Misinformation floods social media in wake of breakneck news cycle

A weeks-long, breakneck news cycle has set off a parallel explosion of misinformation online, which experts warn could make it harder to parse out what is real versus what is fake as the 2024 election gets underway.

In the span of just two weeks, the political landscape has been transformed, starting with the attempted assassination of former President Trump. The shooting, coupled with the dismissal of one of his most serious federal indictments, led straight into a jubilant Republican National Convention where he was officially selected as the next GOP nominee. Shortly after, the Secret Service director resigned over the security failure surrounding the attempt on Trump’s life.

That was followed just days later by President Biden’s announcement that he was withdrawing from the race, itself a fervent news cycle weeks in the making as Biden faced mounting pressure from Democrats to drop out after an abysmal debate performance on June 27.

Now, the world is adjusting to Vice President Harris as the next likely Democratic nominee — something that seemed unthinkable just months ago.

The extraordinary sequence of events gave Americans little time to digest the influx of news, creating the perfect breeding ground for false claims to take hold.

“It actually feels kind of natural that we would have a lot of conspiracy theories,” said Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory researcher.

Misinformation and disinformation have been cited as a potential risk since the start of this year, as billions of people headed to the polls to vote in elections around the world. Since the attempted assassination of Trump earlier this month, conspiracy theories, false information and misleading information have circulated online, sometimes at ferocious speeds.

Some of the misinformation included false allegations that Trump’s assassination attempt was “staged” and that the shooter had been identified before authorities officially released that information. A made-up statement purporting to be from the office of former President Jimmy Carter suggested he had died, when he had not.

When Biden announced he would bow out of the race just after testing positive for COVID-19, conspiracy theories quickly emerged that the president had been gripped by terminal illness or had died. Those false allegations were amplified by conspiracist Alex Jones, right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk and other prominent social media users.

The unprecedented nature of the news cycle has also given way to misleading conjecture about Harris, including about the circumstances of her rise within the Democratic Party.

Right-wing activist and columnist Matt Walsh, for example, shared a post to his 2.9 million followers on the social platform X about Harris’s start in politics and relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown three decades ago.

Harris’s relationship with Brown has previously been used against her, including in 2020 when she campaigned for the presidential nomination. They dated in the 1990s, years after he was separated from his wife.

“That has been leveraged against probably almost every single female politician — ever, anywhere,” Alice Marwick, co-director of the University of North Carolina’s Center for Information, Technology and Public Life, said of suggestions Harris has used the past relationship to professionally advance.

“That’s not new,” she continued. “But because these are so timeworn — because these are so comfortable, these are tropes that people are familiar with — they can be very sticky, and as a result, it’s very easy to tie them into more nefarious or conspiratorial things.”

The same can be said of swirling allegations that Harris’s political success is because of her race, said Freddy Cruz, a researcher and program manager at the Western States Center. He pointed to baseless claims from some Republicans that Harris was a “DEI hire,” selected to advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the White House, or that the “deep state” pushed Biden out for a more favorable Harris.

Several experts drew parallels to former President Obama’s political rise, which was mired in conspiracy theories as he sought to become the country’s first Black president. Most prominent was the unfounded claim that Obama was not born in America, and thus was constitutionally ineligible to be president. Trump, then a celebrity and businessman, was among the most high-profile adherents of the false theory.

“We’re sort of seeing this as a kind of full-circle moment,” Cruz said.

It’s not unusual for historic events to spawn conspiracy theories. False narratives have spanned American history, from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and COVID-19 pandemic.

Rothschild said people are wired to seek patterns and find “order in chaos,” sometimes causing people to connect dots where they’re not meant to.

Anonymous accounts have gained popularity over the years, with Elon Musk’s X paying content creators and monetizing viral posts based on engagement metrics.

Social media companies relaxing their content moderation policies is “the biggest irony” for the right wing, according to Joan Donovan, a professor of journalism and emerging media studies at Boston University, because Republicans are also often at the center of such misinformation.

According to Walter Scheirer, the author of “A History of Fake Things on the Internet,” the misinformation, disinformation, and political satire that people take as real information and then amplify at breakneck speed won’t let up anytime soon as people continue to be consumed by social media.

“The onus is now on users themselves to kind of fact-check and figure out if something is real,” he said.

Memes are another area proving problematic, Scheirer said, because they are often encapsulated as a joke.

“Because it’s funny, it sort of draws you in. And then all of a sudden you’re taking a deeper dive. And there are lots of communities creating memes for different purposes, but they’re a pretty effective vector for misinformation,” Scheirer added.

With just 100 days to go until the November presidential election, taking a cautious approach to information online can help minimize the spread of false claims, Rothschild said.

“What people can do is log off and really try to take a breath,” he said.

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