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      La desinformación es más difícil de combatir en EE. UU.

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      La proliferación de redes sociales alternativas ha ayudado a afianzar la información falsa y engañosa como elemento clave de la política estadounidense.La mañana del 8 de julio, el expresidente Donald Trump recurrió a Truth Social, la plataforma de redes sociales que fundó con gente cercana a él, para afirmar que había ganado las elecciones presidenciales del 2020 en el estado de Wisconsin, a pesar de todas las pruebas que evidenciaban lo contrario.Alrededor de 8000 personas compartieron esa misiva en Truth Social, cifra que distó mucho de los cientos de miles de respuestas que sus publicaciones en Facebook y Twitter solían generar antes de que esas plataformas le apagaran el micrófono tras los mortíferos disturbios en el Capitolio el 6 de enero de 2021.A pesar de ello, la afirmación infundada de Trump pululó en la conciencia pública. Saltó de su aplicación a otras plataformas de redes sociales, por no hablar de pódcast, la radio y la televisión.Al cabo de 48 horas de publicado su mensaje, más de un millón de personas lo habían visto en al menos una decena de otros lugares. Apareció en Facebook y Twitter, de donde fue eliminado, pero también en YouTube, Gab, Parler y Telegram, según un análisis de The New York Times.La difusión de la afirmación de Trump ilustra cómo la desinformación ha hecho metástasis desde que los expertos comenzaron a sonar la alarma sobre la amenaza que supone y todo esto ocurre justo antes de las elecciones de mitad de mandato de este año. A pesar de los años de esfuerzos de los medios de comunicación, de los académicos e incluso de las propias empresas de redes sociales para hacer frente al problema, se puede decir que hoy en día está más generalizado y extendido.“Para ser honesta, me parece que el problema está peor que nunca”, comentó Nina Jankowicz, experta en desinformación que condujo durante un periodo breve un consejo consultivo dentro del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional dedicado a combatir la desinformación. La creación del panel desató furor y provocó su renuncia y la disolución del consejo consultivo.No hace mucho, la lucha contra la desinformación se centraba en las principales plataformas de redes sociales, como Facebook y Twitter. Cuando se les presionaba, solían eliminar los contenidos problemáticos, incluida la información errónea y la desinformación intencionada sobre la pandemia de COVID-19.Sin embargo, ahora hay decenas de plataformas nuevas, incluidas algunas que se enorgullecen de no moderar —censurar, como lo denominan— las declaraciones falsas en nombre de la libertad de expresión.Otras personalidades siguieron los pasos de Trump y se cambiaron a estas nuevas plataformas tras ser “censuradas” por Facebook, YouTube o Twitter. Entre ellos, Michael Flynn, el general retirado que sirvió brevemente como principal asesor de Seguridad Nacional de Trump; L. Lin Wood, una abogada pro-Trump; Naomi Wolf, una autora feminista y escéptica de las vacunas, así como diversos seguidores de QAnon y los Oath Keepers, un grupo de militantes de extrema derecha.Al menos 69 millones de personas se han unido a plataformas como Parler, Gab, Truth Social, Gettr y Rumble, que se promueven como alternativas conservadoras a las grandes empresas tecnológicas, según declaraciones de las empresas mismas. Aunque muchos de esos usuarios ya no tienen cabida en las plataformas más grandes, siguen difundiendo sus opiniones, que a menudo aparecen en capturas de pantalla publicadas en los sitios que les prohibieron la entrada.“Nada en internet existe de manera aislada”, afirmó Jared Holt, gestor principal en la investigación sobre odio y extremismo del Instituto para el Diálogo Estratégico. “Lo que ocurre en plataformas alternas como Gab o Telegram o Truth tarde o temprano llega a Facebook, Twitter y otras”, agregó.Los usuarios han migrado a aplicaciones como Truth Social luego de haber sido “censuradas” por Facebook, YouTube o Twitter.Leon Neal/Getty ImagesEl discurso político se ha radicalizado por la difusión de las personas que propagan desinformación, indicó Nora Benavidez, abogada sénior en Free Press, un grupo de defensa de los derechos digitales y la transparencia.“Nuestro lenguaje y nuestros ecosistemas en línea se están volviendo cada vez más corrosivos”, dijo.Los cambios en el paisaje de la desinformación se están haciendo más evidentes con el ciclo electoral en Estados Unidos. En 2016, la campaña encubierta de Rusia para difundir mensajes falsos y divisorios parecía una aberración en el sistema político estadounidense. Hoy la desinformación, procedente de enemigos extranjeros y nacionales, se ha convertido en una característica del mismo.La idea infundada de que el presidente Joe Biden no fue electo de manera legítima se generalizó entre los miembros del Partido Republicano, e hizo que funcionarios de los estados y los condados impusieran nuevas restricciones para votar, a menudo solo con base en teorías de la conspiración que se cuelan en los medios de comunicación de derecha.Los votantes no solo deben filtrar un torrente cada vez mayor de mentiras y falsedades sobre los candidatos y sus políticas, sino también información sobre cuándo y dónde votar. Los funcionarios nombrados o elegidos en nombre de la lucha contra el fraude electoral han adoptado una postura que implica que se negarán a certificar los resultados que no sean de su agrado.Los proveedores de desinformación también se han vuelto cada vez más sofisticados a la hora de eludir las normas de las principales plataformas, mientras que el uso del video para difundir afirmaciones falsas en YouTube, TikTok e Instagram ha hecho que los sistemas automatizados tengan más dificultades para identificarlos que los mensajes de texto.TikTok, propiedad del gigante chino de la tecnología ByteDance, se ha vuelto uno de los principales campos de batalla en la lucha actual contra la desinformación. Un informe del mes pasado de NewsGuard, una organización que da seguimiento al problema en línea, mostró que casi el 20 por ciento de los videos que aparecían como resultados de búsqueda en TikTok contenían información falsa o tendenciosa sobre temas como los tiroteos en las escuelas y la guerra de Rusia en Ucrania.Katie Harbath en el “sala de operaciones” de Facebook, donde se monitoreaba el contenido relacionado con las elecciones en la plataforma, en 2018Jeff Chiu/Associated Press“La gente que hace esto sabe cómo aprovechar los vacíos”, explicó Katie Harbath, exdirectora de políticas públicas de Facebook que ahora dirige Anchor Change, una consultora estratégica.A pocas semanas de las elecciones de mitad de mandato, las principales plataformas se han comprometido a bloquear, etiquetar o marginar todo lo que infrinja las políticas de la empresa, incluida la desinformación, la incitación al odio o los llamados a la violencia.Sin embargo, la industria artesanal de expertos dedicados a contrarrestar la desinformación —los grupos de expertos, las universidades y las organizaciones no gubernamentales— mencionan que la industria no está haciendo suficiente. El mes pasado, por ejemplo, el Centro Stern para los Negocios y los Derechos Humanos de la Universidad de Nueva York advirtió que las principales plataformas seguían amplificando el “negacionismo electoral” de maneras que debilitaban la confianza en el sistema democrático.Otro desafío es la proliferación de plataformas alternativas para esas falsedades y opiniones aún más extremas.Muchas de esas nuevas plataformas florecieron tras la derrota de Trump en 2020, aunque todavía no han alcanzado el tamaño o el alcance de Facebook y Twitter. Estas plataformas afirman que las grandes empresas tecnológicas están en deuda con el gobierno, el Estado profundo o la élite liberal.Parler, una red social fundada en 2018, era uno de los sitios que más crecía, hasta que las tiendas de aplicaciones de Apple y Google lo expulsaron tras los disturbios mortales del 6 de enero, alimentados por la desinformación y los llamados a la violencia en línea. Desde entonces ha vuelto a ambas tiendas y ha empezado a reconstruir su audiencia apelando a quienes sienten que sus voces han sido silenciadas.