At least 30 Dutch podcasts structurally spread misinformation

Famous people drinking children’s blood, HIV in corona vaccines and population theory, a term used by PPV’er Reinette Klever, among others. These cases fall under conspiracy theories and, according to the journalistic platform Pointer, are the subject of at least 30 Dutch podcasts.

These podcasts are said to structurally spread medical misinformation and conspiracy theories, according to research by Pointer. About 33 percent of these podcasts can be found in podcast charts. Remarkable, because in principle this goes against the guidelines of Spotify, YouTube and Apple. These podcasts can therefore be found on those platforms. This would include podcasts such as De Nieuwe Wereld, Cafe Weltschmerz and The Great Cosmic Show.

Conspiracy theory

When a topic is a conspiracy theory? The definition is that a conspiracy theory is the belief that an event is the result of a secret plan. For example, according to the AIVD, the blackmail theory is a factually incorrect conspiracy theory. The idea here is that the elite would deliberately allow migrants and people of color to ‘displace’ white, Western culture.

Pointer used AI to analyze 150,000 podcast episodes from 2022 and 2023. They searched for terms that are often used when medical misinformation and conspiracy theories are spread. The fragments that emerged from this were 7,500 and were further analyzed by people. If there were those individual episodes with misinformation, the podcast was considered a conspiracy podcast.

Podcasts that spread misinformation

So there may be many more podcasts that share misinformation, but which, for example, involve other conspiracy theories that may not have been searched for yet. The focus in this research was also very much on corona, which was of course also a hot topic in recent years.

Apple and Spotify have not responded to Pointer, writes the NOSbut YouTube took videos offline from four channels after sharing the research results.

Read more about conspiracy theories and subscribe to our newsletter.

Source: www.bright.nl