The Rogan incident is an example of how we’ve preserved the rhetoric about the value of debate even as our discourse has moved to digital platforms that undermine that value.Īs a mass-communication scholar and educator who studies the social effects of our ongoing shift toward networked digital media, I think of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, seven events that unfolded over the course of nearly two months as part of the 1858 campaign to represent Illinois in the U.S. But not all debates are created equal, and thus not all are worth indulging.
Debate is part of this process: Humans are not all-knowing, and effective discourse can sharpen our views. Still, it’s worth addressing the claim that someone ought to debate when challenged, because it invokes the heart of the democratic ideal.ĭemocracy depends on citizens charting society’s course via their elected leaders, and by extension, an informed electorate is better able to choose those leaders wisely. As often happens on social media, the argument went nowhere and both sides stood their ground.
Within hours, their Twitter acolytes were hard at work trying to shame Hotez into saying yes. has cultivated, the tweets sparked a kind of pressure campaign that ratcheted up quickly. Given the audiences that Rogan and Musk command and the following that RFK Jr. graciously accepted, leading Elon Musk to muse that Hotez was scared of debate. with no time limit, offering to donate $100,000 to charity as an incentive. In response, Rogan challenged Hotez to come on his show and debate RFK Jr. Kennedy Jr., lamenting the fact that a podcast with millions of listeners lent its megaphone to a notorious spreader of vaccine misinformation. Last weekend, the vaccine scientist Peter Hotez criticized the influential podcaster Joe Rogan for hosting Robert F.
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