“En Parler creemos que el individuo es quien debe decidir lo que cree que es la verdad”, dijo en una entrevista, Amy Peikoff, la directora de políticas de la plataforma.Argumentó que el problema con la desinformación o las teorías de la conspiración se derivaba de los algoritmos que las plataformas usan para mantener a la gente pegada a internet y no del debate sin moderar que fomentan sitios como Parler.El lunes, Parler anunció que Kanye West había, en principio, accedido a comprar la plataforma en un acuerdo que el rapero y el diseñador de moda, ahora conocido como Ye, formuló en términos políticos.“En un mundo en que las opiniones conservadoras se consideran controversiales, debemos de asegurarnos de tener el derecho a expresarnos libremente”, dijo, según el comunicado de la compañía.Los competidores de Parler son ahora BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Telegram y Truth Social, y cada uno de ellos se presenta como un santuario frente a las políticas de moderación de las principales plataformas en todo tipo de temas, desde la política hasta la salud.Una nueva encuesta del Centro de Investigaciones Pew descubrió que el 15 por ciento de las cuentas destacadas en esas siete plataformas habían sido desterradas previamente de otras como Twitter y Facebook.Las aplicaciones como Gettr se publicitan como alternativas a los gigantes tecnológicosElijah Nouvelage/Getty ImagesSegún la encuesta, casi dos terceras partes de los usuarios de esas plataformas dijeron que habían encontrado una comunidad de personas que compartían sus opiniones. La mayoría son republicanos o se inclinan por ese partido.Una consecuencia de esta atomización de las fuentes de las redes sociales es que se refuerzan las burbujas de información partidista en las que viven millones de estadounidenses.Según el Centro Pew, al menos el seis por ciento de los estadounidenses se informa de manera habitual en al menos uno de estos sitios relativamente nuevos, que a menudo “ponen de relieve puntos de vista del mundo que no pertenecen a la corriente dominante y, a veces, utilizan un lenguaje ofensivo”. La encuesta encontró que una de cada 10 publicaciones en estas plataformas que mencionaban cuestiones relacionadas con la comunidad LGBTQ incluían alegatos peyorativos.Estos nuevos sitios siguen siendo marginales comparados con las plataformas más grandes; por ejemplo, Trump tiene 4 millones de seguidores en Truth Social, en comparación con los 88 millones que tenía cuando Twitter cerró su cuenta en 2021.Aun así, Trump ha retomado cada vez más sus publicaciones con el ímpetu que antes mostraba en Twitter. El allanamiento del FBI en Mar-a-Lago volvió a poner sus últimos pronunciamientos en el ojo del huracán político.Para las principales plataformas, el incentivo financiero para atraer usuarios, y sus clics, sigue siendo poderoso y podría hacer que den marcha atrás a las medidas que tomaron en 2021. También hay un componente ideológico. El llamado a la libertad individual, con tintes emocionales, impulsó en parte la oferta de Elon Musk para comprar Twitter, que parece haberse reactivado tras meses de maniobras legales.Nick Clegg, el presidente de asuntos globales de Meta, la empresa matriz de Facebook, incluso sugirió hace poco que la plataforma podría restablecer la cuenta de Trump en 2023, antes de la que podría ser otra carrera presidencial. Facebook había dicho previamente que solo lo haría “si el riesgo para la seguridad pública ha disminuido”.Nick Clegga, el presidente de asuntos globales de MetaPatrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesUn estudio de Truth Social realizado por Media Matters for America, un grupo de monitoreo de medios con tendencia de izquierda, examinó la forma en que la plataforma se ha convertido en hogar de algunas de las teorías de conspiración más marginales. Trump, que empezó a publicar en la plataforma en el mes de abril, ha amplificado cada vez más el contenido de QAnon, la teoría de conspiración en línea.Ha compartido publicaciones de QAnon más de 130 veces. Los seguidores de QAnon promueven una falsedad amplia y compleja centrada en Trump como líder que se enfrenta a una conspiración de una camarilla de pedófilos del Partido Demócrata. Dichas opiniones han hallado cabida durante las primarias de este año en las campañas electorales de los republicanos.Jankowicz, la experta en desinformación, mencionó que las divisiones sociales y políticas habían agitado las olas de la desinformación.Las controversias sobre la mejor manera de responder a la pandemia de COVID-19 profundizaron la desconfianza en el gobierno y los expertos médicos, sobre todo entre los conservadores. La negativa de Trump a aceptar el resultado de las elecciones de 2020 condujo a la violencia en el Capitolio, pero no terminó con ella.“Deberían habernos unido”, dijo Jankowicz, refiriéndose a la pandemia y a los disturbios. “Pensé que quizás podrían servir como una especie de poder de convocatoria, pero no lo fueron”Steven Lee Myers cubre desinformación para el Times. Ha trabajado en Washington, Moscú, Bagdad y Pekín, donde contribuyó a los artículos que ganaron el Premio Pulitzer al servicio público en 2021. También es el autor de The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin. @stevenleemyers • FacebookSheera Frenkel es una reportera de tecnología premiada que tiene su sede en San Francisco. En 2021, ella y Cecilia Kang publicaron Manipulados. La batalla de Facebook por la dominación mundial. @sheeraf More

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      Ahead of Midterms, Disinformation Is Even More Intractable

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      On the morning of July 8, former President Donald J. Trump took to Truth Social, a social media platform he founded with people close to him, to claim that he had in fact won the 2020 presidential vote in Wisconsin, despite all evidence to the contrary.Barely 8,000 people shared that missive on Truth Social, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of responses his posts on Facebook and Twitter had regularly generated before those services suspended his megaphones after the deadly riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.And yet Mr. Trump’s baseless claim pulsed through the public consciousness anyway. It jumped from his app to other social media platforms — not to mention podcasts, talk radio or television.Within 48 hours of Mr. Trump’s post, more than one million people saw his claim on at least dozen other sites. It appeared on Facebook and Twitter, from which he has been banished, but also YouTube, Gab, Parler and Telegram, according to an analysis by The New York Times.The spread of Mr. Trump’s claim illustrates how, ahead of this year’s midterm elections, disinformation has metastasized since experts began raising alarms about the threat. Despite years of efforts by the media, by academics and even by social media companies themselves to address the problem, it is arguably more pervasive and widespread today.