"Indeed, one can be deceived in many ways; one can be deceived in believing what is untrue, but on the other hand, one is also deceived in not believing what is true." (Kierkegaard, Soren 13)
More people have gotten their news from sites like Facebook and Twitter in recent years. The essence of information presented on these platforms is growing more influential. The predominance of disinformation, extremism, and hate speech poses a vital difficulty for contemporary dialogue. Disinformation and extremism online have corrupted the democratic process and led to real-world catastrophe. Fake news deceives the people and worsens partisan anxieties, misinforming the constituency and adding to political extremism and the polarization of the people.
Fake news is a skeptical and damaging phenom that threatens democracy; social media platforms must clearly label fraudulent communication because misinformation has led to numerous recent threats to democracy.
In early September of 2020, the companies Facebook and Twitter declared that the Internet Research Agency, an organization supported by Russian military intelligence, was attempting to spread fake news articles on their platforms designed to aid the re-election of President Donald Trump. NPR's Shannon Bond reported, "A second smaller network was also connected to Russian intelligence." (9). The Internet Research Agency produced fraudulent accounts to create a fictitious public for a fraudulent left-wing news website intended to reduce support for Democratic presidential nominee Joseph Biden.
The attack mimicked and proved enhanced attempts by Russian military offices to aid Trump's election in 2016. U.S. intelligence agencies predicted for months that Russia would be attempting related tactics before the 2020 election. Facebook eliminated the accounts and pages affiliated with the news site from its platform and cooperated with Twitter to identify other Russian-connected activities.
Since 2016, several events have occurred that can be traced back to an ancient guidance method. Aristotle described rhetoric as “an ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion” (37). However, this, it seems, only applies to those who are not educated regarding rhetoric. An uneducated mind can be educated of anything, including violet rhetoric. On December 4, 2016, an armed assailant of North Carolina walked into a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., and opened fire. Luckily, employees and customers were capable of escaping uninjured.
The assailant surrendered to police and stated he wanted to "self-investigate" fabrications seen online claiming that the Democratic Party was operating a child-trafficking racket out of the establishment—a conspiracy theory referred to as "Pizzagate." Believers in the conspiracy argued that the assailant was part of an intricate scheme to discredit the theory following the gunman's arrest.
The accusations of Pizzagate were entirely false, and the event granted a glimpse at the potential consequences of the spread of fake news narratives online. David Graham proclaims, "After weeks of debate about the theoretical and abstract dangers of fake news, there’s finally a concrete incident to discuss." (1). History now has evidence of the fraudulent power of this situation.
After the Pizzagate incident, the media wanted to bring more attention to the issue of fraudulent news. Media divided, with more independent media sources supporters instead of a more prominent corporation-fueled news media from these reports. Two days after the Pizzagate situation, the website Counterpunch posted an article by Anthony DiMaggio titled Post-Fact Politics: Reviewing the History of Fake News and Propaganda. The post develops a red herring argument that diverts attention from the Pizzagate situation to the political dilemma regarding propaganda.
Anthony DiMaggio is an author and assistant professor of political science at Lehigh University, and wrote on the website Counterpunch, "I've devoted my academic career to spotlighting propaganda, writing numerous books on the subject. So it's more than a little disturbing when I see references to "propaganda" in the corporate press that completely obscure the broader role that manipulation plays in reinforcing domestic political-economic elites' agendas and in padding the pocketbooks of corporate media conglomerates." (4). He explains that mass media has angered the public, "attempts to recognize propaganda as solely the work of 'others' are desperately out of touch with growing publics anger at the officially-allied media propaganda we euphemistically call 'news.'" (21). Anthony discusses that false narratives are nothing new. He challenges the claim that fraudulent news poses a vital threat by alleging a public exists that grows angry by the allied media that work in unison to produce "news." This type of diversion was one of many attempts to take the attention away from the genuine problem of fake news by creating a what-about-ism. Why was the problem ignored? Why was the light taken away from a hostage situation towards a more historical view? It seems that any media that would try to expose the problem of fake news was quickly given the label in return.
