"In September 2018, I was in North Carolina riding out Hurricane Florence and reporting on its impacts. For a few days, I embedded with a FEMA rescue team stationed at Hope Mills Recreation Center near Fayetteville, accompanying emergency responders as they evacuated a senior center in the middle of the night and touring flooded neighborhoods by day.
There were some false rumors circulating online at the time, including one about flooding at a nuclear power plant (it didn’t happen) and another about service animals not being allowed in shelters (they were allowed). This was mostly what experts call “misinformation,” or information coming from people who have their facts wrong and aren’t trying to deceive. Such claims hadn’t registered much with the people I interviewed.
Six years later, I watched from afar as Helene hit a different part of North Carolina. It quickly became clear that something very different was happening online, with potentially massive implications on the ground.
On social media there was a surge of misinformation, as well as disinformation — when the intent of the person or people making the claim is to harm. The debunked or unsubstantiated claims were largely about the government’s response to Helene, including that it was withholding aid to Republican communities and that FEMA was limiting assistance to $750 per family. Russian state media promoted some of these claims. They were amplified offline by conservative voices on the radio and TV, and at Donald Trump’s rallies by the former president himself."
Zahra Hirji reports for Bloomberg October 30, 2024.
SEE ALSO:
"Misinformation Is Turning American Disasters Into Toxic Battlegrounds" (Bloomberg)
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