“I think the problem is worse than it’s ever been, frankly,” said Nina Jankowicz, an expert on disinformation who briefly led an advisory board within the Department of Homeland Security dedicated to combating misinformation. The creation of the panel set off a furor, prompting her to resign and the group to be dismantled.Not long ago, the fight against disinformation focused on the major social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. When pressed, they often removed troubling content, including misinformation and intentional disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic.Today, however, there are dozens of new platforms, including some that pride themselves on not moderating — censoring, as they put it — untrue statements in the name of free speech.Other figures followed Mr. Trump in migrating to these new platforms after being “censored” by Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. They included Michael Flynn, the retired general who served briefly as Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser; L. Lin Wood, a pro-Trump lawyer; Naomi Wolf, a feminist author and vaccine skeptic; and assorted adherents of QAnon and the Oath Keepers, the far-right militia.At least 69 million people have joined platforms, like Parler, Gab, Truth Social, Gettr and Rumble, that advertise themselves as conservative alternatives to Big Tech, according to statements by the companies. Though many of those users are ostracized from larger platforms, they continue to spread their views, which often appear in screen shots posted on the sites that barred them.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsBoth parties are making their final pitches ahead of the Nov. 8 election.Where the Election Stands: As Republicans appear to be gaining an edge with swing voters in the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress, here’s a look at the state of the races for the House and Senate.Biden’s Low Profile: President Biden’s decision not to attend big campaign rallies reflects a low approval rating that makes him unwelcome in some congressional districts and states.What Young Voters Think: Twelve Americans under 30, all living in swing states, told The Times about their political priorities, ranging from the highly personal to the universal.Debates Dwindle: Direct political engagement with voters is waning as candidates surround themselves with their supporters. Nowhere is the trend clearer than on the shrinking debate stage.“Nothing on the internet exists in a silo,” said Jared Holt, a senior manager on hate and extremism research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “Whatever happens in alt platforms like Gab or Telegram or Truth makes its way back to Facebook and Twitter and others.”Users have migrated to apps like Truth Social after being “censored” by Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.Leon Neal/Getty ImagesThe diffusion of the people who spread disinformation has radicalized political discourse, said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, an advocacy group for digital rights and accountability.“Our language and our ecosystems are becoming more caustic online,” she said. The shifts in the disinformation landscape are becoming clear with the new cycle of American elections. In 2016, Russia’s covert campaign to spread false and divisive posts seemed like an aberration in the American political system. Today disinformation, from enemies, foreign and domestic, has become a feature of it.The baseless idea that President Biden was not legitimately elected has gone mainstream among Republican Party members, driving state and county officials to impose new restrictions on casting ballots, often based on mere conspiracy theories percolating in right-wing media.Voters must now sift through not only an ever-growing torrent of lies and falsehoods about candidates and their policies, but also information on when and where to vote. Officials appointed or elected in the name of fighting voter fraud have put themselves in the position to refuse to certify outcomes that are not to their liking.The purveyors of disinformation have also become increasingly sophisticated at sidestepping the major platforms’ rules, while the use of video to spread false claims on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram has made them harder for automated systems to track than text.TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, has become a primary battleground in today’s fight against disinformation. A report last month by NewsGuard, an organization that tracks the problem online, showed that nearly 20 percent of videos presented as search results on TikTok contained false or misleading information on topics such as school shootings and Russia’s war in Ukraine.Katie Harbath in Facebook’s “war room,” where election-related content was monitored on the platform, in 2018.Jeff Chiu/Associated Press“People who do this know how to exploit the loopholes,” said Katie Harbath, a former director of public policy at Facebook who now leads Anchor Change, a strategic consultancy.With the midterm elections only weeks away, the major platforms have all pledged to block, label or marginalize anything that violates company policies, including disinformation, hate speech or calls to violence.Still, the cottage industry of experts dedicated to countering disinformation — think tanks, universities and nongovernment organizations — say the industry is not doing enough. The Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University warned last month, for example, that the major platforms continued to amplify “election denialism” in ways that undermined trust in the democratic system.Another challenge is the proliferation of alternative platforms for those falsehoods and even more extreme views.Many of those new platforms have flourished in the wake of Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020, though they have not yet reached the size or reach of Facebook and Twitter. They portray Big Tech as beholden to the government, the deep state or the liberal elite.Parler, a social network founded in 2018, was one of the fastest-growing sites — until Apple’s and Google’s app stores kicked it off after the deadly riot on Jan. 6, which was fueled by disinformation and calls for violence online. It has since returned to both stores and begun to rebuild its audience by appealing to those who feel their voices have been silenced.“We believe at Parler that it is up to the individual to decide what he or she thinks is the truth,” Amy Peikoff, the platform’s chief policy officer, said in an interview.She argued that the problem with disinformation or conspiracy theories stemmed from the algorithms that platforms use to keep people glued online — not from the unfettered debate that sites like Parler foster.On Monday, Parler announced that Kanye West had agreed in principle to purchase the platform, a deal that the rapper and fashion designer, now known as Ye, cast in political terms.