Two months after Pizzagate on February 17, 2017, President Trump, who frequently blamed the media for exaggerating his setbacks, posted a tweet, "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!". (LAVALLÉE 1) In his time in office, he has criticized journalists for neglecting to present adequate admiration for his achievements, and at the time of this tweet, he was only in office for a month. President Trump used this type of rhetoric throughout his one-term presidency; he fueled a narrative where Americans could not trust the media by publicizing the media as Fake News.
Fake News was now the label given to anyone who would present facts against the president and his following. From February 2017 to September 28, 2021, fake news became a term misused by the president and his followers. Everything became fake news, except the underground sources from legions of misinformed followers. This rhetoric is still found throughout the internet today, and it only has one agenda, to create a false reality that praises Trump and his accomplishments.
On March 9, 2018, researchers from MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy Research released a study that examines the spread of false news online. By acknowledging how no studies explain, in detail, why incorrect information may spread differently from the truth. The researchers evaluated differences in the expanse of truth and falsity across issues and examined real and false news on Twitter; to understand the spread of incorrect information. They encourage the spread of false information using Artificial intelligence-powered accounts.
The study concluded that an individual role contributes more to the differential spread of falsity and truth than programmed A.I. does. The researchers proved that a misinformation containment policy should emphasize behavioral interferences, such as labeling and incentives, rather than decreasing the A.I. that researchers used for the study.
So, even with artificial intelligence, humans spread fake news faster than anything. Nevertheless, the power of rhetoric in the narratives of fake news that ignore facts and create false realities, even with the advancement of A.I., is still no match for the power of the people to spread such false realities. Moreover, proof of this will be seen starting in December 2019 after a virus develops in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
On March 9, 2020, President Trump released a tweet, “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”.(@realdonaldtrump). The tweet has been taken down, but a follower can be seen commenting back to Donald Trump, saying, "The fake news media is attempting to put people in a state of panic just so they can hurt the economy and get at Trump. It truly is very sad." (@ real_defender) as several citizens downplayed the virus in the united states fueled by the rhetoric of Donald Trump, the rest of the world prepared to combat the spreading virus.
On March 9, 2020, Italy initiated a nationwide travel lockdown to stop a new coronavirus from spreading. This infectious and sometimes fatal pathogen has spread to more than 140 countries since December 2019. The plan, which affected more than 60 million people in the country, ordered citizens to seek formal approval for any travel not for essential health, work, or family emergency purposes and banned large public functions like weddings and sporting events.
The next day New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D) announced the creation of a one-mile radius containment area in New Rochelle, a small suburb of New York City that had experienced one of the highest concentrations of coronavirus cases in the United States. "New Rochelle at this point is probably the largest cluster in the United States of these cases, and it is a significant issue." (Cuomo 5)People would still be free to move in and out of the area, but large gathering spaces, houses of worship, and schools would be closed. Cuomo also deployed the National Guard to deliver food to homes in the area and disinfect public spaces.
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization announced the global outbreak a pandemic. Stating, " We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic." (WHO 7). Nevertheless, how do two sides both stating completely different themes exist? How can anyone be diverted from the truth to lies? Can people that follow trump obey every word out of his mouth as truth while accepting all media not endorsed by Trump to be liars?
On April 23rd, 2020, President Trump, at a press hearing, said, "And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning," (qtd. in Farly &Kiely) In April, which includes an eight-day period from the 23rd to the 30th, following Trump’s comments, poisonings increased 121% compared to April of 2019. Things settled down some in the first ten days of May, with poisonings up 69% over the same 10-day period in 2019. (CDC) Citizens had tried injecting and ingesting bleach. It seems Donald Trump had developed an audience that would take his word to heart, following every narrative that he established as the absolute truth, no matter how absurd or injurious the outcome might be. President Trump now had an utterly devoted following that started in 2017, and that following would eventually try to dismantle our democracy.
QAnon springs from a series of cryptic clues that started to be posted online in October 2017. Starting on 4Chan before migrating to the even more fringe 8Chan, the anonymous person behind the clues goes by “Q," referring to a high-level government security clearance. The “Anon” in “QAnon” refers to both Q himself and Q’s nameless supporters, the “anons.” (qtd. in Sommer 3), So it is constructed like a conspiracy theory with some high-profile supporters. Q further includes various celebrities as supporters and followers.
