here rather than from online debates. Yet Trump’s Twitter handle (@RealDonaldTrump) is “on par with the most influential media sites” and is “the most influential source with a right-wing audience orientation.” Trump tweets something, and because he is president, it triggers a wave of coverage across the media ecosystem—including in centrist/mainstream media. The right-wing influencers repeat his claims and develop them; then mainstream media covers this as if it’s a fair, partisan debate rather than disinformation. Yochai Benkler et al., “Mail-In Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign,” Social Science Research Network, January 1, 2020, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3703701.
68 “Statement from CISA Director Krebs on Security and Resilience of 2020 Elections,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, October 20, 2020, https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/statement-cisa-director-krebs-security-and-resilience-2020-elections.
69 Center for Internet Security, “Reporting Misinformation to the EI-ISAC,” US Election Assistance Commission, https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/partners/EI_ISAC_Reporting_Misinformation_Sheet102820.pdf.
70 The “Long Fuse” report. See Chapter 1 of the EIP final report, “The Long Fuse,” for a full description of outside partnerships and workflows. Online at “The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election,” Stanford Digital Repository, March 3, 2021, https://purl.stanford.edu /tr171zs0069.
71 Casey Nelson, “Postal Service Investigating Mail Found in Greenville Ditch,” 94.3 Jack FM [Green Bay, WI], September 23, 2020, https://943jackfm.com/2020/09/23/postal-service-investigating-mail-found-in-greenville-ditch.
72 Jim Hoft, “BREAKING: US Mail Found in Ditch in Rural Wisconsin—Included Absentee Ballots,” Gateway Pundit, September 23, 2020, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20200926103923/https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/09/breaking-us-mail-found-ditch-greenville-wisconsin-included-absentee-ballots.
73 Center for an Informed Public, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graphika, and Stanford Internet Observatory, “The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election,” Stanford Digital Repository: Election Integrity Partnership, March 3, 2021, https://purl.stanford.edu/tr171zs0069.
74 Patrick Marley, “Mail Found in Greenville Ditch Did Not Include Any Wisconsin Ballots,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, October 1, 2020, https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/01/mail-found-greenville-ditch-did-not-include-any-wisconsin-ballots/5883960002.
75 E (@ElijahSchaffer), “If you have further evidence that these are legitimate…,” Twitter, September 25, 2020, https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/1309400335988019201.
76 Jim Hoft, “UPDATED: California Man Finds THOUSANDS of Unopened Ballots in Garbage Dumpster—Workers Quickly Try to Cover Them Up—County Says Returned Ballots from 2018?,” Gateway Pundit, September 29, 2020, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20200925152834/https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/09/exclusive-california-man-finds-thousands-unopened-ballots-garbage-dumpster-workers-quickly-try-cover-photos.
77 Joe Bak-Coleman et al., “Foreign vs Domestic: An Examination of Amplification in a Ballot Misinformation Story,” Election Integrity Partnership, June 24, 2022, https://www.eipartnership.net/2020/vast-majority-of-discarded-ballot-amplification-isnt-from-foreign-sources.
78 Angelo Fichera, “Photos of Recycled Election Materials in California Prompt False Claim,” FactCheck.org, September 29, 2020, https://www.factcheck.org/2020/09/photos-of-recycled-election-materials-in-california-prompt-false-claim.
79 Hoft, “UPDATED: California Man Finds THOUSANDS.”
80 “Two Iranian Nationals Charged for Cyber-enabled Disinformation and Threat Campaign Designed to Influence the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election,” US Justice Department, January 25, 2022, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-iranian-nationals-charged-cyber-enabled-disinformation-and-threat-campaign-designed.
81 Emma S. Spiro and Kate Starbird, “Rumors Have Rules,” Issues in Science and Technology 39, no. 3 (Spring 2023): 47–49, https://doi.org/10.58875/CXGL5395.
82 Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia, “Rumor, Gossip and Urban Legends,” Diogenes 54, no. 1 (February 1, 2007): 19–35, https://doi.org/10.1177/0392192107073433.
83 “Election Security Rumor vs. Reality,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, n.d., https://www.cisa.gov/rumor-vs-reality#rumor18.
