Opinion: Yesterday's Witch Hunts and Today's Misinformation Crisis Have Much in Common

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Opinion | Yesterday’s Witch Hunts and Today’s Misinformation Crisis Have Much in Common

by Julie Walsh
August 13, 2025

An illustration from “The History of Witches and Wizards,” published in 1720, depicting witches offering wax dolls to the devil. Wellcome Collection/Wikimedia Commons

Between 1400 and 1780, an estimated 100,000 people—mostly women—were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe. About half that number were executed, killings motivated by a constellation of beliefs about women, truth, evil and magic.

But the witch hunts could not have had the reach they did without the media machinery that made them possible: an industry of printed manuals that taught readers how to find and exterminate witches.

I regularly teach a class on philosophy and witchcraft, where we discuss the religious, social, economic and philosophical contexts of early modern witch hunts in Europe and colonial America. I also teach and research the ethics of digital technologies.

These fields aren’t as different as they seem. The parallels between the spread of false information in the witch-hunting era and in today’s online information ecosystem are striking and instructive.
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https://www.mississippifreepress.org/opinion-yesterdays-witch-hunts-and-todays-misinformation-crisis-have-much-in-common/