Roseanne Barr has frequently tweeted about QAnon and has expressed a desire to meet Q. In July 2018, the sitcom star took to Twitter to share a phrase common among QAn01on supporters "wwg1wga," (@therealroseanne), short for where we go one, we go all. The QAnon tweet was after her tweet in May 2018, which led to ABC canceling her television show. The Twitter quote was, "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj" (ABC cancels Roseanne 11). The VJ referred to Valerie Jarrett, a White House adviser under President Barack Obama.
Was this the agenda all along to gather a mass of racist individuals, both citizens, and celebrities? Was this the same conspiracy theory that guided Pizzagate? From December 5th, 2016, to January 6th, 2020, Q used social media to expand and build a devoted following of delusional citizens and celebrities with the same intentions.
The conflict covering voting rights in the United States came while confidence in the U.S. electoral system among conservative voters was at a deep, possibly historic, low. On November 3, 2020, President Donald Trump had lost his re-election bid to former vice president Joe Biden. The election took place amid a deadly coronavirus pandemic, and many states had expanded the use of mail-in ballots to limit contagion at polling sites.
President Trump had spent months claiming, without evidence, that voting by mail would precipitate widespread voter fraud. After losing, he refused to concede. Instead, the former president presented baseless allegations and conspiracy theories in which he contended that Democrats had stolen the election through fraudulent ballots and rigged vote counts.
His claims culminated in violence on January 6, 2021, when supporters of the president attending a "Stop the Steal" (Kruzel 1) rally in Washington, D.C., violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, where members of Congress were certifying the results of the election. Five people died from injuries sustained amid the unrest. Stop the steal was a slogan used in November 2016. John Kruzel reported, "For weeks, the group stop the steal has used incendiary rhetoric to motivate members to turn up at contested areas tomorrow to participate in a survey of voters leaving polling places." (2)
Since 2016 this type of rhetoric has been used on various social media to mentally fuel like-minded citizens into a hive. Supporters of President Donald Trump display a U.S. flag with the QAnon conspiracy theory symbol outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 (Montanaro 1). It should have been monitored and controlled since Pizzagate, and a deeper investigation would have made it easier to connect the dots.
Karen Douglas, Ph.D., researched the beliefs in conspiracy theories and their consequences. She is a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. On January 13, 2021, a week after the deadly insurrection, she appeared on the podcast Speaking of Psychology. "People are drawn to conspiracy theories in order to satisfy or in an attempt to satisfy three important psychological motives. epistemic motives, existential motives, and social motives." (Douglas 21-23). She describes the three motives in detail, with the first one being Epistemic motive is the requirement for knowledge, a desire to have information on a significant issue. "people with lower levels of education tend to be drawn to conspiracy theories." (Douglas 23). However, not because people lack intelligence, they lack knowledge. The second motive is Existential motives which are people's requirements to feel safe and secure in their environment."So again, when something happens, people don't like to feel powerless. They don't like to feel out of control." (Douglas 23). When a situation is out of our control, a conspiracy theory can explain why we do not have control of the situation. The last motive Dr. Karen discusses is Social motives. "people's desire to feel good about themselves as individuals and also feel good about themselves in terms of the groups that they belong to...Potentially one way of doing that is to feel that you have access to information that other people don't necessarily have." (Douglas 25). We need to stand out among the crowd, uniqueness at the group level when sharing information among like-minded individuals, and uniqueness when possessing information others do not have. Conspiracy theories create a sense of superiority above others. Dr. Karen presents a clearer picture of how anyone can use conspiracy theories against vulnerable citizens of a society. It becomes evident that false information must be given a label.
Now that the United States is under a new administration, it is time to require all public social media domains to require fact-checking and labeling of false information. Social media platforms should require an acknowledgment for all re-posts of false news, leaving the individual a choice to participate in the spread of false news or not do so. It is not suppression. Instead, it is acknowledgment.
Fake news will always exist; therefore, a permanent digital label warning of misinformation should always exist. Doing this might have stopped the progression from Pizzagate to the insurrection. Doing this could have saved lives instead of protecting lies.
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