On October 25th, 2018, as bots and paid trolls pushed talking points on social media about a caravan of people from Honduras on their way to Mexico’s border with the United States to turn themselves in to seek asylum, the Judicial Watch blog published a shocking story about seven children who were saved from human […]
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has referred a possible scam to the Federal Bureau of Investigation after a number of reporters were contacted by someone apparently shopping a story about him sexually assaulting unidentified women: 13 days ago I received this tip alleging an attempt to pay off women to make up accusations of sexual misconduct […]
On October 30th, 2018, three days after a Pennsylvania white supremacist stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue with guns and murdered eleven people during a service and four days after a Florida man was arrested for mailing a series of glass-packed pipe bombs to public figures, United States President Donald Trump spoke out at length not against […]
In the final days of October 2018, after a series of glass-packed pipe bombs were delivered to high-profile critics of United States President Donald Trump, rumors ran wild about who the suspect was and what he wanted.
Few of these theories were organi Go to site post…»
As a group of desperate women, men, and children traveled north from Central America to try to turn themselves in at the United States border in the hopes of receiving asylum, disinformation and smears about the group and their motives flew thick and fast: An image shared by Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice […]
As a group of desperate women, men, and children traveled north from Central America to try to turn themselves in at the United States border in the hopes of receiving asylum, disinformation and smears about the group and their motives flew thick and f Go to site post…»
As a caravan of thousands of hopeful asylum-seekers from Central America continued to swell as the annual pilgrimage entered Mexico, so did rumors about them in the United States. One such rumor appeared on October 21, 2018, just after the group left Guatemala and entered Mexico: It appears that the migrant caravan, which has been […]
As a caravan of thousands of hopeful asylum-seekers from Central America continued to swell as the annual pilgrimage entered Mexico, so did rumors about them in the United States.
One such rumor appeared on October 21, 2018, just after the group left G Go to site post…»
Weeks before the 2018 United States’ midterm elections, propaganda from across the political spectrum flew thick and fast. Some of it contained grains of truth, while other stories were completely made up, such as a particularly lazy cut-and-paste meme that appeared in mid-October: The meme asks rhetorically, without citation or supporting evidence: Were any of you aware […]
Weeks before the 2018 United States’ midterm elections, propaganda from across the political spectrum flew thick and fast. Some of it contained grains of truth, while other stories were completely made up, such as a particularly lazy cut-and-pas Go to site post…»
On October 18th, 2018, United States President Donald Trump fired off a volley of tweets about a large caravan of people wending their way from Honduras to the southern United States border: These statements were duly picked up and breathlessly repeated by news channels and pundits, spreading the story with crucial context omitted from the story, such […]
On October 18th, 2018, United States President Donald Trump fired off a volley of tweets about a large caravan of people wending their way from Honduras to the southern United States border:
These statements were duly picked up and breathlessly repea Go to site post…»
A hideous story unspooled before the international media in October 2018, when Saudi Arabian journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi — who had been living in Washington, D.C. after fleeing his home country a year before due to persistent death threats in response to his criticism of its government — abruptly vanished. On Monday, sources told CNN […]
A hideous story unspooled before the international media in October 2018, when Saudi Arabian journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi — who had been living in Washington, D.C. after fleeing his home country a year before due to pers Go to site post…»
The ongoing scandals over data privacy, in which social media giants were found to be (among other things) flooding selected readers with hypertargeted and corrosive political advertising, is still unfolding — and it will continue to evolve for some time as new pieces of evidence and data are unearthed and put together to get a […]
The ongoing scandals over data privacy, in which social media giants were found to be (among other things) flooding selected readers with hypertargeted and corrosive political advertising, is still unfolding — and it will continue to evolve for some Go to site post…»
A photograph of a deer riddled with skin tumors appeared on social media in October 2018 with a description that appeared to be a quote, but without any citation or link: A deer that became riddled with tumors from eating plants sprayed with Monsanto’s Roundup. It seems fairly common. This description is inaccurate, as a […]
A photograph of a deer riddled with skin tumors appeared on social media in October 2018 with a description that appeared to be a quote, but without any citation or link:
A deer that became riddled with tumors from eating plants sprayed with Monsanto&# Go to site post…»
Fake news can vary widely in quality and believably from source to source, but quite often identifying it is as easy as taking a moment to learn who is behind a that particular website or social media account. Frequently the creators of fake news put quantity ahead of quality and they are counting on the […]
Imagine, if you will: A presidential election in which even the most basic facts are riddled with confusing disinformation, a far-right candidate appealing to authoritarians and repulsing many women with misogynistic comments, and connections to political aspirants such as Marine Le Pen and Steve Bannon. This is Brazil in 2018, and the person who was […]
Testing for a new cellular phone alert system (the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, also known as IPAWS) began on October 3rd, 2018, with a tone and a message sent across mobile networks. The grumbling began almost immediately, as startled or irritated Americans reacted to the unsolicited (but anticipated) test, but the griping turned […]
In early October 2018, many people in the United States and abroad were closely watching the twists and turns around a Supreme Court nomination as multiple women accused the nominee of committing or abetting sexual assault. Almost immediately, bots, trolls, and useful idiots picked up on the controversy, muddying the waters with rumors, gossip, and […]
The “Star Wars” franchise was not immune from the sort of controversy that has seeped into every tiny nook and cranny of the American public discourse, thanks to the ubiquity of social media and those who wish to exploit conflicts in order to create chaos. In that vein, the film Star Wars: The Last Jedi was […]
The days following a September 27th, 2018 hearing before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, in which Palo Alto University professor and Stanford research psychologist Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh violently assaulted her during a party more than three decades before, swirled with increasingly bizarre stories about a grand conspiracy. […]
As the United States debated putting Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court despite multiple assault allegations, rumors began to fly about a hearing the previous day, including a bombshell that purportedly appeared in the Wall Street Journal: WSJ: Mitchell advised Republicans that to continue questioning Kavanaugh she was required by her oath in Arizona to […]
On the eve of a scheduled hearing for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor who has credibly accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a party in 1982, what looked like a potential bombshell story appeared on social media: Senate Judiciary Rs release a Kavanaugh investigative summary that includes: -an […]
On March 4, 2018, the quiet and picturesque British town of Salisbury was rocked by the discovery of former Russian military officer Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia Skripal foaming at their mouths on a bench outside an Italian restaurant. The culprit: Novichok, a nerve agent known to have been developed and used by […]
In order to boost circulation and rake in more advertising money, hoax and satire sites will sometimes re-run some of their older work hoping to catch clicks while the topics of their stories are once again relevant. This is a common practice with many media sites, but satirical or fake stories can wind up getting […]
As the political fervor roiled around sexual assault accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in September 2018, a number of explanations and excuses for his purported behavior appeared even before the details of the reports were widely known. Some of these excuses bordered on the mystical; others ignored the border and just went straight […]
Hyperpartisan social media pages and bots used yet another fake quote in order to attempt to drum up criticism against Canada's leader. Go to site post…»
Attempts at "whataboutism" with a scandal involving social media and psychographics fail to acknowledge that Cambridge Analytica obtained data by misleading people. Go to site post…»
The State Department allowed a 29 January 2018 deadline to pass without imposing new sanctions authorized in an August 2017 bill signed by President Donald Trump. Go to site post…»
The National Intelligence Service admitted to using "extra-departmental teams" to drum up support for conservative Park Geun-hye, who later resigned amid corruption charges. Go to site post…»
