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Posted via journalist | July 21, 2024
A former president is injured in a shootout, the shooter is temporarily neutralized, and everything is filmed. But for those who can’t see, this is just the beginning of the story.
For some supporters of convicted felon Donald Trump, the fact that the Secret Service failed to save the assassination attempt on the former Republican president indicates a conspiracy orchestrated by Democratic President Joe Biden. For some of Trump’s critics, however, the main problems with the shooting didn’t go up. They wonder if Trump didn’t level everything out.
Two rival conspiracy theories have taken root online in the wake of Trump’s assassination attempt, one at each end of the polarized United States political spectrum. In this split-screen republic, Americans opt for their own reality, to the detriment of a habitual understanding of the facts.
“One screen, two movies” is how Ron Bassilian describes the online reaction to the July 13 shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania. Bassilian is a prolific social media user and has used X to spread his hypothesis about the shooting. “People have their ideals and they will propose theories that are compatible with their ideals. »
Bassilian is one of many Republicans now wondering how the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to climb to the roof of a building, offering a transparent view of Trump, and whether law enforcement looked away to authorize the attempt.
Bassilian claimed that he had no evidence for his conjecture. But the Culver City, California, resident said many other people will be wary of the explanations until an independent review of the facts is completed.
“It sounds very suspicious,” Bassilian said of the attack on Trump and the authorities’ response. “There is more than just a mistake. “
Authorities have not released any information about Crooks’ conceivable motives, although they said they believe he acted alone. But a lack of main points from authorities and growing doubts about the Secret Service’s functionality have led online sleuths to speculate, occasionally in a way that shows their own ideological leanings.
Some allegations related to the shooting have already been denied. Despite claims that the Secret Service refused to provide Trump with additional protection ahead of the rally, the company says it has higher staffing levels.
A post by a user claiming to be a law enforcement sniper at the demonstration, who said he had ordered not to shoot the shooter, was debunked after it was shown that no sniper in his call was running on July 13. And a photo purporting to show a Trump unharmed after the rally turned out to be a symbol of 2022.
Humans have an inherent willingness to share data and guesses after major events such as disasters, political assassinations, or unexplained events, a process that experts call “collective meaning-making. “
Often, experts say, we look for data that allows us to feel safe or unsafe. The shooting of Trump is just the most recent example in a list that also includes the JFK assassination, the moon landing, the September 11, 2001 attacks, Hurricane Sandy’s Hook school shooting, COVID-19, and the January 6, 2021 insurrection attack on the United States Capitol.
Many of the allegations about Trump’s assassination attempt first gave the impression of appearing on fringe social media platforms like 4chan before migrating to larger sites like X or TikTok, where they were noticed by many more people.
“In those situations, human beings make rumors in general,” said Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington who studies misinformation and how other people use the Internet after crises. Attempts to place the shooting in a political context began within minutes of the shooting, Starbird said: “People were looking almost from the beginning to frame the occasion in a way that would benefit their political goals. »
Many of those rumors would possibly involve exaggerations, lack of context, or outright lies that spawn conspiracy theories. The misleading data is then amplified through online trolls, politicians, influencers, and online marketers trying to sell products similar to the assassination attempt.
With few security barriers to combat misinformation online, such accusations can spread temporarily, have an effect on the 2024 election, and potentially persist for years.
The flood of false or misleading data about the shooting will make it harder for voters to locate reliable data ahead of the 2024 election, according to Imran Ahmed, executive director and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that tracks erroneous data online. Hate speech.
Ahmed criticized social media platforms for failing to enforce fundamental content moderation policies and making the spread of misinformation and hate speech a lucrative business model.
Social media platforms have recently subsidized content moderation efforts aimed at preventing the spread of bad data. While some sites like Facebook and Instagram still ban data that could alter an election, others like X rely on other users to correct falsehoods.
Ahmed’s organization analyzed 100 messages about the shooting advised users of X, Twitter’s former platform, and found that many of them contained conspiracy theories. Only about 1 in 20 fake posts were flagged for inaccuracies or for lack of Context X’s “community note” feature for uploading the required information.
In two days, the posts were viewed more than 215 million times. Some viral posts also contained hate speech, such as those suggesting that the shooting was a plot among Jewish people.
“Algorithms take the most outlandish content and magnify it exponentially until the entire virtual world is flooded with conspiracy, misinformation and hate,” Ahmed said. As a result, he said, “people seem to think they can fight lies with more lies. ” »
Russian state media and some pro-Kremlin influencers are already seizing on the shooting with content blaming Democrats for what happened or questioning the authorities’ explanations, in recent posts by users with ties to Russia.
“It almost looks like they let it happen and then got rid of this guy because dead men don’t tell any stories,” wrote John Mark Dougan, a former Florida sheriff’s deputy turned online influencer who now writes pro-Kremlin content.
Russia, along with China and Iran, has used disinformation on social media in the past to try to undermine Americans’ belief in government and democracy and generate polarization in the run-up to the election.
The purpose is to tap into the understandable confusion, anger, and fear that many Americans feel in the wake of the assassination attempt. Federal officials say they expect Russia and other adversaries to expand their disinformation campaigns in the United States as November approaches.
Conspiracy theories have played a huge role in recent American politics, with much of the attention focused on right-wing theories such as QAnon, a motion claiming that there is evidence that Democrats are involved in a global ring of satanic cannibals who abuse children.
But the avalanche of misinformation and conspiracy theories that followed the assassination shows that conspiracy theories know no party.
“They are targeting the left and the right, and the same applies to the internal resources of the dissidents,” said David Salvo, senior researcher and executive director of the Alliance for Security for Democracy, a Washington-based organization that Track the various foreigners. He provides this recommendation to anyone who needs to locate reliable, reliable data on the shooting: “Check your resources and check the timeline of those resources. “
David Klepper
Associated Press
WASHINGTON DC
Gene J. Puskar (AP), Evan Vucci (AP) and Eric Gay (AP)