{"id":193307,"date":"2022-12-14T07:01:37","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T12:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=193307"},"modified":"2022-12-13T12:17:17","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T17:17:17","slug":"ten-years-after-sandy-hook-alex-jones-is-being-held-accountable-for-spreading-falsehoods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2022\/12\/ten-years-after-sandy-hook-alex-jones-is-being-held-accountable-for-spreading-falsehoods\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Years After Sandy Hook, Alex Jones is Being Held Accountable for Spreading Falsehoods"},"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

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

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\u00a0nearly $1.5 billion in damages<\/a>\u00a0to 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.<\/p>\n

As a\u00a0journalism professor<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Connecticut, I have\u00a0studied the misinformation <\/a>that surrounded the mass shooting in Newtown on Dec. 14, 2012 \u2013 including Jones\u2019 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\u2019s aftermath.<\/p>\n

Ten years ago, the Sandy Hook shooting demonstrated how fringe ideas could quickly become\u00a0mainstream on social media<\/a>\u00a0and 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 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<\/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> has since showed even lower levels of trust in the media in 2016, 2021, and 2022.<\/p>\n

These two coinciding trends, which continue to drive misinformation, 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. Jones, who expressed doubt about the shooting on the day it happened, was among the far-right and\u00a0fringe voices<\/a>\u00a0that amplified 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

Soon, a variety of\u00a0establishment figures<\/a>, including the 2010 Republican nominee for Connecticut attorney general,\u00a0Martha Dean<\/a>,\u00a0gave credence<\/a>\u00a0to doubts about the tragedy.<\/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

Since then, many other conspiracy theories have followed a similar trajectory on social media. The bizarre\u00a0QAnon conspiracy movement<\/a>, 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\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<\/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 vilified 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. Jones played video of one parent \u2013 a plaintiff in the Connecticut case against him \u2013 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.<\/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>and 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 became a key tenet in two subsequent conspiracy theories:\u00a0Pizzagate<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0QAnon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The kind of harassment and\u00a0death threats<\/a>\u00a0that 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\u00a0pizza parlor<\/a>\u00a0alleged to be part of a pedophile ring that included politicians were targeted. In 2016,\u00a0one man drove hundreds of miles to investigate and fired his assault rifle<\/a>\u00a0in the restaurant.<\/p>\n

Some people who were skeptical of the COVID-19 pandemic 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

But as the recent court decisions show, conspiracy theorists that target private individuals and companies with their lies may also face consequences in court.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

… but those sorts of lies now plague the US, writes Assistant Journalism Professor Amanda Crawford<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":180023,"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-193307","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":"2026-05-07 06:30:07","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\/193307","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=193307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193308,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193307\/revisions\/193308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/180023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193307"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=193307"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=193307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}