Case Studies

The Yan Report is a misleading preprint that claims COVID-19 was made in a Chinese lab. The author, Dr. Li-Meng Yan, is supported by a partisan partnership between Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui, whose media networks and connections led to media coverage of Yan and the preprint. The case study is an example of how preprints—non-peer-reviewed articles—can be used as cloaked science to muddy the waters during times of crisis and uncertainty.

In the final two weeks of the 2020 presidential election, Republican operatives spread a recontextualized video of candidate Joe Biden they took out of context from a larger interview.

They claimed it showed the candidate bragging about running the “biggest voter fraud organization this country has ever seen.” While this claim was quickly debunked, it was amplified by influencers and media personalities. It was also adopted by administration officials to sow distrust about election integrity, which furthered President Donald Trump’s voter fraud narrative and ultimately led to a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building.

During the active crisis of the Parkland school shooting in February 2018, a photo misidentifying the alleged perpetrator moved from 4chan to the mainstream media when Infowars picked up the image, muddying the waters around the actual shooting. The misidentification led to targeted harassment of the individual in the photograph, who was not associated with the shooting.

Over the course of 3 years, a mix of pranksters and extremists (right wing) launched a butterfly attack campaign as part of a meme war to muddy the waters in an organic Black Twitter hashtag, and utilized digital blackface to amplify memes workshopped on 4chan. Overall, the campaign targeted Black activists and communities online in an effort to sow confusion, discredit authentic support, and suppress voter turnout for the Democratic Party. This campaign was redeployed several times to correspond to cultural trends or breaking news events.

On the afternoon of February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz attacked Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 students and teachers. After fleeing the scene, Cruz was apprehended alive by police. Before being officially identified by law enforcement, speculation and false identifications of the shooter circulated online. During this period of confusion, a hoax targeting journalists led to a misidentification, naming Cruz as a member of a small white nationalist militia.