Case Studies

Born from a single trenchant joke tweeted out of exasperation, the #OscarsSoWhite campaign has grown into a long-lasting movement demanding racial equity in Hollywood.

Andrew Tate's rise to fame in 2022 relied on internet hustle culture, popular reaction videos, and mainstream media amplification, which buoyed his misogynistic and prejudiced views into a powerful brand.

What the media often referred to as the GameStop saga was actually a case study in media manipulation.

How did a TikTok trend that never existed alarm schools and teachers across the United States? This case documents how viral misinformation spread by concerned adults and amplified by the press became a full-fledged media manipulation campaign.

How the Milk Tea Alliance evolved from a meme war into a transnational network of young activists who use media manipulation and protest tactics to counter authoritarian actions worldwide.

In 2020, a protest movement took to the streets across America purportedly attempting to "#SaveTheChildren" from a non-existent satanic cabal.

Chileans voted overwhelmingly in October 2020 to scrap their dictatorship-era constitution and draft a more democratic new constitution. In the months before that referendum, a hashtag campaign deluged Chilean Twitter with messages opposing a new constitution and spreading misinformation across the South American country. A media manipulation campaign targeting an election in this way was novel for Chile—and journalists in fact-checkers struggled to respond.

When a Trump ally claimed migrants were bringing Ebola into the US, fears of a deadly infectious disease furthered his crowdfunded quest to build a border wall with Mexico and fueled anti-immigrant sentiment. The 2019 Ebola rumor wasn't true, but that didn't stop it spreading in the far-right media ecosystem from Texas across the nation.

David Greene, who lost his medical license after botched surgeries resulted in several deaths, sells unproven—and sometimes dangerous—medical treatments using stem cells. While certain stem cell therapies are effective treatments for a limited list of diseases, Greene persuades customers that the stem cell therapy he sells, using cord blood and amniotic tissues, is a near cure-all. Investigation into his marketing strategies shows that Greene is profiting off a business model that is based on phony science while laundering his online reputation to keep the patients—and their money—coming in.

On Aug. 16, 2019, an anonymous user posted to 4chan’s Politically Incorrect board calling upon fellow 4chan users to impersonate Jewish people online by creating inauthentic social media accounts. In the days that followed, campaign participants created dozens of fake Twitter accounts, many of them posing as rabbis and using stereotypically Jewish names. Twitter quickly removed the accounts, although not before their owners could post inflammatory, often-antisemitic, and anti-Israel sentiments.