Always profound. Chaplin was a champion. As Voltaire, Twain, Carlin, Pryor, and far, Far too many to name throughout history show us, tyrants cannot abide being laughed at, and Humor is ever their weakness.
Eighty three years ago, Charlie Chaplin skewered the Nazis in his satire The Great Dictator. Nicholas Barber looks at how the film has wider relevance today.
The Great Dictator: The film that dared to laugh at Hitler
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U. K. H., Tay, L. Q., Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S., Cook, J., Oreskes, N., & Lewandowsky, S. (2024). Why misinformation must not be ignored. American Psychologist.Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001448
Recent academic debate has seen the emergence of the claim that misinformation is not a significant societal problem.
We argue that the arguments used to support this minimizing position are flawed, particularly if interpreted (e.g., by policymakers or the public) as suggesting that misinformation can be safely ignored. Here, we rebut the two main claims, namely that misinformation is not of substantive concern (a) due to its low incidenceand (b) because it has no causal influence on notable political or behavioral outcomes.
Through a critical review of the current literature, we demonstrate that (a) the prevalence of misinformation is nonnegligible if reasonably inclusive definitions are applied and that (b) misinformation has causal impacts on important beliefs and behaviors. Both scholars and policymakers should therefore continue to take misinformation seriously.
