The ‘All Democrats Voted Against a Social Security Raise’ Meme 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 […]
Did United States President Donald Trump Praise an Elected Official Who Body Slammed Reporter? In late October 2018, as the hideous story of journalist and United States resident Jamal Khashoggi‘s disappearance and suspected brutal murder at the behest of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince continued to unfold, the Trump administration and its allies appeared to brush off any sense of urgency about ongoing investigations. “My assessment from these meetings is that […]
The Truth About the Migrant Caravan Approaching the United States 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 […]
Is the Media Covering Up ‘the Real Story’ About Jamal Khashoggi? 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 […]
Foreign Influence Operations Infiltrated, Polarized Online Communities 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 Case of the Monsanto Deer 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 […]
Voting Rights and Provisional Ballots The United States’ 2018 midterm elections approached with far more fanfare than is normal for what is usually a relatively sleepy electoral affair, including an unusual focus on voter disenfranchisement. Stories of people discovering that they were suddenly not eligible to vote and and other voter suppression tactics appeared over and over again: In Georgia, a coalition of […]
Did the Supreme Court Make Voting More Difficult in a Key Battleground State? As the 2018 midterms approached in the United States, the national conversation turned more and more toward the right to vote — and whether all Americans are truly able to exercise that right. The conversation took a new turn just weeks before the November 6th election, when the Supreme Court declined to overturn a controversial […]
The Friends, the Video, and the Bear in the Bucket October 2018 was, like the months immediately preceding it, a seemingly endless march of stressful news stories and increasing political tensions globally as elections loomed in countries around the world. That naturally led a subsection of internet regulars to seek out more uplifting, simple stories, preferably those involving rescuing cute animals. The Daily Mail got in on […]
Pro-Choice Activist Breaks World Record With 27th Abortion? A story about a woman cheerfully embarking on her 27th straight abortion hit social media in October 2018, shocking readers who learned about Elena Travis, the 34-year-old med school student with an unusual hobby (but a heart of gold): The historic operation was performed at the Sacramento Street Health Center and required Elena Travis, 34, […]
