Avoid misinformation amid protests
Bad actors use unrest to foment conspiracies
George Floyd is not really dead. Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is supplying bricks to protesters.
Hoaxes, conspiracy theories and other falsehoods like these are surging on Facebook and Twitter following Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis.
Bad actors exploit large-scale events dominating the national conversation to sow chaos and fear and deepen distrust and division, disinformation experts say. In this case, they’ve seized on America’s rawest political division – race – and the furor over police brutality to hijack protests across the country.
“We are seeing a rapidly evolving situation, sustained attention and most of all just deep existing divisions that make it a perfect confluence of events for disinformation from a range of actors who are known to spread it,” says Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
And these campaigns could intensify following President Donald Trump’s threat late Monday to deploy the military to stop “acts of domestic terror.”
“No doubt tonight there will be outof-context images of the military. There will be rumors about military presence that maybe isn’t happening. It’s very easy for people to do. They just Google images of the military near a protest and circulate those pictures and say: ‘This is whatever city tonight,’” says Peter Adams,
senior vice president of education at the News Literacy Project. “They hope some of it will stick and go viral.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we already are more susceptible to false claims. So how can we stop falling for and spreading bogus information?
Do your homework before sharing
What’s making it tougher to discern fact from fiction: Protests are hyperlocal events.
“Every afternoon and every evening brings different protests and different degrees of unrest in different cities. Because social media collapses those distances and brings those images and those video clips together, it can be very hard for people to understand what’s authentic and what’s not,” Adams says.
Take a few minutes to research each
piece of information before passing it on.
“Consider the source, which guards you against disinformation, the intentional spread of false information, and consider the source’s source, which guards you against the unintentional or inadvertent spread of false information,” Brookie advises.
Watch out for posts that make your blood boil
Beware social media posts that deliberately incite fear, strain credulity or play on your emotions. Ask yourself: Why is someone trying to make me feel this way?
“People just have to remember to pause and don’t react too fast. Don’t share something you don’t know is authentic, even if it’s outrageous to you or strikes a strong emotional cord,” Adams says. “Only share information that you know has been verified in some way.”
Check your bias
Disinformation preys on our biases and our behavior to gain traction, especially in a crisis. We are much more likely to share something that fits our world view. So check your bias, Brookie advises. And remember, he says: “Not everything needs to be tweeted.”
Don’t trust everything you see
We instinctively trust images and video, but they can be taken out of context, edited or digitally manipulated. Some “live” footage of protests being shared on social media is on a loop, for example.
Be empathetic
Don’t forget your – or someone else’s – humanity. We tend to dehumanize the person whose political views we reject, especially during periods of heightened tensions.
“Don’t make a fight out of being right,” Brookie advises.
Don’t join the crowd
Disinformation needs a crowd – the bigger, the better. Effective campaigns thrive by recruiting unsuspecting members of the public who don’t realize they are amplifying and legitimizing posts seeking to inflame tensions or disrupt American life.