84 One interesting thing about the repetitive pathways we observed in our 2020 analysis of election rumors was that even sensational, blatantly conspiratorial ideas—CIA supercomputers changing votes, MaidenGate, other outlandish-seeming conspiracy theories—appeared to have already gone from something that one might expect to fall under complex contagion (something that might be a reputational concern for the influencer propagating it) and instead moved via simple-contagion pathways, suggesting the presence of an echo chamber. The influencers behaved as if the audience was already receptive even to truly outlandish claims, and indeed there was little sign of pushback to any claim of fraud. In the case of Sharpiegate, for example, the primed audience no longer needed extensive additional confirmation or evidence to believe that deliberate fraud had occurred, and so the narrative did move from the periphery to the influencer, but then was quickly boosted by a series of credentialed, large influencers.
85 Kate Starbird, Renée DiResta, and Matt DeButts, “Influence and Improvisation: Participatory Disinformation During the 2020 US Election,” Social Media and Society 9, no. 2 (2023): 205630512311779–205630512311779, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231177943.
86 Jean-Noel Kapferer, Rumors: Uses, Interpretation, and Necessity (London: Routledge, 2013), 69.
87 Brian Slodysko, “How Trump’s MAGA Movement Helped a 29-Year-Old Activist Become a Millionaire,” ABC News, October 10, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/trumps-maga-movement-helped-29-year-activist-become-103849365.
88 University of Washington research scholar Michael Caulfield has written about this process extensively in a series of case studies on his blog: Michael Caulfield, “Tropes and Networked Digital Activism #1: Trope-Field Fit,” Hapgood, June 12, 2021, https://hapgood.us/2021/06/12/participatory-propaganda-tropes-and-trope-field-fit-part-one. For more of Caulfield’s work on how tropes and evidence are related, see Charlie Warzel, “‘Evidence Maximalism’ Is How the Internet Argues Now,” Atlantic, February 8, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive /2024/02/evidence-maximalism-conspiracy-theories-taylor-swift/677390/.
89 Natalie Dagenhardt, “Maidengate Scandal Breaks: Democrats Allegedly Registered Women Under Their Previous Names,” Right Journalism, November 11, 2020, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20201111150137/https://www.rightjournalism.com/maidengate-scandal-breaks-democrats-allegedly-registered-women-under-their-previous-names.
90 For an overview of “Sharpiegate” in Maricopa County, see Rachel Leingang and McKenzie Sadeghi, “Fact Check: Arizona Election Departments Confirm Sharpies Can Be Used on Ballots,” USA Today, November 5, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/11/04/fact-check-sharpiegate-controversy-arizona-false-claim/6164820002.
91 Ibid.
92 Bill Goodykoontz, “Fox News Correctly Called Arizona for Joe Biden a Year Ago. That Night Changed Everything,” Arizona Republic, November 3, 2021, https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/media/2021/11/03/fox-news-biden-arizona-call-election-night/8544699002.
93 Meg Warner et al., “Presidential Election Results 2020,” CNN Politics, November 23, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/election-results-and-news-11-03-20/index.html.
94 Fox announces that Biden has won Arizona at 11:20 p.m. EST. Trump tweets at 12:45 a.m., “I will be making a statement tonight. A big WIN!” and again around 1:25 a.m., “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election,” which Twitter labels shortly after. He spoke just before 2:30 a.m. EST. Christina Wilkie, “Trump Tries to Claim Victory Even as Ballots Are Being Counted in Several States—NBC Has Not Made a Call,” CNBC, November 6, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/04/trump-tries-to-claim-victory-even-as-ballots-are-being-counted-in-several-states-nbc-has-not-made-a-call.html.
95 David Bauder, Randall Chase, and Geoff Mulvihill, “Fox, Dominion Reach $787.5M Settlement over False Election Claims,” AP News, April 20, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe.
96 Olivia Rubin, “What Fox News Hosts Allegedly Said Privately Versus On-Air About False Election Fraud Claims,” ABC News, April 24, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fox-news-hosts-allegedly-privately-versus-air-false/story?id=97662551.
97 Center for an Informed Public, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graphika, and Stanford Internet Observatory, “The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election,” Stanford Digital Repository: Election Integrity Partnership, March 3, 2021, https://purl.stanford.edu/tr171zs0069.
98 Joey Garrison and Jessica Guynn, “Facebook Readying ‘Break-Glass’ Tools to Restrict Content if Violence Erupts After Election,” USA Today, September 23, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/22/election-2020-facebook-has-break-glass-measures-if-violence-erupts/5866803002.
99 Jeff Horwitz, Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2023),