Whitney Phillips
In an era plagued by alternative facts, adjustable data, and social media sleight of hand, falsehood—or at least the threat of falsehood, whether born of maliciousness, ignorance, or greed—permeates the political landscape. It is therefore critical to hone best practices for identifying, assessing, and countering falsity. Not all approaches to true versus false are equally effective, however. Focusing on the “fake news” frame, this chapter will argue that external claims of what counts as real and what counts as fake—regardless of whether a person uses the term fake news specifically—doesn’t bring us any closer to the truth. In fact, etic claims of veracity, which impose external standards onto the indigenous values and assumptions of a particular group, often limit discussions to the basic assertion that a particular story is false, rather than encouraging reflection on why the story resonates with audiences, how the story spreads, and what deeper cultural truths are revealed in the process.
The chapter will advocate instead for a folkloric approach to falsehood, one that situates belief within existing structures and logics, and actively embraces emic analyses, which take seriously—and explore the organic functionality of—the values and behaviors of participants. As an anchoring case study, the chapter will explore the satanic, pedophilic, sometimes ironic, sometimes sincere conspiracy theory known as #Pizzagate, which mushroomed into a very real news story, with very real political, professional, and interpersonal implications for those targeted, despite its utter fictitiousness.
This analysis of #Pizzagate and other cases discussed throughout the chapter will not, to be clear, apologize for slippery relativistic thinking, the notion that if something is believed to be true, that’s close enough. “Close enough” neither is close to the truth nor provides nearly enough of it. However, without fully understanding the broader historical, cultural, and interpersonal context of belief, and, more basically, why a particular false claim is true to the person who believes it, one is much less likely to know where to even begin pushing back—a point of particular importance when the issues in question pose a direct threat to life, liberty, and even democracy itself.
First up is the handful of problems ushered in by the “fake news” frame, which, as the term would suggest, hinges on objective assessment of veracity. At least that’s the idea; after reaching critical mass as a concept, the term has become hopelessly muddled through imprecise use. In addition to describing purposefully deceptive clickbait published by bogus websites and then spread via social media (the original sense of the term), the “fake news” label has been adopted to describe a variety of gossipy claims and conspiracy theories that may or may not be sincerely believed by those sharing. “Fake news” has also proved to be a handy way of undermining one’s critics. The “you’re fake news” schoolyard insult sense of the term has been employed most conspicuously by U.S. president Donald Trump, a habit that can only be described as ironic, given Trump’s, let’s say, shaky relationship with the truth, and enthusiastic amplification of a variety of verifiably false assertions over the years.1 Ironic or not, Trump has taken to calling all unfriendly news organizations fake news, with particular rancor aimed at CNN; in May 2017, he denounced the cable organization for being (double? triple?) fake news for not running an advertisement that accused CNN of being fake news.2 He also spent a great deal of time during his first one hundred days in office deriding the increasingly demonstrable claims of collusion between his presidential campaign and Russia as, you guessed it, “FAKE NEWS” (Trump’s Caps Lock).3
One problem with this approach—particularly when someone uses the term fake news, but also when a story is dismissed out of hand as false—is that such frames tend to trivialize the impact of these stories, as if their falsity somehow mitigates their impact. In “classic” cases of fake news, for example, stories claiming that Pope Francis endorsed Trump for president or that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), both false narratives—narratives that, as Craig Silverman illustrates, frequently outperformed legitimate news stories in terms of Facebook engagement and spread4—can still have a very real impact on individual behavior, from decisions about whom to follow and whom to ignore on social media to whom one chooses to vote for on Election Day. Similarly, erroneous conspiracy theories can have just as much impact as provable claims, as evidenced by the very false yet widespread assertion that Hillary Clinton was running a satanic child sex ring out of the back of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor—a conspiracy theory known broadly as “#Pizzagate.” Clinton was, of course, doing no such thing. That said, #Pizzagate was all too real for the owners of Comet Ping Pong, whose lives were upended by the sudden frenzy of attention from true believers, cynical pot-stirrers, and mainstream journalists alike. One proponent even traveled all the way from North Carolina to D.C. to conduct his own investigation—and ended up opening fire on the restaurant.
In addition to collectively sustained conspiracy theories, false accusations made by individuals can have a similarly serious impact. Donald Trump’s utterly unfounded March 2017 accusation that then president Barack Obama had ordered a parting-gift wiretap of Trump provides one example. Though these claims were ultimately traced to a Breitbart News write-up of a far-right radio host’s unfounded suspicions, Trump’s assertion led the news cycle for weeks on end, triggered a formal probe within the U.S. intelligence community, and even resulted in the recusal of California representative Devin Nunes, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, for attempting (and failing) to validate Trump’s wiretapping claims. Even the fakest, most absurd news, in other words, is in a very basic sense real—at least in terms of the havoc it can wreak.
Perhaps the greatest drawback of the “fake news” frame, however (again, regardless of whether that term is explicitly used), is that it tends to direct focus to the veracity of the text itself, not on the social processes that facilitate the text’s spread, or how particular stories align with the interests and biases of those sharing. It is geared toward surface phenomena, in other words, not to underlying currents. Illustrating this point—as well as what is missed when the primary focus is truth versus falsehood—is Edgar Welch, the #Pizzagate crusader who opened fire on Comet Ping Pong. As noted in an interview with Adam Goldman of the New York Times, Welch didn’t just reject the “fake news” frame (in this case, he was referring to the plethora of unsubstantiated rumors circulating in parts of Reddit and 4chan), he outright inverted it.5 Echoing many far-right conspiracy “truthers” suspicious of corporate media, he asserted that mainstream journalists were biased to the point of fakery;6 for him, these journalists’ proclamations of “fake news” pointed to the veracity of the story they were refuting.
