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Cool heads needed as political fringe dwellers spread disinformation after Trump shooting
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/14/cool-heads-needed-as-political-fringe-dwellers-spread-disinformation-after-trump-shooting
Cool heads needed as political fringe dwellers spread disinformation after Trump shooting
Partisans on the left and the right are weaponizing the attack and spreading lies faster than journalists can offer facts to counter them
Disinformation researcher Amanda Rogers has described the polarized, unhinged, conspiracy-driven noise in social media responses to the shooting of Donald Trump as “a self-sustaining spiral of shit”.
Rogers, a fellow at the progressive thinktank Century Foundation, has seen this before. But the scale is new and troubling, she said. Conversation on social media – and the mainstream media – is focused on the motivations of the shooter and the impact on the election, she said. Bad actors want to turn a moment like this into a broader call for violence. And they will spread lies to get there, she said.
“The fact that this is the perfect storm environment for dis-info from every single point on the political spectrum, is something that worries me immensely,” Rogers said. “Because it’s an accelerationist’s wet dream … But we need to have voices in the media that are speaking to the fact that this is a breaking situation. People need to calm down about speculation.”
Accelerationists are those on the political fringes – right and left – who want a civil war to burn the country to ash so they can start anew from the rubble. Notably, the term “Civil War” began trending in the wake of the Trump shooting.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/14/cool-heads-needed-as-political-fringe-dwellers-spread-disinformation-after-trump-shooting
Cool heads needed as political fringe dwellers spread disinformation after Trump shooting
Partisans on the left and the right are weaponizing the attack and spreading lies faster than journalists can offer facts to counter them
Disinformation researcher Amanda Rogers has described the polarized, unhinged, conspiracy-driven noise in social media responses to the shooting of Donald Trump as “a self-sustaining spiral of shit”.
Rogers, a fellow at the progressive thinktank Century Foundation, has seen this before. But the scale is new and troubling, she said. Conversation on social media – and the mainstream media – is focused on the motivations of the shooter and the impact on the election, she said. Bad actors want to turn a moment like this into a broader call for violence. And they will spread lies to get there, she said.
“The fact that this is the perfect storm environment for dis-info from every single point on the political spectrum, is something that worries me immensely,” Rogers said. “Because it’s an accelerationist’s wet dream … But we need to have voices in the media that are speaking to the fact that this is a breaking situation. People need to calm down about speculation.”
Accelerationists are those on the political fringes – right and left – who want a civil war to burn the country to ash so they can start anew from the rubble. Notably, the term “Civil War” began trending in the wake of the Trump shooting.
