Why Google hires anthropologists to talk to conspiracy theorists

A couple of years ago, staff at a Google “tech incubator” called Jigsaw made an important breakthrough: they realised that while their company has come to epitomise the power of technology, there are some problems that computers alone cannot solve. Or not, at least, without humans.

Jigsaw, wrestling with the problem of online misinformation, quietly turned to anthropologists. These social scientists have since fanned across America and Britain to do something that never occurred to most techies before: meet conspiracy theorists face-to-face — or at least on video platforms — and spend hours listening to them, observing them with the diligence that anthropologists might employ if they encountered a remote community in, say, Papua New Guinea.

“Algorithms are powerful tools. But there are other approaches that can help,” explains Yasmin Green, director of research and development at Jigsaw, which is based in an achingly cool, futuristic office in Manhattan’s Chelsea district, near the High Line. Or, as Dan Keyserling, Jigsaw chief operating officer, puts it: “[We’re using] behavioural science approaches to make people more resilient to misinformation.”

The results were remarkable. Previously, groups such as anti-vaxxers seemed so utterly alien to techies that they were easy to scorn — and it was hard to guess what might prompt them to change their minds. But when the Jigsaw team summoned anthropologists from a consultancy called ReD Associates, who listened with open-minded curiosity to people, it became clear that many of the engineers’ prior assumptions about causation in cyber space were wrong. 

For example, the techies had assumed that “debunking” sites needed to look professional, since that was what they associated with credibility. But conspiracy theorists thought that “smart” sites looked like they were manufactured by the elite — something that matters if you want to counter such theories.

So these days Google’s staff is trying to blend anthropology with psychology, media studies and, yes, data science to create tools that might “inoculate” more internet users against dangerous misinformation. “We can’t do this just based on what we assume works. We need empathy,” says Beth Goldberg, Jigsaw research project manager, who was trained in political science but has now also acquired anthropology skills.

Will it fix the issue? Sadly not by itself, given the deep-seated societal roots of the problem. Nor will a dose of anthropology magically remove the anger that many people feel about the power of tech giants, and the sometimes irresponsible ways in which they have behaved. But the experiment has already had one benefit: it has made some Google techies understand what they don’t understand with their data tools — and why techies sometimes need “fuzzies”, or people with qualitative, not quantitative, analyses. As Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has observed, Silicon Valley would have probably built a much better internet and social media world if it had employed social scientists alongside computer scientists at the outset. 

eddie wrote:I really dislike the term “conspiracy theorists”. Just because something is believed that is different to “popular belief” doesn’t mean it’s a conspiracy at all.

Labels. They are so restrictive.

Ben Reilly wrote:I like Maddog's definition, I tend to agree.

For example, if you think Covid may have come from a lab, you're not a conspiracy theorist. But if you think that Bill Gates hired the Chinese to manufacture Covid so that he could cash in by investing in vaccines, that's a conspiracy theory.

eddie wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:I like Maddog's definition, I tend to agree.

For example, if you think Covid may have come from a lab, you're not a conspiracy theorist. But if you think that Bill Gates hired the Chinese to manufacture Covid so that he could cash in by investing in vaccines, that's a conspiracy theory.

It might be called “a conspiracy theory” but it still doesn’t mean that it can’t be true. Nobody will ever truly know, will they?

Not saying I think the Bill Gates thing is true btw, but if we found out it was true, I wouldn’t be at all shocked or surprised.

Ben Reilly wrote:I like Maddog's definition, I tend to agree.

For example, if you think Covid may have come from a lab, you're not a conspiracy theorist. But if you think that Bill Gates hired the Chinese to manufacture Covid so that he could cash in by investing in vaccines, that's a conspiracy theory.

eddie wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:I like Maddog's definition, I tend to agree.

For example, if you think Covid may have come from a lab, you're not a conspiracy theorist. But if you think that Bill Gates hired the Chinese to manufacture Covid so that he could cash in by investing in vaccines, that's a conspiracy theory.

It might be called “a conspiracy theory” but it still doesn’t mean that it can’t be true. Nobody will ever truly know, will they?

Not saying I think the Bill Gates thing is true btw, but if we found out it was true, I wouldn’t be at all shocked or surprised.

eddie wrote:Well I find a lot of media stories are believed without much proof apart from the story was reported in the media. As you know, I’m always committed to be open-minded about everything I read, which means I sit on the fence.

In any case, the term “conspiracy theorist” doesn’t describe absolutely everybody that is tarred with that brush. There are varying degrees, as there are with every group of people.

Ben Reilly wrote:

eddie wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:I like Maddog's definition, I tend to agree.

For example, if you think Covid may have come from a lab, you're not a conspiracy theorist. But if you think that Bill Gates hired the Chinese to manufacture Covid so that he could cash in by investing in vaccines, that's a conspiracy theory.

It might be called “a conspiracy theory” but it still doesn’t mean that it can’t be true. Nobody will ever truly know, will they?

Not saying I think the Bill Gates thing is true btw, but if we found out it was true, I wouldn’t be at all shocked or surprised.

But my point is that I don't know why anybody would say that's true, or believe it, without proof.