99 The “Tricks of the Trade” were articulated in Chapter 3 of The Fine Art of Propaganda. I have selected the most appropriate modern emojis available, but here note the original pictographs chosen: Name Calling was symbolized by “the ancient sign of condemnation used by the Vestal Virgins in the Roman Coliseum, a thumb turned down”; Glittering Generality was symbolized by “a glittering gem that may or may not have its apparent value”; Transfer was symbolized by a mask of the style worn by ancient Greek and Roman actors; Testimonial was symbolized by a seal and ribbons, the “stamp of authority”; Plain Folks was symbolized by an old shoe (period slang for an old friend); Card Stacking was symbolized by an ace of spades, “a card traditionally used to signify treachery”; and Band Wagon was symbolized by a bandmaster’s hat and baton.
100 Anya Schiffrin, “Fighting Disinformation in the 1930s: Clyde Miller and the Institute for Propaganda Analysis,” International Journal of Communication 16 (2022): 3715–3741.
101 Philipp Markolin, “Distort, Discredit, Dismiss: The Manipulation Playbook of Anti-science Actors, Part 2,” The Protagonist Future?, May 15, 2023, https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/distort-discredit-dismiss.
102 Stephan Lewandowsky, Ronald E. Robertson, and Renée DiResta, “Challenges in Understanding Human-Algorithm Entanglement During Online Information Consumption,” Perspectives on Psychological Science, July 10, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916231180809.
103 For a full discussion of recent studies examining intervention and responses to political rumors, see Adam J. Berinsky, Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023).
104 Lisa Belkin, “Procter & Gamble Fights Satan Story,” New York Times, April 18, 1985, https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/18/garden/procter-gamble-fights-satan-story.html.
105 Robert Skvarla, “When 1980s Satanic Panic Targeted Procter & Gamble,” Atlas Obscura, July 13, 2017, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/procter-gamble-satan-conspiracy-theory.
106 See Jean-Noël Kapferer, Rumors: Uses, Interpretations and Images (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2013), chap. 7–8.
107 Laura Blumenfeld, “Procter Gamble’s Devil of a Problem,” Washington Post, July 15, 1991, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1991/07/15/procter-gambles-devil-of-a-problem/36f27641-e679-40f4-ac02-9d12c59a2f3b.
108 Kapferer, Rumors, 235.
109 Jessica Contrera, “A QAnon Con: How the Viral Wayfair Sex Trafficking Lie Hurt Real Kids,” Washington Post, December 16, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2021/wayfair-qanon-sex-trafficking-conspiracy.
110 Kate Starbird et al., “What Makes an Election Rumor Go Viral? Look at These 10 Factors,” Neiman Lab, October 25, 2022, https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/10/election-rumors-gone-viral.
111 Stephanie Saul, “Looking, Very Closely, for Voter Fraud,” New York Times, September 16, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/us/politics/groups-like-true-the-vote-are-looking-very-closely-for-voter-fraud.html.
112 As writer Robert Tracinski points out, secret conspiracies and cabals are a staple of Hollywood, so we perhaps shouldn’t be surprised when people think that’s how our political system works. For more on the connection between entertainment tropes and those that appear in political conspiracy theories, see Robert Tracinski, “The Paranoid Style in American Entertainment,” The UnPopulist, June 1, 2023, https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-paranoid-style-in-american-entertainment.
113 Reuters Staff, “Evidence Disproves Claims of Italian Conspiracy to Meddle in U.S. Election (Known as #ItalyGate),” Reuters, January 15, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact-check-debunking-italy-gate-idUSKBN29K2N8.
114 Jigsaw, “7 Insights from Interviewing Conspiracy Theory Believers,” Medium, March 17, 2021, https://medium.com/jigsaw/7-insights-from-interviewing-conspiracy-theory-believers-c475005f8598; Renée DiResta and Beth Goldberg, “‘Prebunking’ Health Misinformation Tropes Can Stop Their Spread,” Wired, August 28, 2021, https://www.wired.com/story/prebunking-health-misinformation-tropes-can-stop-their-spread.
115 Garret Morrow et al., “The Emerging Science of Content Labeling: Contextualizing Social Media Content Moderation,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 73, no. 10 (2022): 1365–1386, https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24637.
116 Zeve Sanderson et al., “Twitter Flagged Donald Trump’s Tweets with Election Misinformation: They Continued to Spread Both on and off the Platform,” Harvard Misinformation Review, August 24, 2021, https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/twitter-flagged-donald-trumps-tweets-with-election-misinformation-they-continued-to-spread-both-on-and-off-the-platform.
117 Stephan Lewandowsky and Sander van der Linden, “Countering Misinformation and Fake News Through Inoculation and Prebunking,” European Review of Social Psychology 32, no. 2 (2021): 348–384, https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2021.1876983.
118 A channel of experimental intervention content created by Google Jigsaw can be found here: Info Interventions, YouTube Channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiov-3rtgg9Nl_ezyWyOHpQ.
119 Josh Compton, Ben Jackson, and James A. Dimmock, “Persuading Others to Avoid Persuasion: Inoculation Theory and Resistant Health Attitudes,” Frontiers in Psychology 7, article 122 (2016): 1–9, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00122.
120 “Happy Ending,” TV Tropes, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HappyEnding.
121 Ryan Schocket, “This Woman Tweeted About Having Coffee Every Day with Her Husband—the Internet Tore Her Apart,” BuzzFeed, October 24, 2022, https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanschocket2/woman-backlash-for-coffee-husband-tweet.
122 Ezra Klein, “Elon Musk Got Twitter Because He Gets Twitter,” New York Times, April 27, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/opinion/elon-musk-twitter.html.
123 Chris Bail, Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021), 101–107.
124 The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (https://www.csldf.org) offers legal support and educational information to the field and works to ensure that scientists “can conduct, publish, and discuss their research and advocate for science without the threat of political harassment, censorship, or legal intimidation.” For more information, see the fund’s website. Physicians started the group Shots Heard Round the World (https://shotsheard.org) to offer support and collective response to medical professionals targeted by anti-vaccine activists.
125 Renée DiResta, “Virus Experts Aren’t Getting the Message Out,” The Atlantic, May 6, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/health-experts-dont-understand-how-information-moves/611218.
126 Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010), 263–265.
127 Lauren Kinkade, “5 Good—and Often Funny—Government Social Media Accounts,” Governing, December 4, 2022, https://www.governing.com/community/5-good-and-often-funny-government-social-media-accounts.
128 Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein, Analyzing Narrative Reality (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2009), 211.
129 Taylor Lorenz, “To Fight Vaccine Lies, Authorities Recruit an ‘Influencer Army,’” New York Times, August 1, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/01/technology/vaccine-lies-influencer-army.html.