Allissa to join Columbia U as Tow Fellow
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University has funded my new research collaboration with Dr. Miya Williams Fayne! We’ll spend the next year studying how Black digital news outlets combat racialized misinformation during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Here is our project summary:
The coronavirus pandemic is a hoax, said the self-proclaimed right-wing “opinionators,” Diamond and Silk on their popular YouTube channel, in March 2020. The FOX News contributors added that all COVID-19 news was “fake news,” which was designed to threaten Pres. Donald Trump’s path to re-election.
The irony of these statements is that they were uttered by African American women, whose community would be ravaged by the global pandemic in the weeks to come. But, in the meantime, Diamond and Silk used most of March to spread more misinformation to their 1.2 million subscribers. They bandied about ideas of “black immunity.” They dismissed the deadly symptoms as flu-like. They even suggested that official death tolls were fabricated by left-leaning activists. By May 2020, it was clear that Diamond & Silk were wrong. The U.S. COVID-19 death toll reached 100,000, and African Americans were its disproportionate victims.
Protests from Black Twitter — to “de-platform” Diamond and Silk — bore fruit quickly. Fox News cut ties with the women reportedly because “they promulgated unproven and dangerous medical advice, false claims, conspiracy theories and misinformation.” While it is unclear how much of the duo’s rhetoric influenced the actual behavior of African Americans, it is evident that medical misinformation did indeed infect many black digital outlets and social media spaces. Herein lies the research interest. Our project will investigate how black digital news outlets handle this ongoing, racialized infodemic. We want to know how they are providing solid facts to a vulnerable community—even as the historic distrust that many black people have for medicine (and the media) grows.
Here’s the official announcement from the Tow Center. I’ve admired the program for many years now. I am excited to be a Knight Innovation Fellow in this esteemed program. I’m looking forward to analyzing the data that Dr. Miya and I find!