Disinformation by Omission

Discourses of Anti-Trans Disinformation on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast

Abstract

As one of the world’s most popular podcasts and boasting a larger audience than mainstream media outlets like CNN (Bozzi, 2025; Mwachiro, 2025), discourses of trans-critical disinformation that are shared on the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) podcast matter greatly. This paper employs corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis (Baker, 2020; Hodson & Lefevre, 2022) to understand discourses related to trans individuals on the JRE podcast, and the ways they may threaten the safety and security of trans people. Using the framework of communicative capitalism (Dean, 2014), the role of precarious masculinity (DiMuccio & Knowles, 2021) in creating an audience for trans-critical disinformation is considered. The results of this study suggest that more needs to be done to raise awareness of and counter the one-sided politicization and dehumanization of trans bodies as expressed by Rogan and most of his podcasts guests.