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What a 17th century misinformation campaign can teach about today’s use of conspiracy theories to destabilize society
“King James I of England and VI of Scotland” by Daniel Mijtens, 1621.
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Long before the internet, social media and other modern forms of communication, the information-hungry people of 17th century England published pamphlets to disseminate news and spread memes via “verse libels” – nasty poems shared through conversation or inserted into song lyrics.
And even then, they contended with the problem of “fake news” – conspiracy theories spread through these media to undermine the political discourse.
Alastair Bellany, chair of Rutgers University-New Brunswick’s history department in the School of Arts and Sciences, discusses how the death of one early-modern English king spurred a viral conspiracy theory that, through pamphlets and word of mouth, contributed to the execution of the next king – and whether parallels can be drawn to our own age of QAnon-fueled and politically driven lies about everything from vaccines to election integrity.