Southeastern U.S. residents have suffered back-to-back hurricanes and a torrent of mis- and disinformation that complica
President Joe Biden speaks Oct. 13, 2024, following a briefing by federal, state, and local officials in St. Pete Beach, Fla., during a tour of areas affected by Hurricane Milton.
They are the same kinds of claims that followed other recent disasters, including the August 2023 Maui, Hawaii, wildfires and the March 2024to spread false claims the fires were intentionally sparked by the U.S. government, or that the U.S. government was more interested in helping Ukraine than Americans. Similarly, after the Key Bridge collapse,Jessica Jensen, a policy researcher at Rand Corp.
The analysts called this a"consistent pattern" for Chinese state actors who"opportunistically leverage disastrous events … in the U.S. to denigrate the U.S. government and cast doubt on leadership at both federal and local levels." They also said one common tactic is amplifying existing public concerns."Whether or not some of those sources on X are in fact hostile agents, we know Russia is certainly sharing some of this information," Sinclair said.
"We know in Maui that some of the disinformation were from foreign state actors," Criswell said."I don't have that information for this disaster if that's the case or not." Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, said such efforts have been successful in the past.
Sinclair said her research shows that one major reason foreign governments seek to spread false narratives online is to distract people from other news events that may put their own nations in an unfavorable light. For example, Russia may seek to distract people from focusing on its war with Ukraine.
Some of the signs social media users can watch for include typos in names, poor English grammar, the mixing of American and British slang, obviously AI-generated images and little interaction on their accounts, she told PolitiFact.People should"look at the URL of the referring information just to see how legitimate it looks," West said."Foreign entities have created fake news sites. People should evaluate whether this seems to be coming from a domestic or a foreign source.
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