16 Weaponizing #fakenews in a Visual War on Journalism: Seeing a Big Picture through Instagram
Leslie-Jean Thornton
When CNN reporter Jim Acosta broadcast live from a rally for Donald Trump in Tampa, Florida, the sight of an angry, threatening crowd yelling insults his way while waving fists and antipress signs made news worldwide.1 It was no surprise to those who had watched the highly charged “enemy of the people” rhetoric grow on social media, particularly in visual posts hashtagged #fakenews and distributed on Instagram. For them, this was an enactment of the potentially explosive antagonistic discourse they saw rationalized again and again in images they scrolled on their phones and computers. The possibility of a violent outcome targeting a member of the press is troubling, but for some, at least if #fakenews posts before and after the rally are to be believed, violence is viewed as a desirable and even deserved outcome.
Video clips and photographs of that event circulated online and were viewed by millions. On Instagram, where hashtags aggregate posts together, there were more than 210 posts to #fakenews during the time of this event. Many of the posts also contained additional hashtags, pushing them to other hashtag publics where they could be seen.2 For example, 422 individuals clicked the heart-shaped “like” button on just one post (out of many) of Acosta warily eyeing someone giving him the finger, an obscene gesture (figure 16.1). “They are scared,” the caption states, referring to journalists. The popular image itself was incorporated into multiple memes, including one featuring a fake “cover” of Time magazine (figure 16.2). But possibly the most significant post chronicling that event and posted to #fakenews was one from President Trump himself, which was viewed a million times in just one day.
The thriving world of Instagram’s #fakenews feed, more than 637,700 posts strong and growing as of July 4, 2018, is one of conspiracies, crisis actors, duplicity and deception, depictions of violent or punitive acts, provocative mockery, partisan sniping, memes,3 misunderstandings passed off as wisdom, and directed anger and outrage. In the first half of 2018, the forum became increasingly global as other countries faced fake-news incursions and interested parties began posting to the hashtag.4
In the mix, there is occasional guidance about how to detect actual fake news (deliberately false information) or posts debunking rumors and allegations, but overwhelmingly, it is an insult-rich zone with the legitimate press, not false information, as the primary target. A significant and thriving aspect of the platform’s #fakenews forum is a steady stream of posts attempting to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of journalists and journalism organizations in the United States. How that plays out in a visual social media forum, where repetition, public pressure, and the immediacy and emotionality of visual cognition combine to make a strikingly powerful delivery system,5 is the focus of this chapter.
The political weaponization of the phrase fake news arose primarily from then president-elect Donald Trump’s appropriation of the term to denounce the press. Although he criticized journalists and news organizations frequently during his campaign, Trump used “FAKE NEWS!” in his tweets and public statements through early January 2017 as a way to label what he deemed false or unflattering information.6 However, his use of “fake news” changed when he started using it to describe whole news organizations as well as stories and reports, resulting in a muddied definition. During a televised press conference on January 12, 2017, then president-elect Trump thundered, “You are fake news!,” from behind the Trump Tower lectern while pointing dramatically at CNN reporter Jim Acosta and the assembled corps.7 Images from that moment, photographed from television screens and computer monitors, turned into internet memes, many of which carried the #fakenews hashtag. This redefinition was famously cemented on February 17, 2017, when Trump tweeted, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people!”8 Screenshots of the tweet went viral on social media and were voluminously posted to #fakenews.
#fakenews on Instagram
Acceleration of posts on Instagram’s #fakenews feed began around the time of the you-are-fake press conference. By mid-January 2017, the hashtag had approximately 20,000 posts. A year and a half later, it has attracted in excess of 617,700 more. Beginning in November 2016 and continuing through August 1, 2018, I monitored the feed on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. Posts representative of viewpoints about journalists, journalism, and fake news were archived contemporaneously during that time. Analysis of the posts reveals four distinct content stages that may help us better understand journalism’s role in American life during a time of heightened political friction. The first stage begins with Trump’s recharacterization of the term fake news to refer to journalists and their organizations. After that key polarity is established, the second stage shows why they should not be trusted. In the third stage, the posts show there can be consequences to being enemies of the American people. In the fourth stage, there are cautions and reminders that the threat from so-called fake-news journalists is dangerous and pervasive. The images chosen as illustrative were analyzed following visual analysis guidelines;9 the observations contributed to the overall analysis, but full descriptions were beyond the scope of this essay.
