WASHINGTON — The footage in the WhatsApp text chain message was real: a local Boston TV news report on the January arrest of Harvard professor Charles Lieber, a chemist charged with lying to federal authorities about receiving funding from Wuhan University of Technology in China.
The text that accompanied it was not: “The US has found the man responsible for fabricating and selling the coronavirus to China,” it read in Spanish.
In fact, authorities have found no such connection between Lieber and the virus.
To the alarm of disinformation experts, the pandemic is creating the conditions for conspiracy theorists and foreign agents, seasoned political strategists and amateur crusaders alike to sow confusion about the virus, downplay its severity, and instigate discord over the response to the outbreak.
In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump supporters, Republican operatives, and Russian actors harnessed the power of Internet content to disseminate contagious messages and influence political narratives, not all rooted in truth.
Only this time, the online manipulation campaigns aren’t just about damaging civil discourse or a campaign, researchers said. They could be deadly.
“We are not talking #pizzagate,” said John Voiklis with Knology, a social science think tank, pointing to a debunked conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 election and falsely linked prominent Democrats with human trafficking at a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor. “We are talking about a real disease that could sicken you and your relatives.”
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