Makeshift Bombs Sent to Subjects of Major Conspiracy Theories
Where mass communication is used to spread lies and disinformation and smear political enemies, stochastic terrorism follows.
2018
Did a Caravan of Central Americans Beat Up Police in Mexico?
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: The caravan is not an invasion? Look what they do to …
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Will Hurricane Willa Hit a Refugee Caravan in Mexico?
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 …
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Rumors About Caravan of Asylum-Seekers Reach New Heights
As a caravan consisting of thousands of asylum-seekers from Central America drew ever closer to Mexico’s border with the United States to prepare to turn themselves in to border authorities en masse and request asylum, the usual fearmongering suspects did what they do best: whipping up racial hatred with disinformation and propaganda. “Democrat approved migrant …
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Did Vladimir Putin Say the United States’ Influence in the World Is ‘Waning’?
Russian president Vladimir Putin criticized the United States in his annual address to the nation in October 2018, saying that American influence in the world has irrevocably waned. Left-leaning political news site AmericanIndependent.com reported on his comments in a story that was later picked up by Shareblue.com: Speaking about the position of the U.S. on …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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