Creating an Other
The first stage creates a basis for arguments that follow by breaking the original “fake news” binary opposition (fake versus actual news). Here, Trump’s January 2017 accusation making journalists “fake news” appears to be seminal, with multiple iterations serving as visual testament. This foundational image establishes “us versus them” in a classic binary opposition, encouraging identity formation and setting the framework of a constructed reality. The image aligns Trump with truth and the United States—he wears the colors of the flags behind him, visually and symbolically identifying this president with the nation. He is strong, sure of himself, clearly in charge. The “you” in his accusation refers to journalists, but also to anyone who is not on his and the nation’s side, facing down news and news reporters not of his liking. Memes, in many iterations, were posted to #fakenews (figure 16.3).
Visually, these images call to mind another historic image, the iconic Uncle Sam poster created by James Montgomery Flagg for the government during World War I. The allusion was not lost among posters using #fakenews; both the U.S. Army poster and various spinoffs were popular (figure 16.4). The visual message is clear: Trump stands for America and he wants to rally an army. In this case, though, it is against the people toward whom he was pointing—the people he placed in opposition to himself—when he said, “You are fake news”: journalists.
Don’t Trust Journalists, Don’t Trust These Journalists
The second stage builds on the first, but identifies journalists more granularly, both by organization and individually. The memes—and there are thousands of them—give reasons why journalists should not be trusted and encourage non-journalists to keep their distance. Insults and mockery play into this stage, with popular targets chosen largely from the ranks of broadcast journalists, and mostly from CNN (figure 16.5). Occasionally, a Trump administration hero is shown, as in one image where White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is shown with a mop and bucket. The mop has the face of the CNN reporter from the “you are fake news” press conference. She refers to him in the image, saying, “I don’t always enjoy mopping up the floor. But when I do, it’s with Jim Acosta.” In other memes, she is depicted as belittling reporters in White House press conferences. In something of a double whammy, MSNBC anchor Brian Williams, who lied repeatedly about his whereabouts and involvement for a story and was, as a result, fired from his job as an NBC anchor in 2015, is shown purportedly delivering the message that journalists make up news. The overall message: “fake news” journalists do not deserve civility, respect, or trust.
The use of branding logos is a popular symbolic device in visual messages for several reasons: they are designed for immediate recognition, as they do not depend on language to understand them or to connect them with the organizations they represent. And in the context of this hashtag community, they serve as shorthand messaging to announce “fake news,” an association that would likely carry over to when the logos were seen outside of the #fakenews forum as well. In that sense, the organizations’ own branding is weaponized along with the phrase fake news. An example: “WARNING,” intones big, white-on-red, all-cap letters across the top of one post in this category, “THE FOLLOWING MEDIA OUTLETS PROMOTE FAKE NEWS.” Below (figure 16.6) are brand logos for eighteen well-known journalism organizations, including CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, ABC, USA Today, Politico, and Time. Hundreds of iterations of this meme play on the same theme.
The top middle image of figure 16.6 signals that the news media are “whorish” in an unquestioning obedience to former president Barack Obama, a reference to Trump’s deep state conspiracy charges as well as an accusation of media bias mirroring statements made by Trump. Next to it is a cautionary tale reinforcing an assessment of the moral depravity of journalists, in general, and of CNN reporters, in particular. Following it, four advisories offer direct, if blanket, identification of journalist organizations one should disbelieve and why.
