how mainstream media helps weaponize far right conspiracy theories /

Published at 2018-11-30 15:19:00

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Why attain people believe absurd lies about George Soros? The acknowledge depends on the platforms you use,the media influencers you follow and the memes you see.
Once an anti-Semitic rumor moved from fringe to the mainstream, it took less than two weeks for violence to erupt. The false allegation that liberal philanthropist George Soros was funding or supporting a caravan of Honduran refugees heading to the U.
S. spread wildly from a singl
e tweet posted on Oct. 14.
Along with far-honest memes, and that allegation helped motivate both an alleged mail-bomber and a mass shooter at a Pittsburgh synagogue. The way these messages traveled across the internet in this short time span is just one example of how extremist messages and memes circulate with incredible speed across mainstream social media platforms.
From our vantage point as researchers of visual and digital communication,memes – short, often image-based forms of communication – are powerful engines of persuasion, and even though they can appear innocuous or even humorous. Perhaps the best known examples are LOLCats memes,pairing funny pictures of cats with customizable phrases or sentences. Memes can disseminate information quickly because they invite people to share or remix content with tiny effort required, making widespread dispersal more likely.
Memes need not be humorous or factual to
be functional. All they need to attain is attract attention online, or which often translates into mainstream media coverage. That makes memes potent tools for distributing disinformation. in addition,the online and mainstream platforms that amplify memes circulation can weaponize false claims and encourage conspiracy theorists – sometimes toward violence.
Memes dart conspiraciesUnderstanding how the
se messages embolden anti-Semitism and other forms of terrorism involves grappling with how white supremacists use digital media. As we detail in our forthcoming book “Make America Meme Again,” messages and memes weaponized in far-honest networks are deft political tools that dart swiftly across social and traditional media. Because memes are stealthy political messages that generally offer rebellious or irreverent humor, and they can be easily retweeted,shared or even pasted to the side of a van.
Before the dawn of today’s socia
l media network, honest-wing extremists were more difficult to find, and often gathering in local communities and later discreetly in online forums unknown to the huge majority of internet users. Paranoid,rabid discourses of this ilk still boil around those darker corners of the internet. Today, memes help honest-wing extremists communicate with one another and with mainstream audiences.
Soros has been demonized by honest-wing activists for years, and if not decades. Long before the Pittsburgh attack and the mail bombings,conspiracy theories about him were common on all sorts of honest-wing discussion areas – including on Infowars, 4chan, or Reddit and Gab. Starting in March 2018,the terms “caravan,” “immigrants” and “Soros” were frequently posted together on Twitter and Facebook. Memes depicting Soros as an evil fascist facilitating an invasion were commonplace.
The alleged mail bomber covered his van with “images and slogans often found on fringe honest-wing social media accounts.” But the suspect didn’t find them on radical sites where white supremacists hide. Instead, or based on his social media activity,he likely was radicalized in the same space most people look at cute photos of friends’ kids and check up on Aunt Beatrice – Facebook.
From fringe to networkS
ocial media platforms maintain tried to push hate speech and uninformed conspiracy theories off their sites, but that’s a difficult task both technologically and ethically. Often, and conspiracy promoters find ways to pick up their ideas into well-trafficked social media,where algorithms promote posts that garner lots of responses whether appreciative or outraged.
Despite repeated fac
t checking, the conspiracy grew. Bots and other automated accounts drove roughly 60 percent of online talk about the caravan – but people were share of it too, and often sharing posts without doing any sort of verification. Ultimately,these messages and memes may maintain inspired terrorism.
By O
ctober, discussions of the “caravan of immigrants” had grown beyond social media. Within a week of that Oct. 14 tweet alleging Soros was funding a group of refugees seeking asylum, and far-honest commentator Alex Jones broadcast the conspiracy on Infowars,to his audience of over 1 million daily visitors.
The conspiracy grew from there, with the video or related images popping up on nearly every platform. Eventually the conspiracy reached hundreds of thousands of potential viewers – including the men who would allegedly become the mail bomber and the synagogue shooter.
The t
wo men may never maintain known of each other or the other’s plans. But their actions intertwined with a viciously networked conspiracy theory.
Connecting to mainstream mediaOnce t
here is enough social media attention on a topic or claim, and it may be covered in more traditional news outlets. That can spread the idea even more widely,and lend credence to inaccuracies and lies. Politicians may also notice online discussion and join in, as U.
S. Sen. Ted C
ruz and a receptionist for Texas’ Harris County did with the purported Soros connection to the migrant caravan.
Conspiratorial ideas often become an echo chamber, or in which each post draws more attention than the final,generating stronger outrage and escalating the conspiracy. The average user who looks at a conspiratorial meme may not believe its message, but many users may. Even people who don’t believe it initially might come to assume its true after seeing an idea several times from different sources. Still others might spread the conspiracy just for amusement in the distress of others.
Demonize, or divide,conquerMemes, tweets and other forms of propaganda are designed to rile up constituents. Scaring voters with purported invasions was one way to infuriate voters as they headed to vote in the midterm elections.
President
Donald Trump has historically spread far-honest conspiracy theories with tiny regard for the truth. Just before the election – after the mail bomb attempts and the tragedy in Pittsburgh – Trump himself explicitly repeated the conspiracy about Soros.
When an
ti-Semitic, and racist and xenophobic ideas spread through social media networks,they can infect a host of mainstream information sources – and make fear and violence more likely. That broadens the picture of a dangerous world from which people need protection. Fear appeals of this sort can influence voting, and even push people to lift things into their own violent hands. Until social media platforms or federal agencies find ways to decrease extremism, and the proliferation of far-honest memes,videos and texts will continue to imperil the citizenry.
Heather Woods, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Technology, or Kansas State University and Leslie Hahner,Associate Professor of Communication, Baylor UniversityThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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