Last month, former US President Donald Trump was shot and injured during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania by a gunman positioned on a nearby roof. CIR Senior Investigator Stefanie Le was watching the incident unfold on the news and her social media feeds from Washington DC.
“In this day and age, if something’s happening, people have their phones out and they’re posting it,” Le says. “I saw the news of the Trump rally shooting and immediately knew that the internet was going to be ablaze with rumours.”
It wasn’t long before conspiracy theories started to fly. Photographs of the former US president’s raised fist and defiant stance as he was ushered away fed false narratives that the event was staged, Le explains. Fake images also emerged online, edited to appear that President Trump and US Secret Service agents were smiling as the incident unfolded.
The FBI eventually named the attacker as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, but somewhat unusually, Crooks left few digital crumbs online – there was no social media profile, manifesto, or evidence of extremist views, Le explains.
With so little information about the shooter and his motivations, fake profiles and manifestos started appearing on social media and gaming platforms. According to Le, when there’s an information vacuum, actors will fill that space with conspiracy theories.
Widespread misinformation
Social media allows us to access news in real-time – both from journalists on the ground and eyewitnesses.
But the prevalence of misinformation on platforms such as X means we must approach our news feeds with increasing scrutiny: is this image new or old? Has it been edited? Who is sharing it?
The assassination attempt on President Trump saw several newsrooms utilise open source methods to debunk the various false narratives circulating online, from BBC Verify to Reuters.
But Le points out that individuals too can strengthen their media literacy skills and become more attuned to the tell-tale signs of mis- and disinformation. Below, she breaks down the key steps to assessing an incident using open source methods.
Data collection
“In a breaking news situation, the first step is to collect as much data as you can,” says Le. “That means all social media posts you could find across all platforms posting from the location.”
Various tools and techniques exist to speed up the process and narrow down your search:
Boolean search operators
- Boolean search operators are logical connectors that widen or narrow a search to surface the most relevant posts, for example: “AND”, “OR”, and “NOT”.
- These can be used on social media platforms to find posts that are relevant to the specific event.