The left image in the top row of figure 16.7 is based on a pictorial maxim dating back centuries. The three wise monkeys (slightly out of traditional order here) stand for “say no evil, see no evil, and hear no evil”—generally shortened to mean, “turning a blind eye.” This is another image that would convey meaning across cultures without relying on words. The two images referencing Facebook rely on wide-eyed expressions of credulity, with the underlying message implying that Facebook is complicit in publishing “fake news” journalists, playing on Facebook’s stated intent of eliminating actual fake news. Anyone who believes otherwise, the visuals imply, is either a baby who does not know better or an overly trusting adult. The last image speaks for it itself in the most dyadic color scheme possible: contrasting the reflection of all light (white) with the total absorption thereof, which shows as black.
Enemies and Consequences
Having established journalists as untrustworthy others, and having identified them by affiliation and likeness, the visual rhetoric in the third stage again establishes a foundational image—a screengrab of Trump’s “enemy of the American people” tweet. That accusation provides justification for exploring potential consequences enemies of the nation may face. Positioning journalists as enemies, in this context, provides a rationale for visually insulting, mocking, shunning, punishing, and even killing them. Although no connection has been documented, the last is especially chilling after five journalists were fatally shot at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland on June 28, 2018.10
One post (figure 16.8) shows five hanged bodies, nooses around their necks, suspended from the word “TIME” displayed as if it were Time magazine’s cover (it is not) and the (presumed) corpses were cover art. Nineteen brand logos are placed on the bodies, including CNN, the New York Times, MSNBC, the Washington Post, and CBS. Toward the bottom of the post, where one would find teases for that issue’s articles had this been an actual cover, the words “High Treason” are displayed in white against Time’s signature blood-red background. The “assembly required” post suggestive of lynching refers to a T-shirt worn at a Trump rally the day before the 2016 presidential election. Reuters photojournalist Jonathan Ernst captured the image and it went viral on social media, inspiring graphics such as this one. A year and a half later, after the Capital Gazette shootings, the shirt again made news because it was still being sold.11
The first image in figure 16.9 has the appearance of having been made on a typewriter, harking back to precomputer news days. In the second image, bullet holes mark what appears to be glass separating the shooter from journalists on the other side. “Trump 2018” suggests that this might be part of an agenda. The third image appeared on July 4, 2018. It was a topical cookout post, drawn by a skilled cartoonist but not carrying any attribution or credit (later identified as the work of Antonio Branco): Trump is dressed for a celebratory barbecue; he wears a “commander in chef” apron and an Uncle Sam stars-and-stripes top hat. He holds a flipper. Next to him is a grill, smoke rising, with hamburgers labeled CNN, NBC, ABC, WAPO, CBS, NPR, and NYT sizzling away.
Huge Threat
In the fourth stage, another category of images argues how threatening journalists are to “us”—that they’re the bad guys even if they insist they’re not. (Many posts mock CNN’s motto: “The most trusted name in news,” for example.) As one of the “threat” posts suggests, the very fabric of our nation is being ripped apart by their fakery (figure 16.10). In another post typical of the subtheme, you (non-journalists) have no control over how you perceive the world. While you are asleep and vulnerable, they (the journalists and their corporate owners) are busy creating your reality. The head in the meme, showing Caucasoid features and seen reflecting what could be the blue glow of a television or computer screen, shows how journalists have lodged in the host of this presumably white human’s brain. Journalists (“aliens”?) exist both within and without, godlike, and unsusceptible to a need for sleep.
Keeping with the theme of defenseless complicity, one of the top posts on Independence Day 2018 proclaimed, “In North Korea, people are forced to listen to propaganda. IN THE USA PEOPLE DO IT WILLINGLY” (figure 16.10). At the top of the meme is a photograph of loudspeakers mounted on a pole. There is a small photo of the American flag next to it, a rallying image for patriots. To the right of the “willingly” statement, there are brand logos for NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC. Unspoken message: the named news organizations are propagandists, and you should be smarter than to heed their broadcasts. Visually, the loudspeakers evoke jail yards and captive areas, and the flag insert effectively transports what is allegedly North Korea to the United States. The common tie? Propaganda. Journalists, in this meme, are equated with a dictator’s propaganda mouthpieces.
