Muzzling Misinformation: Drawing from Other Disciplines and Engaging Health and Science Journalists as Research Collaborators

Misinformation is part of a treacherous information landscape that cuts across fields, feeding public distrust, harming public health and undermining public policymaking. Research on misinformation crosses disciplinary boundaries, providing wide-ranging knowledge from which health and science journalism research and practice can draw. Journalists, scientists, social media and technology platforms where misinformation ferments and spreads, along with individual recipients, all can play a role in tackling various aspects of the problem. Journalists who cover health and science are important connectors between science and society, and their work can both counteract and contribute to misinformation and its effects. A knowledge-based approach to health and science journalism, in which reporters with training and experience in the areas they cover are able to draw on their own expertise, can help reduce news-spread misinformation. Scholarly critiques of health and science in media have tended, however, to not examine work specifically known to be produced by health and science journalism specialists. Thus, research is needed to explore differences, if any, between the quality and influence of health and science news reports created by health and science journalism specialists, and work created by non-specialists.