![]() Jones was recently found liable by default in defamation cases filed by Sandy Hook families. Jones, who expressed doubt about the shooting on the day it happened, was among the far-right and fringe voices that amplified these false claims. Speculation that the shooting was a false flag – an attack made to look as if it were committed by someone else – began to circulate on Twitter and other social media sites almost immediately. These two coinciding trends, which continue to drive misinformation, pushed fringe doubts about Sandy Hook quickly into the U.S. Gallup’s annual survey has since showed even lower levels of trust in the media in 2016, 2021, and 2022. It also marked a modern low in public trust of the media. The year of the Sandy Hook shooting, 2012, marked the first year that more than half of all American adults used social media. Social media’s role in spreading misinformation has been well documented in recent years. This provided an early example of how misinformation spread on social media could cause real-world harm. ![]() Those who claimed the tragedy was a hoax showed up in Newtown and harassed people connected to the shooting. Ten years ago, the Sandy Hook shooting demonstrated how fringe ideas could quickly become mainstream on social media and win support from various establishment figures – even when the conspiracy theory targeted grieving families of young students and school staff killed during the massacre. I consider it the first major conspiracy theory of the modern social media age, and I believe we can trace our current predicament to the tragedy’s aftermath. 14, 2012 – including Jones’ role in spreading it to his audience of millions. Jones had falsely claimed that the shooting was a hoax.Īs a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut, I have studied the misinformation that surrounded the mass shooting in Newtown on Dec. 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 relatives of victims killed in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago. Recently, one of the most popular American conspiracy theorists faced consequences in court for his part in spreading viral lies. While American politics has long had a paranoid streak, and belief in conspiracy theories is nothing new, outlandish conspiracy theories born on social media now regularly achieve mainstream acceptance and are echoed by people in power. These conspiracy theories are part of a dangerous misinformation crisis that has been building for years in the U.S. They have damaged public health amid a global pandemic, shaken faith in the democratic process and helped spark a violent assault on the U.S. Conspiracy theories are powerful forces in the U.S.
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