Another popular perspective in this category suggests that hackers, working outside the system, are reliable sources of truth, not journalists. An anti-Semitic strain, long seen in anti-media protests, is evident in #fakenews. Many memes draw on cultural references, such as the image of mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, also known as Superman, here on Earth to protect the planet from evildoers (figure 16.11). Alas, he’s also an alleged illegal immigrant, so be warned. In another image, Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone (1990), a popular movie series about a young boy mistakenly left behind from family vacations, gains topical association with the border separations taking place and in the news when this (and other memes like it) are posted. A meme featuring a scene from Kindergarten Cop (1990), a movie starring former two-term California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, incorporates a recurring “But the liberal media …” memetic theme. Those who do not know the film references might assume the memes refer to actual news reports; those who do get it could interpret this as mockery, meaning that journalists conflate fact and fiction.
Finally, two images (bottom row) refer to media framing with a more sophisticated illustration than generally seen in the #fakenews feed. In the graphic, which dates back to at least 2010 and appears often on social media, a cameraman is shown broadcasting a scene in such a way that the attacker becomes the attacked, a perspective that might resonate with both sides of the us versus them construction.
Counter-Memes and Conclusions
The preceding images represent visual rhetoric supporting the delegitimization of the press in the United States. The #fakenews feed, however, is not homogeneous in viewpoint. There are occasional counter-posts. These memes, and others in the same vein, appeared soon after Trump’s “fake news” press conference and “enemy of the American people” charges. The first four (figure 16.12) make sharp connections between Hitler’s and Trump’s treatment of the press. The fifth image rebuts: the connection’s only there if you’re seeing through CNN’s blood-colored glasses.
The casting of journalists as not only un-American but anti-American, as Trump did when he called them enemies of the American people, is a particularly significant charge for people who derive their professional calling as public servants from the Constitution’s First Amendment. To be labeled “fake news media” harms their credibility, whether that’s the intended purpose or not. The repeated use of the phrase fake news makes it familiar, normal—less likely to be parsed for exact meaning. Whether these anti-journalism posts persuade anyone or not, they damage journalistic standing, even if only by validating a dangerous worldview. In short, any journalistic use of the words fake news normalizes them as well, making them more familiar and easier to slide into one’s brain uncontested. How can anyone, the reasoning goes, believe anything journalists report when they, themselves, are fake?
Within the visual world of #fakenews, everyone agrees that fake news is bad. No less an authority than the current president of the United States has told them so repeatedly and with great passion. Right-leaning voters and politicians assign blame to left-leaners and tie the rise of fake news to what they perceive as multiple social ills. Journalists and social media companies deploy experts to combat it. When one looks at what each group means, however, contradictions appear. When one follows visual rhetoric for the Trumpian logic, the depicted way to fight fake news is to punish or eliminate journalists, suggesting a troubling Big Picture indeed. The stages of thought I present in this chapter show how a hateful viewpoint might grow with continued exposure to the #fakenews feed. One might begin noticing the posts out of curiosity, then buy into some of them, and then into more until it makes perfect sense to mock (or worse) a so-called enemy of the American people. Newcomers to the feed can find a plethora of posts from which to choose, tuning in to their existing perspective but awash in material politically and emotionally charged and intended to validate or persuade.
