Case Studies

In the fall of 2019, a coalition of conservative and right-wing influencers and conspiracists encouraged campaign participants to keyword squat the name of an individual who they alleged was the whistleblower who lodged a complaint about President Trump's dealings with Ukraine. Mainstream press outlets implemented a media blackout to protect the identity of the whistleblower, which involved never printing the name of anyone alleged to be the person, including the target of the campaign. This asymmetrical media environment shaped the breaking news event and led to misidentification and targeted harassment.

The viral slogan “Jobs Not Mobs” was popularized on social media and conservative press in early October 2018, before official political adoption by President Donald Trump later that month. This campaign formulated through interactions between small social media accounts and influencers with large audiences, working together to popularize a meme linking the Democratic Party to violent mobs, and Republicans to job growth. 

“Endless Mayfly” was an operation that created inauthentic websites spoofing established media outlets and online personas to spread false and inflammatory content targeting Saudi Arabia, the US, and Israel from at least April 2016 to November 2018. The operation astroturfed a false grassroots organization purporting to advocate against Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism, and seeded related false content to activists and journalists, which in some instances was traded up the chain to the mainstream media.

In December 2017, congressional candidate Omar Navarro instigated a media manipulation campaign to denigrate his political opponent, Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Exploiting prejudice and wedge issues via a forgery, his campaign was seeded by pseudonymous participants and right-wing influencers online. After Waters formally challenged the harassment on Twitter, the campaign was amplified by mainstream press, and investigated by the FBI. 

“It’s okay to be white” (IOTBW) is a viral slogan adopted and popularized by a variety of reactionary communities beginning in 2017. The campaign to promote the slogan exploited the wedge issue of white racial consciousness and identity, utilizing memes, flyering campaigns, and influencers to trade the phrase up the chain to garner significant press attention. Campaign organizers have redeployed the viral slogan strategically multiple times over the years and it continues to be used.

In the final days of the French presidential election in 2017, an anonymous individual instigated a campaign to discredit President Emmanuel Macron by dropping allegedly leaked emails on 4chan’s “Politically Incorrect” board, claiming they proved Macron was guilty of tax evasion. Campaign participants spread the mix of real and forged documents across the social and open web. A legal media blackout stopped French press from reporting on the documents.