2020 US Election Misinformation Round-Up

October 10, 2020

Trump’s Health

There is continuing uncertainty over Trump’s health and in a void of official and trustworthy information, misinformation spreads. Journalists haven’t heard from Trump’s doctors since Monday. He hasn’t appeared before the White House press corps. But he has been firing on all cylinders with pre-recorded videos, tweets, and appearances on friendly forums like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

Theories about his health dominated online conversations early in the week. Buzzfeed has a running list here of all the false and misleading information about Trump’s diagnosis. This includes some of the following: Trump was wearing a portable oxygen concentrator when walking to the presidential helicopter; the Trump campaign tried to use the diagnosis to fundraise $421 million; Biden tested positive for COVID and only after did Trump. Buzzfeed also reports that theories abound over whether Trump was standing in front of a green screen for one of his videos. Not likely.

Note these conspiracies are largely being led by the anti-Trump “liberal” side. The hashtag #TrumpCovidHoax was trending for a time and includes conspiracies that Trump is faking his COVID diagnosis for political gain. Some theories postulate that there has been a Trump body double on display for the cameras in recent days.

Again, not likely.

But let’s not forget that Alex Jones claimed that “Evidence is mounting that he’s being deliberately killed at Walter Reed Military Hospital” — I think we can put that one to bed now.

Other conspiracies swirl over how Trump contracted the virus. One example that has gained traction is that Trump’s podium at the debate was sprayed with something. A video showing a man wearing gloves with a spray has circulated, with over 300,000 views on Twitter.

Project Lincoln, a PAC formed by some Republicans to oppose Trump, released a video parodying Trump’s promotion of Regeneron. It already has 4.7 million views. But on the pro-Trump forum TheDonald.win, a thread about it showed… they seemed to like it. This is not the first time Trump has promoted a treatment for COVID-19 which has yet to win majority support from scientists.

Sadly, Trump’s health has led to the revival of the hydroxychloroquine debate, with hashtags like #HCQWORKS popping up frequently on social platforms. Some politicians are promoting this too; Arizona Republican Andy Biggs is just one example.

Ballot Misinformation

Pretty much every day now it seems that there is another viral video alleging electoral fraud in relation to mail-in ballots. Experts say such fraud is likely to be a tiny sample of actual votes, but it’s become a wedge issue for Trump and supporters.

Just one example: Politifact debunked a video which allegedly showed “shredded” ballot applications for Trump: “The printer of this particular mailer said the video shows print production waste, not shredded applications.” Be careful with what you see on social media.

As researcher Kate Starbird eloquently writes, “Repeatedly, we see cases of accidents and errors around mail and/or ballots framed in misleading ways — and mobilized by right-wing influencers, including POTUS — to support the false narrative of systematic voter fraud. An active disinfo campaign against our country.”

On that, Yochai Benkler writes that “Journalists should treat systematic disinformation campaigns from President Trump and his party no differently than those from Russian propagandists and Facebook clickbait artists.”

VP Debate

The VP Debate this week felt more important than usual because of uncertainty around Trump’s health and what might happen next in this race. (Indeed, it seems the next debate has been cancelled now.)

Within the context of the debate itself, misinformation spread. Reuters debunks a theory that the word “evil” was seen behind Harris and “light” behind Pence as some sort of signal. In reality, the same words from the Declaration of Independence were behind both of them.

Actor James Woods posted to his 2.6 million followers that Harris had the questions in advance.

Politifact has a round up of fact checks from the VP debate here.

The Washington Post has a case study in how sexist, racist attacks on Kamala Harris have spread online.

Hillary Emails

Trump’s announcement about halting COVID stimulus talks was big news but far bigger in the MAGA world was his announcement about declassifying documents regarding “the Russia hoax.” Some QAnon folks are calling this “Red October,” as they are sure it will reveal the corruption of the Deep State, including Obama and Hillary Clinton. MAGA groups are sharing this Fox News article claiming that it proves Clinton orchestrated a focus on the Trump-Russia connection in 2016 as a way to distract the public from the emails controversy.

Four years on, the Trump world is still obsessed with Hillary’s emails. Trump is trailing Biden in the polls. Maybe he’s hoping that reverting to an earlier successful strategy can get him out of his current situation.

Conspiracy to Kidnap Gov Whitmer

NBC News reports that a number of men who are to be charged with a conspiracy to kidnap Gov Whitmer of Michigan have ties to the Boogaloo movement. Buzzfeed has a detailed outline of how the plan was hatched.

VICE reports that the Boogaloo Bois are turning a man killed in an FBI shootout into their new martyr.

Platforms

Both Twitter and Facebook made notable moves this week.

Twitter announced some upcoming changes which have been broadly welcomed by the misinformation researcher community. (Although it’s still early days.)

They are trying to add more “friction” to the spread of misinformation, making it slightly harder to retweet, for example. Baybars Örsek of the International Fact Checking Network questioned some of these moves: “What I see is an untested and very US-specific approach lack of transparency & monitoring.”

Facebook said it would ban political ads after the election. But the more significant action from them this week was cracking down hard on QAnon. Many of the misinformation researchers saw these pages and groups disappear from the platform.

Also this week, Facebook removed a post from Trump comparing COVID-19 to the flu. Twitter attached a warning label to the respective post. Politifact reports that “COVID-19 is estimated to be about 10 times more deadly than the seasonal flu.”

PS

This week I published a blog post with Kinzen outlining some of the work we do. Have a read and let me know what you think.