De Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezingen: Twitter en Facebook deden het best goed, terwijl YouTube faalde

“Many media organizations have spent the past four years generally failing to adapt to a campaign, a president, a White House and an administration that is extremely online,” said Stacy-Marie Ishmael, the editorial director of the nonprofit Texas Tribune. “We are only, four years in, getting to grips with how to contend with rhetorical techniques, messaging and communications steeped in misinformation and propaganda.”

One of the most high-profile cases involved robocalls that went to tens of thousands of minority voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and New York. The calls falsely claimed that voting by mail could be dangerous. “Mail-in voting sounds great,” a woman’s voice warned. “But did you know that if you vote by mail your personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit companies to collect outstanding debts?” The woman went on to say — falsely — that the government could use the information to track people down for mandatory vaccines. “Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man. Stay safe and beware of vote-by-mail,” she concluded.

Between November 3 and November 5, there were nearly 100 million views on videos from politics-focused channels with at least 10,000 subscribers that mention keywords related to “election fraud,” according to initial research from Transparency Tube, an independent tool that tracks politics-focused YouTube channels. More than 2.5 million of those views were on channels known for promoting conspiracy content. These large numbers of views demonstrate that the narrative is gathering significant attention.