“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” he said, according to the company’s statement.Parler’s competitors now are BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social, with each offering itself as sanctuary from the moderating policies of the major platforms on everything from politics to health policy.A new survey by the Pew Research Center found that 15 percent of prominent accounts on those seven platforms had previously been banished from others like Twitter and Facebook.Apps like Gettr market themselves as alternatives to Big Tech.Elijah Nouvelage/Getty ImagesNearly two-thirds of the users of those platforms said they had found a community of people who share their views, according to the survey. A majority are Republicans or lean Republican.A result of this atomization of social media sources is to reinforce the partisan information bubbles within which millions of Americans live.At least 6 percent of Americans now regularly get news from at least one of these relatively new sites, which often “highlight non-mainstream world views and sometimes offensive language,” according to Pew. One in 10 posts on these platforms that mentioned L.G.B.T.Q. issues involved derisive allegations, the survey found.These new sites are still marginal compared with the bigger platforms; Mr. Trump, for example, has four million followers on Truth Social, compared with 88 million when Twitter kicked him off in 2021.Even so, Mr. Trump has increasingly resumed posting with the vigor he once showed on Twitter. The F.B.I. raid on Mar-a-Lago thrust his latest pronouncements into the eye of the political storm once again.For the major platforms, the financial incentive to attract users — and their clicks — remains powerful and could undo the steps they took in 2021. There is also an ideological component. The emotionally laced appeal to individual liberty in part drove Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter, which appears to have been revived after months of legal maneuvering.Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, even suggested recently that the platform might reinstate Mr. Trump’s account in 2023 — ahead of what could be another presidential run. Facebook had previously said it would do so only “if the risk to public safety has receded.”Nick Clegg, Meta’s president for global affairs.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA study of Truth Social by Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media monitoring group, examined how the platform had become a home for some of the most fringe conspiracy theories. Mr. Trump, who began posting on the platform in April, has increasingly amplified content from QAnon, the online conspiracy theory.He has shared posts from QAnon accounts more than 130 times. QAnon believers promote a vast and complex falsehood that centers on Mr. Trump as a leader battling a cabal of Democratic Party pedophiles. Echoes of such views reverberated through Republican election campaigns across the country during this year’s primaries.Ms. Jankowicz, the disinformation expert, said the nation’s social and political divisions had churned the waves of disinformation.The controversies over how best to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic deepened distrust of government and medical experts, especially among conservatives. Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election led to, but did not end with, the Capitol Hill violence.“They should have brought us together,” Ms. Jankowicz said, referring to the pandemic and the riots. “I thought perhaps they could be kind of this convening power, but they were not.” More

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      The Midterm Election’s Most Dominant Toxic Narratives

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      Ballot mules. Poll watch parties. Groomers.These topics are now among the most dominant divisive and misleading narratives online about November’s midterm elections, according to researchers and data analytics companies. On Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Truth Social and other social media sites, some of these narratives have surged in recent months, often accompanied by angry and threatening rhetoric.The effects of these inflammatory online discussions are being felt in the real world, election officials and voting rights groups said. Voters have flooded some local election offices with misinformed questions about supposedly rigged voting machines, while some people appear befuddled about what pens to use on ballots and whether mail-in ballots are still legal, they said.“Our voters are angry and confused,” Lisa Marra, elections director in Cochise County, Ariz., told a House committee last month. “They simply don’t know what to believe.”The most prevalent of these narratives fall into three main categories: continued falsehoods about rampant election fraud; threats of violence and citizen policing of elections; and divisive posts on health and social policies that have become central to political campaigns. Here’s what to know about them.Misinformation about the 2020 election, left, has fueled the “Stop the Steal” movement, center, and continues to be raised at campaign events for the midterms, right.From left, Amir Hamja for The New York Times, Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times, Ash Ponders for The New York Times Election FraudFalse claims of election fraud are commanding conversation online, with former President Donald J. Trump continuing to protest that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.Voter fraud is rare, but that falsehood about the 2020 election has become a central campaign issue for dozens of candidates around the country, causing misinformation and toxic content about the issue to spread widely online.“Stolen election” was mentioned 325,589 times on Twitter from June 19 to July 19, a number that has been fairly steady throughout the year and that was up nearly 900 percent from the same period in 2020, according to Zignal Labs, a media research firm.On the video-sharing site Rumble, videos with the term “stop the steal” or “stolen election” and other claims of election fraud have been among the most popular. In May, such posts attracted 2.5 million viewers, more than triple the total from a year earlier, according to Similarweb, a digital analytics firm.More recently, misinformation around the integrity of voting has metastasized. More conspiracy theories are circulating online about individuals submitting fraudulent ballots, about voting machines being rigged to favor Democrats and about election officials switching the kinds of pens that voters must use to mark ballots in order to confuse them.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Inflation Concerns Persist: In the six-month primary season that has just ended, several issues have risen and fallen, but nothing has dislodged inflation and the economy from the top of voters’ minds.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia claimed his business donated 15 percent of its profits to charities. Three of the four groups named as recipients say they didn’t receive money.North Carolina Senate Race: Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? The contest between Cheri Beasley, a Democrat, and her G.O.P. opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.These conspiracy theories have in turn spawned new terms, such as “ballot trafficking” and “ballot mules,” which is used to describe people who are paid to cast fake ballots. The terms were popularized by the May release of the film “2000 Mules,” a discredited movie claiming widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. From June 19 to July 19, “ballot mules” was mentioned 17,592 times on Twitter; it was not used before the 2020 election, according to Zignal.In April, the conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk interviewed the stars of the film, including Catherine Engelbrecht of the nonprofit voting group True the Vote. Mr. Kirk’s interview has garnered more than two million views online.“A sense of grievance is already in place,” said Kyle Weiss, a senior analyst at Graphika, a research firm that studies misinformation and fake social media accounts. The 2020 election “primed the public on a set of core narratives, which are reconstituting and evolving in 2022.