{"id":180021,"date":"2021-12-14T06:41:17","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T11:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=180021"},"modified":"2021-12-10T13:52:54","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T18:52:54","slug":"how-conspiracy-theories-in-the-us-became-more-personal-cruel-and-mainstream-after-sandy-hook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2021\/12\/how-conspiracy-theories-in-the-us-became-more-personal-cruel-and-mainstream-after-sandy-hook\/","title":{"rendered":"How Conspiracy Theories in the US Became More Personal, Cruel, and Mainstream After Sandy Hook"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0helped spark<\/a>\u00a0a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.<\/p>\n

These conspiracy theories are part of a dangerous misinformation crisis that has been building for years in the U.S.<\/p>\n

American politics has long had a\u00a0paranoid streak<\/a>, and belief in conspiracy theories is\u00a0nothing new<\/a>. But as the news cycle reminds us daily, outlandish conspiracy theories born on social media now regularly achieve mainstream acceptance and are echoed by people in power.<\/p>\n

As a\u00a0journalism professor <\/a>\u00a0at the University of Connecticut, I have\u00a0studied the misinformation <\/a>\u00a0around the mass shooting that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. 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\u2019s aftermath.<\/p>\n

Nine years ago, the Sandy Hook shooting demonstrated how fringe ideas could quickly become\u00a0mainstream<\/a>\u00a0on social media and win support from various establishment figures \u2013 even when the conspiracy theory targeted grieving families of young students and school staff killed during the massacre.<\/p>\n

Those who claimed the tragedy was a hoax showed up in Newtown, Connecticut, and harassed people connected to the shooting. This provided an early example of how misinformation spread on social media could cause real-world harm.<\/p>\n

New Age of Social Media and Distrust\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Social media\u2019s\u00a0role in spreading misinformation<\/a>\u00a0has 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\u00a0used social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It also marked a\u00a0modern low<\/a>\u00a0in public trust of the media. Gallup\u2019s\u00a0annual survey<\/a>\u00a0has since showed even lower levels of trust in the media in 2016 and 2021.<\/p>\n

\"People
People display portraits of Sandy Hook elementary school shooting victims as they take part in the March for Our Lives in New York on March 24, 2018.
(EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These two coinciding trends \u2013 which continue to drive misinformation \u2013 pushed fringe doubts about Sandy Hook quickly into the U.S.\u00a0mainstream<\/a>. Speculation that the shooting was a\u00a0false flag<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 an attack made to look as if it were committed by someone else \u2013 began to circulate on Twitter and other social media sites almost immediately. Far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and other\u00a0fringe voices<\/a>\u00a0amplified these false claims.<\/p>\n

Jones was recently found\u00a0liable by default<\/a>\u00a0in defamation cases filed by Sandy Hook families.<\/p>\n

Mistakes in breaking news reports<\/a>\u00a0about 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\u00a0my research<\/a>\u00a0shows. Amateur sleuths collaborated in Facebook groups that promoted the shooting as a hoax and lured new users down the rabbit hole.<\/p>\n

Six months later, as gun control legislation\u00a0stalled in Congress<\/a>, a\u00a0university poll<\/a>\u00a0found 1 in 4 people thought the truth about Sandy Hook was being hidden to advance a political agenda. Many others said they weren\u2019t sure. The results were so unbelievable that some media outlets\u00a0questioned<\/a>\u00a0the poll\u2019s accuracy.<\/p>\n

Today, other conspiracy theories have followed a similar trajectory on social media. The media is awash with stories about the popularity of the bizarre\u00a0QAnon conspiracy movement<\/a>, which falsely claims top Democrats are part of a Satan-worshipping pedophile ring. A member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has also publicly denied\u00a0Sandy Hook<\/a>\u00a0and other mass shootings.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

New Breed of Conspiracies\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sandy Hook also marked a turning point in the nature of conspiracy theories and their targets. Before Sandy Hook, popular American conspiracy theories generally villainized shadowy elites or forces within the government. Many 9\/11 \u201ctruthers,\u201d for example,\u00a0believed the government<\/a>\u00a0was behind the terrorist attacks, but they generally left victims\u2019 families alone.<\/p>\n

Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists accused\u00a0family members of those killed<\/a>, survivors of the shooting, religious leaders,\u00a0neighbors<\/a>\u00a0and first responders of being part of a government plot.<\/p>\n

Newtown parents were accused of faking their children\u2019s deaths, or their very existence. There were also allegations they were part of a child sex cult.<\/p>\n

This change in conspiratorial targets from veiled government and elite figures to everyday people marked a shift in the trajectory of American conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n

Since Sandy Hook, survivors of many other high-profile\u00a0mass shootings<\/a>\u00a0and attacks, such as the\u00a0Boston Marathon bombing <\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Charlottesville car attack<\/a>, have had their trauma compounded by denial about their tragedies.<\/p>\n

And the perverse idea of a politically connected pedophile ring has become a key tenet in two subsequent conspiracy theories:\u00a0Pizzagate<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0QAnon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The kind of harassment and\u00a0death threats<\/a>\u00a0targeting Sandy Hook families has also become a common fallout of conspiracy theories. In the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, the owners and employees of a Washington,\u00a0D.C., pizza parlor<\/a>\u00a0alleged to be part of a pedophile ring that included politicians continue to be targeted by adherents of that conspiracy theory. In 2016,\u00a0one man drove hundreds of miles to investigate and fired his assault rifle<\/a>\u00a0in the restaurant.<\/p>\n

Some people who remain skeptical of the COVID-19 pandemic have harassed front-line\u00a0health workers <\/a>. Local election workers across the country\u00a0have been threatened<\/a>\u00a0and accused of being part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election.<\/p>\n

The legacy of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook is a legacy of misinformation \u2013 the start of a crisis that will likely plague the U.S. for years to come.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Originally published in The Conversation.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The legacy of the Sandy Hook shootings in 2012 continues to reverberate nine years later, including in how conspiracy theories have changed since the tragedy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":180022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2192,2317,2235],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-180021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-fairfield-county","category-journalism","category-today-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 05:38:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180021"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180046,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180021\/revisions\/180046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/180022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180021"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=180021"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=180021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}