Attention to the Unseen

Axios reports: In the heat of this historic election, educated elites who should know better — billionaires, elected officials, journalists — keep falling for fakes, conspiracy theories and outright lies. Why it matters: Human gullibility is not a new phenomenon. But social media and polarized politics are exposing it at industrial scale, fueled by a poisonous cocktail of bad actors, media illiteracy and plummeting trust in traditional news. Driving the news: Each day on the digital campaign trail has brought a torrent of false or…

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When people spread lies online, they may know they’re sharing falsehoods. Timucin Taka/500 px via Getty Images By H. Colleen Sinclair, Louisiana State University There has been a lot of research on the types of people who believe conspiracy theories, and their reasons for doing so. But there’s a wrinkle: My colleagues and I have found that there are a number of people sharing conspiracies online who don’t believe their own content. They are opportunists. These people share conspiracy theories…

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Politico reports: Elon Musk is using his social media network to spread election conspiracy theories about U.S. disasters — just as online falsehoods are complicating the federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Musk has helped spread accusations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “actively blocked” donations to victims of Helene and is “seizing goods … and locking them away to state they are their own” — allegations that FEMA officials call false and which run afoul of state and…

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The Washington Post reports: One day after Helene slammed into Asheville, N.C., leading to seven trees falling on her house and destroying her roof, Nicole McNeill read an alarming article that warned a second storm was barreling toward the area. McNeill, 43, had a panic attack, her anxiety spiking and her heart pounding. She knew she didn’t have enough gasoline in her car to evacuate from yet another disaster. But it was all a hoax. “The second storm turned out…

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Gizmodo reports: Donald Trump launched Truth Social in 2022 as a social media platform where the MAGA faithful could hang out without any liberals to spoil the fun. The biggest selling point? It was the only place where Trump was personally posting his unhinged screeds after getting banned from Twitter over that whole coup attempt. But new documents obtained by Gizmodo reveal the site has also been flooded with scammers who are swindling users out of enormous sums of money….

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The Guardian reports: Labelling tweets featuring false claims about election fraud as “disputed” does little to nothing to change Trump voters’ pre-existing beliefs, and it may make them more likely to believe the lies, according to a new study. The study, authored by John Blanchard, an assistant professor from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Catherine Norris, an associate professor from Swarthmore College, looked at data from a sampling of 1,072 Americans surveyed in December of 2020. The researchers published…

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Microsoft Threat Analysis Center: Russia and Iran have both undertaken cyber influence operations headed into the 2024 presidential election. In our last report, published on August 8, we detailed how Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations sought to undermine the Republican campaign through targeted hack-and-leak operations, covert social media personas, and imposter US news sites. In the past two months, Microsoft has observed a notable shift in Russian influence operations tactics reflecting the changing U.S. political environment. Specifically, we have observed Russia…

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RFE/RL reports: A trove of leaked records from a Russian disinformation campaign reveals how Moscow sought to discredit Ukraine and Western governments that support it while also trying to boost support for far-right political parties in the European Union. The documents obtained by a consortium of European media outlets and shared with Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, highlight the internal operations of the Social Design Agency, a Moscow-based company that the United States says has led the propaganda campaign at…

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