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.The security of ballot drop boxes, left; the search for documents at Mar-a-Lago, center; and the role of the F.B.I., right, are being widely discussed online in the context of the midterm elections. From left, Marco Garcia for The New York Times, Saul Martinez for The New York Times, Kenny Holston for The New York TimesCalls to ActionOnline conversations about the midterm elections have also been dominated by calls for voters to act against apparent election fraud. In response, some people have organized citizen policing of voting, with stakeouts of polling stations and demands for information about voter rolls in their counties. Civil rights groups widely criticize poll watching, which they say can intimidate voters, particularly immigrants and at sites in communities of color.From July 27 to Aug. 3, the second-most-shared tweet about the midterms was a photo of people staking out a ballot box, with the message that “residents are determined to safeguard the drop boxes,” according to Zignal. Among those who shared it was Dinesh D’Souza, the creator of “2000 Mules,” who has 2.4 million followers on Twitter.In July, Seth Keshel, a retired Army captain who has challenged the result of the 2020 presidential election, shared a message on Telegram calling for “all-night patriot tailgate parties for EVERY DROP BOX IN AMERICA.” The post was viewed more than 70,000 times.Anger toward the F.B.I. is also reflected in midterm-related conversations, with a rise in calls to shut down or defund the agency after last month’s raid of Mr. Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.“Abolish FBI” became a trending hashtag across social media, mentioned 122,915 times on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and news sites from July 1 to Aug. 30, up 1,990 percent from about 5,882 mentions in the two months before the 2020 election, according to Zignal.In a video posted on Twitter on Sept. 20, Representative Andrew Clyde, Republican of Georgia, implied that he and others would take action against the F.B.I. if Republicans won control of Congress in November.“You wait till we take the House back. You watch what happens to the F.B.I.,” he said in a video captured by a left-leaning online show, “The Undercurrent,” and shared more than 1,000 times on Twitter within a few hours. Mr. Clyde did not respond to a request for comment.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, center, is among the politicians who have spread misinformation about gay and transgender people, a report said.From left: Todd Heisler/The New York Times, Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times, Todd Heisler/The New York TimesHot-Button IssuesSome online conversations about the midterms are not directly related to voting. Instead, the discussions are centered on highly partisan issues — such as transgender rights — that candidates are campaigning on and that are widely regarded as motivating voters, leading to a surge of falsehoods.A month after Florida passed legislation that prohibits classroom discussion or instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity, which the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law in March, the volume of tweets falsely linking gay and transgender individuals to pedophilia soared, for example.Language claiming that gay people and transgender people were “grooming” children for abuse increased 406 percent on Twitter in April, according to a study by the Human Rights Campaign and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.The narrative was spread most widely by 10 far-right figures, including midterm candidates such as Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, according to the report. Their tweets on “grooming” misinformation were viewed an estimated 48 million times, the report said.In May, Ms. Boebert tweeted: “A North Carolina preschool is using LGBT flag flashcards with a pregnant man to teach kids colors. We went from Reading Rainbow to Randy Rainbow in a few decades, but don’t dare say the Left is grooming our kids!” The tweet was shared nearly 2,000 times and liked nearly 10,000 times.Ms. Boebert and Ms. Taylor Greene did not respond to requests for comment.On Facebook and Instagram, 59 ads also promoted the narrative that the L.G.B.T.Q.+ community and allies were “grooming” children, the report found. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, accepted up to $24,987 for the ads, which were served to users over 2.1 million times, according to the report.Meta said it had removed several of the ads mentioned in the report.“The repeated pushing of ‘groomer’ narratives has resulted in a wider anti-L.G.B.T. moral panic that has been influencing state and federal legislation and is likely to be a significant midterm issue,” said David Thiel, the chief technical officer at the Stanford Internet Observatory, which studies online extremism and disinformation. More

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      Putin Raises Stakes in the War, With Direct Challenge to the West

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      The Russian leader announced a call-up of troops and hinted at using nuclear weapons, accusing the West of trying to “destroy our country” and vowing that Russia would defend itself.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia accelerated his war effort in Ukraine on Wednesday, announcing a call-up of roughly 300,000 reservists to the military, while also directly challenging the West over its support for Ukraine with a veiled threat of using nuclear weapons.In a rare address to the nation, Mr. Putin said he was prepared to declare four Ukrainian regions to be part of Russia as early as next week, even though some of that territory is still controlled by Ukrainian forces. And he framed the war he launched seven months ago in existential terms for Russia, insisting that the nation was merely defending itself against a mortal threat to its “sovereignty” and that the West was seeking to “weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country.”“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people,” he said. “This is not a bluff.”Taken together, Mr. Putin’s speech laid out the Kremlin’s strategy of continuing to raise the stakes in the war, despite the humiliating setbacks Russia’s military has suffered on the battlefield and a potential public backlash in Russia. Protests against the mobilization and arrests were reported in dozens of cities.The address also suggested that even as Mr. Putin was mobilizing more troops, his broader aim was to startle the United States and its European allies into dropping their support for Ukraine or compelling President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate a peace deal that is acceptable to Moscow.A photograph released by Russian state media on Tuesday shows President Vladimir V. Putin speaking at a meeting on Wednesday.Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik“You get the feeling now that he might do anything, and this is his strategic potential,” Gleb O. Pavlovsky, a Moscow political analyst and a former adviser to Mr. Putin, said in a phone interview. “He is using this strategic potential because he has no other.”Russian occupation authorities in four Ukrainian regions declared on Tuesday that they would stage referendums on annexation by Russia, laying the groundwork for Mr. Putin’s escalation. In his speech on Wednesday, he said he would support the results, likely redefining the territory as part of Russia, while justifying the mobilization as a matter of self-defense.But if Mr. Putin’s aim was to change the terms of the war so profoundly as to shake Ukraine and its allies, there was no immediate evidence that it was working.In Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky told a German newspaper in response to Mr. Putin’s speech that the Russian president wanted to “drown Ukraine in blood” and that he would only negotiate “if they leave our territories.” Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, said in an interview with The New York Times that the situation was “dangerous,” but that Russia’s status as a nuclear power would not “change what we are doing.”At the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, President Biden insisted that “we will stand in solidarity to Russia’s aggression,” and said Mr. Putin was making “irresponsible nuclear threats.’’ He added later, “This war is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state.”In Russia, the announcement of a major call-up thrust the Kremlin into uncharted political terrain. Until now, the government has sought to assure regular Russians that they could go on living their lives, referring to the war as only a “special military operation” and insisting that no one would be forced to fight in Ukraine against his will.But this month’s stunning counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces, in which Kyiv retook more than one thousand square miles of territory, appeared to change that calculus. Mr. Putin suddenly appeared on the back foot, under fire from even some of his supporters on national television who claimed that he was not waging war decisively enough. And the fact that Russia lacked sufficient combat personnel in Ukraine to make gains or even to hold territory — as Western analysts and officials have asserted for months — became unmistakable.The city of Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, is on the front line in the war with Russia. Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesIn response, Mr. Putin declared for the first time on Wednesday that Russian civilians could be pressed into service in Ukraine. Apparently keen to avoid a public backlash, the Russian leader insisted that the new draft was only a “partial mobilization” and that only men with military experience would receive orders to report for duty.Mr. Putin said that Russia’s goals in Ukraine had not changed and that the move was “necessary and urgent” because the West had “crossed all lines” by providing sophisticated weapons to Ukraine.In subsequent remarks, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, put the number of potential new call-ups at 300,000 people. He said that university students would not be subject to the draft, and that young conscripts serving the one year of military service that is required in Russia would not be sent to the front lines.But the official order declaring the call-ups was far more vague, leaving open the possibility that the government could later broaden the draft.In Russia, news of the call-up spurred protests across the country; more than 1,200 from 38 cities were detained, according to OVD-Info, a human rights watchdog that monitors police activity. In Moscow, hundreds of protesters gathered on the Old Arbat, a pedestrian street in the city center, screaming “Send Putin to the trenches!” and “Let our children live!”Some Russians rushed to purchase plane tickets out of the country, and the Telegram messaging app was filled with messages about the border situation and possible ways to get out of the country.Vasiliy Horkaviy, center, and his father Alexey Horkaviy, left, in an evacuation vehicle taking them from Kupiansk, Ukraine, on Wednesday.Nicole Tung for The New York TimesThe responses underscored the risks being taken by Mr. Putin as he pushed to escalate a war that has caused heavy Russian casualties and is increasingly violating his unspoken deal with the public: that Russians stay out of politics and the Kremlin lets them live their lives. Mr. Putin has successfully clamped down on dissent since starting the war, with new censorship laws and a spate of arrests, but analysts said that the main reason he long avoided declaring a draft was his fear of public backlash.“This is crossing a red line,” Mr. Pavlovsky, the former Putin adviser, said, referring to Wednesday’s mobilization order. “It will violate, in a sense, the contract with the Putin majority.”Military analysts said the draft would not have immediate consequences on the battlefield because it would take weeks, if not months, for Russia to mobilize, train and equip additional combat-ready troops. Still, the move could begin to address Russia’s manpower shortages, in part because it would prohibit existing contract soldiers from quitting, said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the CNA defense research institute in Arlington, Va.Mr. Putin this week has also sought to retake the initiative by setting the stage for claiming sovereignty over more territory in Ukraine. Russian occupation authorities in Ukraine said they would hold five-day, snap “referendums” starting Friday on joining Russia, a likely prelude to annexation.“Russia can’t give up on people living close by to be torn apart by executioners and fail to respond to their desire to determine their own fate,” Mr. Putin said, referring to Ukrainians in occupied territory, even as reports continue to emerge of torture and killings by Russian occupying forces.Pro-Kremlin analysts and officials have said that after annexation, Moscow could claim that any further Ukrainian military action on those territories was an attack on Russia itself, providing Mr. Putin with a justification for retaliation. He did not explicitly threaten a nuclear response, but warned that he was ready to use all of the weapons in Russia’s arsenal to protect what the Kremlin considered Russian territory.“An attack on the people and territories will be an attack on Russia,” a senior Russian lawmaker, Konstantin I. Kosachev, posted on social media, warning the West to “stop playing military games with a nuclear state.”Western officials have condemned the planned referendums as “sham’’ votes, and Ukrainian officials have described them as a red line after which negotiation with Russia would be impossible.But there remained some signals that Mr. Putin was open to a negotiated exit from the war.Hours after his speech, officials in Kyiv announced that Russia had released 215 Ukrainians in a prisoner of war exchange, including the top two commanders of the Azov Battalion and more than 100 other troops who were involved in the last-ditch defense of Mariupol before it fell to the Russians in May — fighters who are regarded in Ukraine as national heroes. Saudi Arabia made its own announcement about an exchange that secured the release of 10 prisoners held by Russia, including U.S. and British citizens.Andrei Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research organization close to the Russian government, said in a phone interview that he did not expect Mr. Putin to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine as long as NATO did not directly attack Russia. Doing so would offer no significant battlefield advantage over conventional weapons, he said, while “the political risks associated with this are very high.”Mr. Kortunov said that Mr. Putin’s goal was now pressuring the West, rather than Ukraine, to agree to some kind of peace deal.“This means that there is no hope for political dialogue with Kyiv,” Mr. Kortunov said of Mr. Putin’s apparent plans for annexing more of Ukraine. “If there is any dialogue, it will be with the West, not with Kyiv.”Ukrainian military vehicles in Bakhmut on Wednesday.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times More

