Ever since Hurricane Milton, Florida, the second dangerous storm to hit the southeastern US in a couple of weeks, a flood of misinformation threatens to escalate the disaster. The main target of the false claims is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the government agency coordinating recovery efforts for Hurricanes Milton and Helene, the latter of which has killed at least 230 people since the storm struck. landing at the end of September. FEMA has created one debunking page because it faces many harmful and inaccurate rumors. And in a telling example of how far things have gone, Representative Chuck Edwards of North Carolina, a Republican, had to dispel lies in a letter to his constituents this week: “Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits at Chimney Rock.” , he wrote.
FEMA is not seizing anyone’s property. The agency did not prevent the evacuations. Its grant programs generally do not require repayment. FEMA disaster relief funds were not diverted to help migrants at US borders. Chimney Rock does not have a lithium mine. Uncle Sam can’t control storms.
But conspiracy theories making such claims have spread rapidly, and with surprising prominence. “What we’re seeing now is pretty unprecedented,” says Lisa Kaplan, CEO of Alethea, a cybersecurity company that tracks the spread of false narratives online. Former President Donald Trump, tech mogul Elon Musk, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have promoted lies or bogus theories about hurricane or disaster responses.
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“You always see misinformation after disasters,” he says Lisa FazioAssociate Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. “You don’t always see national political figures being the ones spreading this misinformation.”
Trump has repeated numerous baseless stories at rallies and on the Truth Social social media platform. For example, the federal government has claimed to have gone out of its way “not to help people in republican areas” and that FEMA had no response in North Carolina. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told CNN on Tuesday that Trump’s “the accusations are completely false,” indicating that there are approximately 3,400 employees from various federal agencies assisting in the state’s disaster response. “We need to stop this rhetoric,” Criswell said. He said he was concerned that people would not register with FEMA to receive aid, including money. Misinformation that fosters mistrust can also put responders at risk, or at least make their job more difficult as they try to keep people safe after deadly storms.
Why target FEMA?
Conspiracy theories about FEMA are as old as the agency itself, which was founded in 1979. An early disinformation campaign in the 1980s claimed that FEMA would round up American patriots and relocate them. “detention camps” operated by the agency.. (1998 X-Files the film squashed these fears, with Martin Landau’s character warning that FEMA had it covered a foreign virus and was about to establish a totalitarian government.)
Craig Fugate, the agency’s administrator from 2009 to 2017, says false rumors about FEMA are “not really new” but “social media spreads them faster.” During his tenure, FEMA had to dispel rumors about Superstorm Sandy in 2012.including false reports that the agency hired people to clean up trash in New York State and New Jersey for $1,000 a week.
The attacks on the agency are the result of a “broader distrust of government,” Kaplan says, “fueled by persistent misinformation over the years.” Those claims fuel concerns about government decline, a common issue on the right. What’s more, disinformation research in recent years indicates that conservative Americans may be susceptible to falsehoods than liberals. Also more options to interrupt to share more low-quality news from social media websites.
Why lie about a hurricane?
“Disasters are ripe for conspiracy theories because there’s so much uncertainty and so much fear as things unfold,” he says. David G. RandA professor of management science and brain and cognitive science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is also the author of a recent study looking at the asymmetry of social media suspensions between conservatives and liberals.
Disinformation gives people a way to at least cover the gaps of uncertainty something. When communication systems go down, when family members cannot be contacted, when official answers have not yet been given, rumors take root. And messages that appeal to emotion are particularly likely to spread virally, as Fazio and his colleagues document in a 2022 review. Reasons why people believe misinformation. “When we’re trying to calm ourselves down,” says Fazio, we might seek solace through, say, a meme that captures our feelings. “People want to do something helpful,” says Fazio, and spreading misinformation that makes us feel a certain way can be the result of that desire.
In the same way, a fact-checking page like FEMA can be useful as a legitimate source of information for people to share. But condemnation has its limits. “For some, that will be enough to correct their beliefs,” Fazio says. “What debunks can’t do is fix those emotions.”
A post-Hurricane Helene photo that has been viewed millions of times — an image of a tearful girl holding a puppy in a flooded town — was created using artificial intelligence. Users of X, formerly Twitter, pointed this out to Amy Kremer, the Republican National Committee member who shared the AI image. was doubled: “it doesn’t matter” where the photo came from, Kremer wrote in X, because it was “emblematic of the trauma and pain people are experiencing right now.”
In the face of deeply rooted beliefs, can anything be done? Information scientists have largely moved beyond the idea that providing more facts can win audiences. A concept that has emerged instead is “prebunking”, which is building the immunity of the mind to misinformation This involves learning about common manipulation techniques and tactics. It also helps to know how to be vigilant about claims on social media, understanding, for example, that falsehoods are spread in constant disasters.
Perhaps what is also missing is a personalized touch. A study published in science He found that out in September conversations with a custom AI chatbotwhich was named by the experimenters DebunkBotcan tease some people down their rabbit holes. Rand, who co-authored that study, suggests it’s an approach FEMA should consider. “It would be easy to take a chatbot like this, feed the information from the FEMA debunking page and help direct people,” he says. (FEMA did not respond to multiple requests for comment American scientific.)
Can misinformation hinder disaster response?
yes After rumors of “antifa” arsonists spread amid the Oregon wildfires in 2020, civilian vigilantes, some armed, set up road blocks survey the residents as they evacuate. at least Three men were arrested for blocking the roads. Now, due to misinformation about FEMA and Hurricane Helene, there are calls to send militias to North Carolina as well.
There’s a tendency to think that misinformation and rumors are “just random people who live online and post stuff on Twitter”… I don’t think that’s true at all. What happens online can very easily move offline,” says Samantha Montano, an emergency management expert at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. “Even on our best day, when everyone is on the same page and working well together, it’s incredibly complicated to respond to a disaster the size of Helene and now Milton,” he said. Add misinformation to the mix, and responders have another thing to deal with, and another threat to their safety and security in the field.
Falsehoods can endanger a survivor even after a storm has passed. If misinformation convinces you that FEMA can seize your water-damaged home, “you might be less likely to leave while you’re fixing it. That means you’re going to be living in a mold-infested home. That’s really dangerous,” says Montano. “The potential for impacts here, I think , it’s very important.”
