When I watched the clip of a man invading a town hall meeting and attacking Ilhan Omar back in January, I was struck by Donald Trump’s lies that the Minnesota representative staged the attack herself. But fake photos and memes flooded social media, attempting to push the untruth that Omar was closely associated with the man.
As my colleague Anna Merlan writes in a new piece today, this kind of disinformation is damaging even when it doesn't fully convince people of a false narrative: “What we’re seeing now could be termed ‘strategic memes against public participation’—images designed to confuse, sow doubt, and chill public engagement with political issues.”
And I find this to be true. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to tell if an image or video is real or fake. As Renée DiResta, a social media researcher and expert on propaganda and disinformation, told Anna, it’s not just the accuracy of the photo—it's that it can also be presented in a false context.
I highly recommend Anna’s piece on this dangerous conundrum—especially the way our federal government now promotes meme-based lies.
—Alex Nguyen
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