Conspiracy theories are powerful forces in the United States. They have damaged public health in the midst of a global pandemic, shaken faith in the democratic process, and helped spark a violent assault on the United States Capitol in January 2021.These conspiracy theories are part of a dangerous misinformation crisis that has been building for years in the United States.
While American politics has long had a paranoid streak and belief in conspiracy theories is nothing new, outlandish theories hatched on social media now regularly achieve mainstream acceptance and are even constantly repeated by people in power. .
Recently, one of the most popular American conspiracy theorists faced consequences in court for his part in spreading viral lies. Right-wing radio host Alex Jones and his company, Infowars, were ordered by juries in Connecticut and Texas to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to the families of victims killed in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School ago. one of each. Jones had falsely claimed that the shooting was a hoax.
As a professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, I have studied the misinformation surrounding the December 14, 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, including Jones’ role in spreading it to his audience of millions. I consider it the first major conspiracy theory of the modern age of social media, and I believe we can trace our current situation back to the aftermath of the tragedy.
Ten years ago, the Sandy Hook shooting demonstrated how fringe ideas could quickly become mainstream on social media and win the support of various ‘establishment’ figures, even as the conspiracy theory targeted the grieving families of young students and school personnel killed during the massacre.
Those who claimed the tragedy was a hoax turned up in Newtown and harassed people connected to the shooting. This provided an early example of how disinformation spread on social media could cause real-world damage.
(Keep reading: Baby was orphaned by shooting on July 4 and receives a million-dollar donation.)
New era of social media
The role of social media in spreading misinformation has been well documented in recent years. The year of the Sandy Hook shooting, 2012, marked the first year that more than half of all American adults used social media.
It also marked a modern low in public confidence in the media. Since then, Gallup’s annual poll has shown even lower levels of trust in the media in 2016, 2021, and 2022.
These two coincident trends, which continue to drive misinformation, quickly pushed fringe doubts about Sandy Hook into the mainstream in the United States. Speculation that the shooting was a false flag, an attack made to appear as if it had been committed by someone else, began circulating on Twitter and other social media sites almost immediately. Jones, who expressed doubt about the shooting the day it happened, was among the far-right and fringe voices amplifying these false claims.Jones was recently found liable by default in defamation cases brought by the Sandy Hook families.
Errors in breaking news reports of the shooting, such as conflicting information about the weapon used and the identity of the shooter, were pieced together in YouTube videos and compiled on blogs as evidence of a conspiracy, my research shows. Amateur detectives collaborated on Facebook groups that promoted the shooting as a hoax and lured new users down the rabbit hole.
Soon, a variety of establishment figures, including the 2010 Republican candidate for Connecticut attorney general, Martha Dean, gave credence to doubts about the tragedy.
Six months later, when gun control legislation stalled in Congress, a university poll found that 1 in 4 people thought the truth about Sandy Hook was being covered up to advance a political agenda. Many others said they weren’t sure. The results were so incredible that some media outlets questioned the accuracy of the survey.
Since then, many other conspiracy theories have followed a similar trajectory on social media. The bizarre QAnon conspiracy movement, which falsely claimed that mainstream Democrats were part of a ring of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, has been promoted by candidates for public office. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who amplified QAnon beliefs while a candidate, has also previously expressed doubts about Sandy Hook and other mass shootings.
But in 2012, the spread of outlandish conspiracy theories from social media to the mainstream was a relatively new phenomenon, and an indication of things to come.
(You can also read: Republicans sink law to control domestic terrorism in the US.)
New generation of conspiracies
Sandy Hook also marked a turning point in the nature of conspiracy theories and their goals. Before Sandy Hook, popular American conspiracy theories generally vilified dark elites or forces within the government. Many 9/11 truthers, for example, believed the government was behind the terrorist attacks, but they often left the families of the victims alone.
Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists accused relatives of those killed, shooting survivors, religious leaders, neighbors and first responders of being part of a government plot.
The Newtown parents were accused of faking their children’s deaths, or their own existence. Jones played a video of one of the parents, a plaintiff in the Connecticut case against him, over and over again, speculating that he was an actor. Many other false accusations swirled online, including that the murders were linked to a child sex cult.
This shift in conspiracy targets from veiled government figures and elites to ordinary people marked a change in the trajectory of American conspiracy theories.
Since Sandy Hook, survivors of many other high-profile mass shootings and attacks, such as the Boston Marathon bombing and the Charlottesville car attack, have seen their trauma compounded by denial of their tragedies.
And the perverse idea of a politically connected pedophile ring became a key tenet in two subsequent conspiracy theories: Pizzagate and QAnon.
The kind of harassment and death threats the Sandy Hook families faced have also become a common byproduct of conspiracy theories. In the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which Jones encouraged his listeners to investigate, the owners and employees of a Washington pizzeria that was allegedly part of a pedophile ring that included politicians were targeted. In 2016, a man drove hundreds of miles to investigate and fired his assault rifle at the restaurant.
Some people who were skeptical of the COVID-19 pandemic harassed frontline health workers. Local poll workers across the country have been threatened and accused of being part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election.
(You can also read: Oath Keepers: How I Escaped From The Far-Right Militia Founded By My Father.)
The legacy of the Sandy Hook mass shooting is a legacy of misinformation, the beginning of a crisis likely to plague the United States for years to come.
But, as recent court decisions show, conspiracy theorists who target individuals and private companies with their lies may also face consequences in court.
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AMANDA J CRAWFORD
The Conversation (**)
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