Has Denmark Offered to Buy the United States From Russia?
Timely geopolitical satire was mistaken for a real story by some presumably exhausted readers.
Is Donald Trump Deleting Anti-Immigrant Tweets?
In the hours after a mass shooter at a mall in El Paso, Texas left at least 22 people dead, rumors flew that the President of the United States was deleting relevant tweets.
Have Arrest Warrants Been Issued for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?
Despite fears of “deepfake” videos and other high-tech ways disinformation could potentially proliferate in the very near future, the stories that still get the most traction are often decidedly low effort. Take, for example, the case of a May 2019 story with the provocative headline “Panel of 16 Judges Agrees: Barr Has Enough to Indict Clinton …
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Did Malia Obama Cash a $1.2 Million Check?
A headline about former First Daughter Malia Obama (archived here) depositing a suspiciously large check got a lot of traction on social media in June 2019: However, this story is suspect for two reasons. First, it contains little beyond a provocative headline, a photograph, and a few lines of text: Malia Obama cashed a check for …
Scams and Hoax Accounts Proliferate on Instagram
April 2019 saw the culmination of a months-long popular uprising in the country of Sudan, when its former president Omar al-Bashir stepped down from his post. The Sudanese military quickly took control of the country in what it called a transitional phase. In the weeks following al-Bashir’s ouster, however, clashes became both deadlier and more …
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Donald Trump’s British Fans?
In June 2019, as United States President Donald Trump visited Britain to meet with the royal family and elected officials, a photograph purportedly of his English fans appeared on social media and made the usual rounds. One popular variation (archived here) came with additional commentary about how the media refuses to tell the story of …
Trump Rally vs. Live Aid
In May 2019, a suspicious looking meme began to make the usual rounds on social media. It shows a huge crowd of people packing a venue raptly gazing at a stage bearing “Trump 2020” signs on either side, with a third Trump banner over the audience: The text over the photograph said: No, this is …
Does a ‘Leaked’ British Intelligence Document Prove Trump Wiretapping Claims?
In April 2019, in the days and weeks following the release of a heavily anticipated (and heavily redacted) Special Counsel’s report on interference into the 2016 United States presidential elections, rumors and speculation reinvigorated a March 2017 conspiracy theory that British intelligence spied on the Trump campaign for the Obama administration: President Trump provoked a rare public dispute with …
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‘They Pushed Her’ Facebook Post
On April 17 2019, a Facebook post (archived here) began circulating, purporting to tell the tragic story (“they pushed her”) of a young girl named Carmen Winstead, as well as the fates of the classmates responsible for her death: They pushed her After lunch, her teacher announced that the school was holding a fire drill. …
Retaliatory Attack on Christian Church in Pakistan?
On March 18 2019, just days after a right-wing extremist traveled from Australia to Christchurch, New Zealand to murder fifty people at two mosques during Friday prayers, British conservative commentator Theodora Dickinson posted a video of a burning building on Twitter with the following commentary: In response to the New Zealand mosque attacks, Islamists have …
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