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      ‘I’ll Stand on the Side of Russia’: Pro-Putin Sentiment Spreads Online

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      After marinating in conspiracy theories and Donald J. Trump’s Russia stance, some online discourse about Vladimir Putin has grown more complimentary.The day before Russia invaded Ukraine, former President Donald J. Trump called the wartime strategy of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “pretty smart.” His remarks were posted on YouTube, Twitter and the messaging app Telegram, where they were viewed more than 1.3 million times.Right-wing commentators including Candace Owens, Stew Peters and Joe Oltmann also jumped into the fray online with posts that were favorable to Mr. Putin and that rationalized his actions against Ukraine. “I’ll stand on the side of Russia right now,” Mr. Oltmann, a conservative podcaster, said on his show this week.And in Telegram groups like The Patriot Voice and Facebook groups including Texas for Donald Trump 2020, members criticized President Biden’s handling of the conflict and expressed support for Russia, with some saying they trusted Mr. Putin more than Mr. Biden.The online conversations reflect how pro-Russia sentiment has increasingly penetrated Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, right-wing podcasts, messaging apps like Telegram and some conservative media. As Russia attacked Ukraine this week, those views spread, infusing the online discourse over the war with sympathy — and even approval — for the aggressor.The positive Russia comments are an extension of the culture wars and grievance politics that have animated the right in the United States in the past few years. In some of these circles, Mr. Putin carries a strongman appeal, viewed as someone who gets his way and does not let political correctness stop him.“Putin embodies the strength that Trump pretended to have,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council who studies digital platforms. “For these individuals, Putin’s actions aren’t a tragedy — they’re a fantasy fulfilled.” Support for Mr. Putin and Russia is now being expressed online in a jumble of facts, observations and opinions, sometimes entwined with lies. In recent days, commenters have complimented Mr. Putin and falsely accused NATO of violating nonexistent territorial agreements with Russia, which they said justified the Russian president’s declaration of war on Ukraine, according to a review of posts by The New York Times.Others have spread convoluted conspiracy theories about the war that are tinged with a pro-Russia sheen. In one popular lie circulating online, Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump are working together on the war. Another falsehood involves the idea that the war is about taking down a cabal of global elites over sex trafficking.In all, pro-Russian narratives on English-language social media, cable TV, and print and online outlets soared 2,580 percent in the past week compared to the first week of February, according to an analysis by the media insights company Zignal Labs. Those mentions cropped up 5,740 times in the past week, up from 214 in the first week of February, Zignal said.The narratives have flourished in dozens of Telegram channels, Facebook groups and pages and thousands of tweets, according to The Times’s review. Some of the Telegram channels have more than 160,000 subscribers, while the Facebook groups and pages have up to 1.9 million followers.(It is difficult to be precise on the scope of pro-Russian narratives on social media and online forums because bots and organized campaigns make them difficult to track.)Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, in Kyiv this week. The square was the center of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesThe pro-Russia sentiment is a stark departure from during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was viewed by many Americans as a foe. In recent years, that attitude shifted, partly helped along by interference from Russia. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Kremlin-backed groups used social networks like Facebook to inflame American voters, creating more divisions and resistance to political correctness.After Mr. Trump was elected, he often appeared favorable to — and even admiring of — Mr. Putin. That seeded a more positive view of Mr. Putin among Mr. Trump’s supporters, misinformation researchers said.“Putin has invested heavily in sowing discord” and found an ally in Mr. Trump, said Melissa Ryan, the chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation. “Anyone who studies disinformation or the far right has seen the influence of Putin’s investment take hold.”At the same time, conspiracy theories spread online that deeply polarized Americans. One was the QAnon movement, which falsely posits that Democrats are Satan-worshiping child traffickers who are part of an elite cabal trying to control the world.The Russia-Ukraine war is now being viewed by some Americans through the lens of conspiracy theories, misinformation researchers said. Roughly 41 million Americans believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to a survey released on Thursday from the Public Religion Research Institute. This week, some QAnon followers said online that Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was simply the next phase in a global war against the sex traffickers.Lisa Kaplan, the founder of Alethea Group, a company that helps fight online misinformation, said the pro-Russia statements were potentially harmful because it could “further legitimize false or misleading claims” about the Ukraine conflict “in the eyes of the American people.”Not all online discourse is pro-Russia, and Mr. Putin’s actions have been condemned by conservative social media users, mainstream commentators and Republican politicians, even as some have criticized how Mr. Biden has handled the conflict.“Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is reckless and evil,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, said in a statement on Twitter on Thursday.On Tuesday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois who was censured recently by the Republican Party for participating in the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, criticized House Republicans for attacking Mr. Biden, tweeting that it “feeds into Putin’s narrative.”Understand Russia’s Attack on UkraineCard 1 of 7What is at the root of this invasion? 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      How Anti-Asian Activity Online Set the Stage for Real-World Violence

