Witch Hunts: Seventeenth Century Fake News

In a three-and-a-half minute clip on the PBS site, you can learn about “fake news” in terms of of witch hunts. Did you know there was a “Witchfinder General” in England and he was responsible for the deaths of over 200 innocent people in the 1600s? He wrote a book that offered advice on finding witches and dispensing with them. His work and the work of others contributed to a misinformation movement that resulted in the executions of 40,000 innocent people, mostly women.

In the PBS program, Networld, historian Niall Ferguson explores the spread of social movements and information across the world’s networks - from the Reformation spreading because of the European printing revolution to the spread of information across the internet via social media networks that is ubiquitous in 2020. Among the many facets of the study of the spread of information is the viral spread of misinformation. To watch all three episodes of the Networld series, login to PBS with the PBS passport.