Conspiracy theories are powerful forces in the U.S. They have damaged public health amid a global pandemic, shaken faith in the democratic process and helped spark a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.
These conspiracy theories are part of a dangerous misinformation crisis that has been building for years in the U.S.
While American politics has long had a paranoid streak, and belief in conspiracy theories is nothing new, outlandish conspiracy theories born on social media now regularly achieve mainstream acceptance and are echoed by people in power.
Recently, one of the most popular American conspiracy theorists faced consequences in court for his part in spreading viral lies. Right-wing radio host Alex Jones and his company, Infowars, were ordered by juries in Connecticut and Texas to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to relatives of victims killed in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago. Jones had falsely claimed that the shooting was a hoax.
As a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut, I have studied the misinformation that surrounded the mass shooting in Newtown on Dec. 14, 2012 – including Jones’ role in spreading it to his audience of millions. I consider it the first major conspiracy theory of the modern social media age, and I believe we can trace our current predicament to the tragedy’s aftermath.
Ten years ago, the Sandy Hook shooting demonstrated how fringe ideas could quickly become mainstream on social media and win support from various establishment figures – even when the conspiracy theory targeted grieving families of young students and school staff killed during the massacre.
Those who claimed the tragedy was a hoax showed up in Newtown and harassed people connected to the shooting. This provided an early example of how misinformation spread on social media could cause real-world harm.
New age of social media and distrust
Social media’s role in spreading misinformation has been well documented in recent years. The year of the Sandy Hook shooting, 2012, marked the first year that more than half of all American adults used social media.
It also marked a modern low in public trust of the media. Gallup’s annual survey has since showed even lower levels of trust in the media in 2016, 2021, and 2022.
These two coinciding trends, which continue to drive misinformation, pushed fringe doubts about Sandy Hook quickly into the U.S. mainstream. Speculation that the shooting was a false flag – an attack made to look as if it were committed by someone else – began to circulate on Twitter and other social media sites almost immediately. Jones, who expressed doubt about the shooting on the day it happened, was among the far-right and fringe voices that amplified these false claims.
Jones was recently found liable by default in defamation cases filed by Sandy Hook families.
Mistakes in breaking news reports about the shooting, such as conflicting information on the gun used and the identity of the shooter, were spliced together in YouTube videos and compiled on blogs as proof of a conspiracy, as my research shows. Amateur sleuths collaborated in Facebook groups that promoted the shooting as a hoax and lured new users down the rabbit hole.
Soon, a variety of establishment figures, including the 2010 Republican nominee for Connecticut attorney general, Martha Dean, gave credence to doubts about the tragedy.
Six months later, as gun control legislation stalled in Congress, a university poll found 1 in 4 people thought the truth about Sandy Hook was being hidden to advance a political agenda. Many others said they weren’t sure. The results were so unbelievable that some media outlets questioned the poll’s accuracy.
Since then, many other conspiracy theories have followed a similar trajectory on social media. The bizarre QAnon conspiracy movement, which falsely claimed top Democrats were part of a Satan-worshipping pedophile ring, has been promoted by candidates for public office. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who amplified QAnon beliefs while a candidate, has also previously expressed doubt about Sandy Hook and other mass shootings.
But back in 2012, the spread of outlandish conspiracy theories from social media into the mainstream was a relatively new phenomenon, and an indication of what was to come.
New breed of conspiracies
Sandy Hook also marked a turning point in the nature of conspiracy theories and their targets. Before Sandy Hook, popular American conspiracy theories generally vilified shadowy elites or forces within the government. Many 9/11 “truthers,” for example, believed the government was behind the terrorist attacks, but they generally left victims’ families alone.
Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists accused family members of those killed, survivors of the shooting, religious leaders, neighbors and first responders of being part of a government plot.
Newtown parents were accused of faking their children’s deaths, or their very existence. Jones played video of one parent – a plaintiff in the Connecticut case against him – over and over, speculating he was an actor. Many other false allegations swirled online, including that the murders were related to a child sex cult.
This change in conspiratorial targets from veiled government and elite figures to everyday people marked a shift in the trajectory of American conspiracy theories.
Since Sandy Hook, survivors of many other high-profile mass shootings and attacks, such as the Boston Marathon bombing and the Charlottesville car attack, have had their trauma compounded by denial about their tragedies.
And the perverse idea of a politically connected pedophile ring became a key tenet in two subsequent conspiracy theories: Pizzagate and QAnon.
The kind of harassment and death threats that Sandy Hook families faced has also become a common fallout of conspiracy theories. In the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which Jones encouraged his listeners to investigate, the owners and employees of a Washington pizza parlor alleged to be part of a pedophile ring that included politicians were targeted. In 2016, one man drove hundreds of miles to investigate and fired his assault rifle in the restaurant.
Some people who were skeptical of the COVID-19 pandemic harassed front-line health workers . Local election workers across the country have been threatened and accused of being part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election.
The legacy of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook is a legacy of misinformation – the start of a crisis that will likely plague the U.S. for years to come.
But as the recent court decisions show, conspiracy theorists that target private individuals and companies with their lies may also face consequences in court.
