for example, of things like diffusion theory, there are always those, we're going to need to see more evidence and acquire more information before they choose themselves, to adopt whatever intervention whatever medical breakthrough has been created. But I think really, when you talk about this hesitancy, it has its roots, really just in the past two decades, that the perhaps most high profile example of this was Andrew Wakefield's now retracted study, that that pushed this idea of this link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and then you started having some pretty high profile, high profile individuals sharing anecdotal evidence involving how their children responded in some way to the MMR vaccine in a negative way. And I think really, when you match that up with, again, the technological developments of the past two decades where perhaps those stories would be shared locally, but now can reach a national audience, if the individuals who have the you know, the platform to do so push these types of ideas, that that's where you can start to see this idea spread further and faster. And so I would agree, I think in the past two decades, this seems to have gotten worse, largely as a consequence of some bad science, and then some some high profile figures kind of fighting this fight.

Unknown Speaker 27:41
But how much is this about the the information? You know, it you've, you've said that this is also partly just about social identity about emotional responses? there apparently is even survey data where people will endorse mutually exclusive conspiracy theories, both Osama bin Laden was dead before we got there, and he's still alive. So it seems like there might just be some parts of population that want to kind of mistrust regardless of sort of what the information environment looks like.

Unknown Speaker 28:18
And that's a good that's a really great point. It's a methodological question that I think the misinformation literature is still grappling with. To some extent, there's good reason to believe that misinformation alone is insufficient, necessarily to foster misperceptions that some of these thoughts and beliefs form as a consequence of either some kind of underlying personality dimension. We talked about, you know, conspiracist ideation as one people's proclivity to kind of try to identify patterns and, and and relationships where perhaps none exist. Because we don't like to be uncertainty we don't like we don't like that feeling of not knowing. And so sometimes we'll just try to create these explanations. But that's an internal process. And again, sometimes our beliefs are informed not necessarily by information, but by what is accepted by our group, what is the dominant norm in terms of how the individuals that we identify with believe and then so we'll follow that a level of follow along? And so I do think this is a question that requires a great deal of attention, especially in light of recent work, by many of my colleagues in the literature that suggests that exposure to misinformation really isn't all that consequential for many of our beliefs that perhaps these are born more from intuitive processes, internal processes, social processes beyond the information that we see. And so I think there's more to be said in this in this discussion.

Unknown Speaker 29:42
Well, Dustin, I want to thank you very much. Certainly, as you noted, given the last couple of decades, and the impact of social media. The future is is somewhat uncertain and will be definitely interesting. Good in your work, moving forward. So greatly appreciate the work that you're doing. And we'll continue to have your thoughts with us over the course of time. Charlie and Matt, always a pleasure to be with you. Any last thoughts are, you know, dystopian, or otherwise? You got any dystopian thoughts, man?

Unknown Speaker 30:24
I'm not really an AI are jolly and excited about the future. I don't know. But that vaccines are now widely available in Michigan, you can make your appointment for tomorrow. So do that.

Unknown Speaker 30:36
Yeah, yesterday there were no, it was walk up at the pavilion. I believe. You could you could go right in. So yeah. Fairly.

Unknown Speaker 30:45
Yeah. I mean, I, for me the most, the most positive thing is that despite the resistance, which is very real, we're continuing to get shots in arms in large numbers every day and I have em now my wife and I are completely vaccinated and and that has that has lifted a burden from our shoulders. We feel better about about daily activities than we did a few months ago. And so I I think we're, it may be two steps forward and one step back, but I think we're heading in the right direction.

Unknown Speaker 31:21
Well, I do agree with that. I think people can get vaccinated. wear a mask as prescribed and keep their social distances prescribed wash their hands, I think. I think we'll be turning the corner here soon for sure. Well, that's about all the time we have on this edition of state of the state. My thanks again to Russ white and the staff here at Wk AR for their support of this program. Join us again next month on state of the state

Transcribed by https://otter.ai