Jeremy B. Merrill and Jamiles Lartey report Trump’s Crime and Carnage Ad Blitz Is Going Unanswered on Facebook (‘The president has spent millions on misleading Facebook ads targeting undecided voters, while Joe Biden has been virtually silent’): With unprecedented protests around race and policing dominating the news all summer, it was all but certain criminal justice would emerge as a key…
Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracy Theories, Culture, Disinformation, Education, Social Media
Facebook Discussions as Displays of Ignorance, Fallacies, and Marginal Literacy
by JOHN ADAMS •
In communities in the Whitewater area, assorted Facebook pages (particularly) are a significant means of messaging about politics, culture, etc. Too often, these messages are evidence of ignorance, fallacies, and are poorly written (to the point of only marginal literacy). Over time, as these rural communities have suffered relative economic decline, they have also experienced a…
Conspiracy Theories, Coronavirus, Documentary
Conspiracy Theories: A Frontline Documentary and Coronavirus Disinformation
by JOHN ADAMS •
Of Alex Jones & Roger Stone, Frontline’s United States of Conspiracy describes how “trafficking in conspiracy theories went from the fringes of U.S. politics into the White House. [It’s an] investigation of the alliance among conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, longtime Trump associate Roger Stone and the president — and their role in the battle over…
Conspiracy Theories, Coronavirus, Culture, Disinformation, Education, Free Markets, Public Health
The Price of Ignorance is Widely Paid
by JOHN ADAMS •
As nationwide chains take sensible measures to require masks, ordinary workers at those chains find themselves the underserving recipients of abuse. Kelli Weill reports Walmart Workers Are Terrified of Enforcing Mask Rules: Even in a time of record unemployment, some of Dan’s colleagues at an Indiana Walmart have walked off the job. They aren’t quitting over…
City, Conspiracy Theories, Culture, Public Health, Reasoning
The Balancing That Shouldn’t Have Happened
by JOHN ADAMS •
In communities across America, when a common & rational direction is most needed, cities & towns are about to confront the absence of a rational consensus. Residents who are in the grip of conspiracy theories (Qanon, anti-vaxxers, rumors of antifa, etc.) and those who have retained a sound understanding may live in the same place,…
Conspiracy Theories, Coronavirus
Frontline’s Covering Coronavirus: United States of Conspiracy
by JOHN ADAMS •
As COVID-19 has spread, so, too, have misinformation and conspiracy theories about the virus — amplified by figures like Alex Jones, and proliferating on social media and even at the highest levels of government. Veteran FRONTLINE filmmaker Michael Kirk, who was already making a documentary about the rise of conspiracy theories in American politics when…
Conspiracy Theories, Horde, Trump, Unfit
Conspiracy Theories’ Intensity & Drug Tolerance
by JOHN ADAMS •
Drug tolerance occurs when a drug user experiences a lesser reaction to a drug after its repeated use. One solution – although a possibly dangerous and self-defeating one – is to take even more of that same drug as its effects decline. The horde that fanatically follows Trump requires ever-more fantastic claims to produce the…
Conspiracy Theories, Trump, Trump-Russia
The Ludicrous ‘Obamagate’ Scandal
by JOHN ADAMS •
National security lawyer Bradley Moss gave Fox host Shannon Bream more than she bargained for when she tried to advance the latest crackpot distraction being pushed by her network and Trump.