Days before the Tampa rally in which CNN was targeted, New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger asked President Trump to stop his “enemy of the people” rhetoric, fearing it would lead to violence.12 Days after, human rights appointees from the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned Trump’s treatment of news media: “We are especially concerned these attacks increase the risk of journalists being targeted with violence.”13 Instagram’s #fakenews feed amplifies those attacks, raising challenges involving freedom of speech, political manipulation, and safety. Although the platform blocks or removes offensive accounts or content (this is clear from occasional complaints in comments), all the images included in this chapter remained online as this chapter was written, some well more than a year after being posted. There are difficulties, as well, in knowing where the posts originate. Facebook, which owns Instagram, was used extensively as a tool of foreign influence in the 2016 campaign, and the interference continued. It seems likely #fakenews was a prime arena. As account purges continue, change may occur, but experts extend little encouragement.14 Traffic ebbs and flows, but spikes in positing around political events or controversies provide a pattern of sorts. Journalists can hardly be expected to cover news as well as post corrective counterarguments into the #fakenews fray, but one wonders what might happen if public service–minded volunteers began practicing a bit of hashtag activism, strategically seeding the feed with support.
Notes
1. Tom Embury-Dennis, “Trump Supporters Filmed Hurling Sustained Abuse at Journalists following Make America Great Again Rally,” The Independent, August 1, 2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-florida-rally-supporters-cnn-jim-acosta-tampa-maga-a8472436.html.
2. Nathan Rambukkana, #Hashtag Publics: The Power and Politics of Discursive Networks (New York: Peter Lang, 2015).
3. Embury-Dennis, “Trump Supporters.”
4. Jon Henley, “Global Crackdown on Fake News Raises Censorship Concerns,” The Guardian, April 24, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/apr/24/global-crackdown-on-fake-news-raises-censorship-concerns; Anya Schiffrin, “How Europe Fights Fake News,” Columbia Journalism Review, October 26, 2017, https://www.cjr.org/watchdog/europe-fights-fake-news-facebook-twitter-google.php.
5. On visual cognition, see Paul Messaris and Linus Abraham, “The Role of Images in Framing News Stories,” in Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World, ed. Stephen D. Reese, Oscar H. Gandy Jr., and August E. Grant (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001), 215–226.
6. On Trump’s criticism of the press during his campaign, see Nick Corasaniti, “Partisan Crowds at Trump Rallies Menace and Frighten News Media,” New York Times, October 14, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/us/politics/trump-media-attacks.html. On Trump’s use of “fake news” to label information as false, see Adam Gabbatt, “How Trump’s ‘Fake News’ Gave Authoritarian Leaders a New Weapon,” The Guardian, January 25, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/25/how-trumps-fake-news-gave-authoritarian-leaders-a-new-weapon.
7. Maxwell Tani, “Trump Battles CNN Reporter in Heated Exchange at Press Conference: ‘You Are Fake News,’” Business Insider, January 11, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-fake-news-donald-trump-cnn-jim-acosta-question-press-conference-2017-1.
8. Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), Twitter, February 17, 2017, https://
twitter .com /realdonaldtrump /status /832708293516632065. 9. Paul M. Lester, Visual Communication: Images with Messages, 7th ed. (Dallas, TX: WritingForTextbooks, 2017); Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Methods, 4th ed. (London: Sage, 2016).
10. Sabrina Tavernise, Amy Harmon, and Maya Salam, “5 People Dead in Shooting at Maryland’s Capital Gazette Newsroom,” New York Times, June 28, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/us/capital-gazette-annapolis-shooting.html.
11. John Bonazzo, “ ‘Rope. Tree. Journalist.’ T-Shirt Shows Need for Online Moderators,” Observer, July 2, 2018, http://observer.com/2018/07/ccafepress-rope-tree-journalist-site-moderators/.
12. Mark Landler, “New York Times Publisher and Trump Clash over President’s Threats against Journalism,” New York Times, July 29, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/29/us/politics/trump-new-york-times-sulzberger.html.
13. United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Trump Attacks on Media Violate Basic Norms of Press Freedom, Human Rights Experts Say,” August 2, 2018, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23425&LangID=E.
14. Matt O’Brien and Ryan Nakashima, “Social Media Plays Whack-a-Mole with Russia Interference,” Seattle Times, August 1, 2018, https://www.seattletimes.com/business/social-media-plays-whack-a-mole-with-russia-interference/.