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      On platforms such as Telegram and 4chan, racist memes and posts about Asian-Americans have created fear and dehumanization.In January, a new group popped up on the messaging app Telegram, named after an Asian slur.Hundreds of people quickly joined. Many members soon began posting caricatures of Asians with exaggerated facial features, memes of Asian people eating dog meat and images of American soldiers inflicting violence during the Vietnam War.This week, after a gunman killed eight people — including six women of Asian descent — at massage parlors in and near Atlanta, the Telegram channel linked to a poll that asked, “Appalled by the recent attacks on Asians?” The top answer, with 84 percent of the vote, was that the violence was “justified retaliation for Covid.”The Telegram group was a sign of how anti-Asian sentiment has flared up in corners of the internet, amplifying racist and xenophobic tropes just as attacks against Asian-Americans have surged. On messaging apps like Telegram and on internet forums like 4chan, anti-Asian groups and discussion threads have been increasingly active since November, especially on far-right message boards such as The Donald, researchers said.The activity follows a rise in anti-Asian misinformation last spring after the coronavirus, which first emerged in China, began spreading around the world. On Facebook and Twitter, people blamed the pandemic on China, with users posting hashtags such as #gobacktochina and #makethecommiechinesepay. Those hashtags spiked when former President Donald J. Trump last year called Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu.”While some of the online activity tailed off ahead of the November election, its re-emergence has helped lay the groundwork for real-world actions, researchers said. The fatal shootings in Atlanta this week, which have led to an outcry over treatment of Asian-Americans even as the suspect said he was trying to cure a “sexual addiction,” were preceded by a swell of racially motivated attacks against Asian-Americans in places like New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate.“Surges in anti-Asian rhetoric online means increased risk of real-world events targeting that group of people,” said Alex Goldenberg, an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University, which tracks misinformation and extremism online.He added that the anti-China coronavirus misinformation — including the false narrative that the Chinese government purposely created Covid-19 as a bioweapon — had created an atmosphere of fear and invective.Anti-Asian speech online has typically not been as overt as anti-Semitic or anti-Black groups, memes and posts, researchers said. On Facebook and Twitter, posts expressing anti-Asian sentiments have often been woven into conspiracy theory groups such as QAnon and in white nationalist and pro-Trump enclaves. Mr. Goldenberg said forms of hatred against Black people and Jews have deep roots in extremism in the United States and that the anti-Asian memes and tropes have been more “opportunistically weaponized.”But that does not make the anti-Asian hate speech online less insidious. Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation, said the misinformation and racist speech has led to a “dehumanization” of certain groups of people and to an increased risk of violence.Negative Asian-American tropes have long existed online but began increasing last March as parts of the United States went into lockdown over the coronavirus. That month, politicians including Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, and Representative Kevin McCarthy, a Republican of California, used the terms “Wuhan virus” and “Chinese coronavirus” to refer to Covid-19 in their tweets.Those terms then began trending online, according to a study from the University of California, Berkeley. On the day Mr. Gosar posted his tweet, usage of the term “Chinese virus” jumped 650 percent on Twitter; a day later there was an 800 percent increase in their usage in conservative news articles, the study found.Mr. Trump also posted eight times on Twitter last March about the “Chinese virus,” causing vitriolic reactions. In the replies section of one of his posts, a Trump supporter responded, “U caused the virus,” directing the comment to an Asian Twitter user who had cited U.S. death statistics for Covid-19. The Trump fan added a slur about Asian people.In a study this week from the University of California, San Francisco, researchers who examined 700,000 tweets before and after Mr. Trump’s March 2020 posts found that people who posted the hashtag #chinesevirus were more likely to use racist hashtags, including #bateatingchinese.“There’s been a lot of discussion that ‘Chinese virus’ isn’t racist and that it can be used,” said Yulin Hswen, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco, who conducted the research. But the term, she said, has turned into “a rallying cry to be able to gather and galvanize people who have these feelings, as well as normalize racist beliefs.”Representatives for Mr. Trump, Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Gosar did not respond to requests for comment.Misinformation linking the coronavirus to anti-Asian beliefs also rose last year. Since last March, there have been nearly eight million mentions of anti-Asian speech online, much of it falsehoods, according to Zignal Labs, a media insights firm..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-coqf44{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-coqf44 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-coqf44 em{font-style:italic;}.css-coqf44 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-coqf44 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#333;text-decoration-color:#333;}.css-coqf44 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In one example, a Fox News article from April that went viral baselessly said that the coronavirus was created in a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan and intentionally released. The article was liked and shared more than one million times on Facebook and retweeted 78,800 times on Twitter, according to data from Zignal and CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool for analyzing social media.By the middle of last year, the misinformation had started subsiding as election-related commentary increased. The anti-Asian sentiment ended up migrating to platforms like 4chan and Telegram, researchers said.But it still occasionally flared up, such as when Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a researcher from Hong Kong, made unproven assertions last fall that the coronavirus was a bioweapon engineered by China. In the United States, Dr. Yan became a right-wing media sensation. Her appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show in September has racked up at least 8.8 million views online.In November, anti-Asian speech surged anew. That was when conspiracies about a “new world order” related to President Biden’s election victory began circulating, said researchers from the Network Contagion Research Institute. Some posts that went viral painted Mr. Biden as a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party.In December, slurs about Asians and the term “Kung Flu” rose by 65 percent on websites and apps like Telegram, 4chan and The Donald, compared with the monthly average mentions from the previous 11 months on the same platforms, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute. The activity remained high in January and last month.During this second surge, calls for violence against Asian-Americans became commonplace.“Filipinos are not Asians because Asians are smart,” read a post in a Telegram channel that depicted a dog holding a gun to its head.After the shootings in Atlanta, a doctored screenshot of what looked like a Facebook post from the suspect circulated on Facebook and Twitter this week. The post featured a miasma of conspiracies about China engaging in a Covid-19 cover-up and wild theories about how it was planning to “secure global domination for the 21st century.”Facebook and Twitter eventually ruled that the screenshot was fake and blocked it. But by then, the post had been shared and liked hundreds of times on Twitter and more than 4,000 times on Facebook.Ben Decker More