Working on some visuals to help explain the dynamics of “participatory disinformation” and how that motivated the January 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

Let’s start from the beginning. We have “elites”, including elected political leaders, political pundits and partisan media outlets, as well as social media influencers who have used disinformation and other tactics to gain reputation and grow large audiences online.

We also have their audiences — the social media users and cable news watchers who tune into — and engage with — their content.

During the lead-up to — and for several months after — the 2020 election, political elites on the “right” (Trump supporters) repeatedly spread the message of a rigged election. This set an expectation of voter fraud and became a “frame” through which events were interpreted.

An example of one of those messages is this one, from realDonaldTrump, in June 2020:

With their perspective on the world shaped by this frame, the online “crowds” generated false/misleading stories of voter fraud, echoing & reinforcing the frame. Sometimes these stories were produced intentionally, but often they were generated sincerely, misinterpreted.

We see this w/ the #SharpieGate narrative, as people were initially concerned about Sharpie pens bleeding through (which would not have affected their votes in most cases), and later became convinced that the pens had been an intentional effort to disenfranchise Trump voters.

“Grassroots” activists and social media influencers helped amplify these stories, passing the content up to the political elites. Some intentionally attempt to “trade up” their content to reach larger influencers (w/ bigger audiences).

Political elites then echo the false/misleading stories back to their audiences, reinforcing the frame, and building a sense of collective grievance.
Shared grievance is a powerful political force. It can activate people to vote — and to take other political action in the world.

Audiences echo and reiterate this growing sense of grievance. Violent language and calls to action increase.

Political elites began to mobilize and organize the audiences into a series of rallies and protests (under the #StopTheSteal hashtag which began on Election Day and began to encompass a number of false and misleading narratives about voter fraud).

And on January 6, the protests — motivated by this participatory disinformation dynamic — turned violent, in an attempt (by people who, at least in part, falsely believed they were patriots defending their country from a stolen election).

Participatory disinformation makes for a powerful dynamic. These tight feedback loops between “elites” and their audiences (facilitated by social media) seem to make the system more responsive — and possibly more powerful and unwieldy.

Responding to a comment here, one aspect of this dynamic is that it can produce new “elites” who manage to use the system to gain reputation (and followers).

My understanding of the dynamics of online misinfo & populist political movements is informed by Ong & Cabañes work on “networked disinformation” in the Philippines. (My class read that paper this week.) Seems to apply to many contexts around the world. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1075&context=communication_faculty_pubs

A sparse view of the retweet network of "Stop the Steal” tweets (edges = 10 RTs by one account of another), so only shows common trajectories of information flow gives a sense of who the “elites” where in this discourse (on Twitter, they may differ on FB and elsewhere).

These graphs can be misleading, so a little context. This shows a three part structure. The top includes the now suspended account of former Pres. Trump as well as many of the organizers of the Stop the Steal movement. (Zooming into the top.)

Bottom section is a second component that we often see in network graphs of US right-wing discourse. It’s a lot of “grassroots” activist accounts (a bit of astroturf as well) that have build connections over years thru follow-backs and other techniques — and often RT each other.

If we lower the RT threshold on for the edges (to 3 retweets) we can see the larger audiences cluster around the influencers and, to a lesser extent, spread around the second network component as well.

A visual explanation of the dynamics of “participatory disinformation” and how they motivated the January 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol. [Fixed the missing arrows on the left and updated my affiliation on the original slide.]

Elise Stefanik has used her participation in “The Big Lie” to enhance her reputation and power in the pro-Trump section of the GOP. Imagine her as one of those red bubbles rising along the left side through these participatory disinformation dynamics. https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1391456545624535040

GOP hopefuls have a hard choice to make, whether to defend our country against pervasive disinformation that erodes democratic institutions (indeed, our very trust in the elections that define democratic governance), or jump in & benefit from these participatory disinfo dynamics.