The glaring disconnect between Welch and those who scoffed at #Pizzagate highlights the limitations of etic truth claims—most succinctly captured by the paradox that one person’s marker of truth is another person’s marker of falsehood. There are, of course, such things as actual things, and it is critical to keep track of which is which. That said, people are often memetically, and not strictly empirically, situated, a fact that complicates how best to respond to subjective experiences of truth. Ryan M. Milner and I highlight the power—and potential destructiveness—of subjectivist, memetic thinking in our discussion of the most successful memes of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.7 These memes were not traditional internet memes, with specific resonant images superimposed with text. Sorry, Pepe the Frog; sorry, Ken Bone. Rather, the most successful election memes—the memes that spread the farthest with the most people across the broadest variety of media—aligned with ideas much older than the internet, from harmful racial stereotypes to restrictive gender norms to sweeping nativist sentiment. Cries of “Lock her up,” “Build the wall,” and “Drain the swamp” are all memes in this sense, with objective truth having very little to do with their subjective emotional resonance. In fact, the resonance of these memes was often entirely unmoored from the objective truth of the claims being made.
It is easy to decry memetic thinking in these cases, particularly when the message so explicitly denigrates an entire racial or religious group. But memetic thinking can be much more subtle, both in terms of the messages communicated and the implications of these messages. We—all of us, at some point in our lives, to varying degrees—believe things because they align with our existing worldviews, or because we were told these things by people we trust, or because we desperately want to believe them, not because we have independently verified these things using anything even vaguely resembling an analytic methodology. This point is supported by Sandra Harding’s articulation of feminist standpoint theory, which foregrounds the extent to which political standpoint—literally and figuratively, where one is standing in relation to power, due to race, gender, or class, for example—directly influences what one sees, and therefore what one knows, or thinks one knows, about the world.8 The mere assertion that a false belief is false downplays the degree to which the belief hinges on memetic resonance, and the degree to which memetic resonance hinges on political standpoint. This, in turn, renders untenable any nuanced understanding of why something is believed, and how this belief coheres within a broader value system.
It’s not just that “fake news” frames obscure the why and how of belief. Etic assertions of falsity posit a worldview and set of assumptions that may not even be perceivable to believers, further convincing these believers that their detractors are the crazy ones. For Welch, for example, it was logically impossible—from his standpoint, anyway—that mainstream reports debunking the #Pizzagate story could possibly have been true. Journalists always lie, the logic went. So if they’re saying this didn’t happen, it definitely did. Welch’s case also illustrates Stephan Lewandowsky, Ullrich K. H. Ecker, and others’ findings that attempts to correct misinformation may ultimately serve to reinforce false beliefs, as entrenched repetition inadvertently reinforces one’s subjective understanding of a particular argument, its (presumed) evidence, and even its broader political stakes.9
For both these reasons, etic attempts to set the record straight risk strengthening precisely the emic monster that’s been placed under quarantine. The possibility of fact-checks backfiring is rendered even more fraught when considering the difficulty imposed by Poe’s law, an internet axiom that was formulated by Nathan Poe in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century and stipulates that sincerity and satire are often impossible to parse online. In the case of #Pizzagate, it wasn’t clear as the conspiracy unfolded how many of the people sharing the story and posting theories to various online forums genuinely believed the story was true, and how many were engaged in trollish pro-Trump “shitposting”—shitposting being a term adopted by trolls / white nationalists / white nationalist trolls / who know to describe their efforts to seed as much Trump-flavored chaos as possible, with the ultimate goal of bolstering Trump, who they describe perhaps ironically, perhaps sincerely, perhaps as some unholy combination of both, as their “God Emperor.”
The range of (often unverifiable) participant motivations in the #Pizzagate case raised a number of questions about the relative benefits and drawbacks of pushing back against the story. Explainers and other articles debunking the conspiracy were appropriate for those already aligned with the reporters’ basic worldview. For truthers like Welch, however, who inverted every factual claim made by journalists on the grounds that journalists lie, these articles inadvertently reinforced the veracity of the story being debunked. For those who weren’t true believers, but rather were just trying to bolster Trump, these articles had an even more insidious impact. Most basically, they incentivized further trollish engagement with and amplification of the story, because these pot-stirring behaviors worked; they spurred journalists to jump into the conspiracy-theorizing fray. This simultaneously incentivized the filing of additional articles (even articles of the “look at what these trolls on 4hcan are doing” ilk) and provided additional proof, or what looked like proof, for people like Welch. The objectively correct claim that nobody, and certainly not Hillary Clinton, was running a satanic child sex ring out of the back of a Washington, D.C., pizza shop completely sidestepped this complex intertwine of belief, standpoint, and play. It certainly couldn’t begin to try and untangle it.
But if not “fake news,” or some other etic framing of the truth, then what? Although less catchy, and a decidedly less fun insult, a folkloric framework—one that could be described as “folkloric news,” or even the clipped “folk news,” though the specific terminology is less important than the underlying theoretical approach—provides one possibility. Again, this is not to court relativism, or to minimize the value of true claims, or to give liars a free pass. This should go without saying, but warrants explicit spelling out in a climate so suffused by prevarication, outright deception, and questions of motive.
What a folkloric framing does do is foreground the resonance of a particular narrative or claim, and the realness of this resonance, within and across existing folk groups. This resonance might be born of sincere belief, sincere satire, or sincere shit-stirring; participants might be truthers or trolls. Regardless of motives, one basic insight always holds when considering participant behavior: something about whatever narrative or claim connects with those participating. This point of connection might accurately reflect the world, that is, be true. It might not. In either case, and in contrast to etic analyses, an emic folkloric frame doesn’t hinge on the veracity of a given claim. It hinges on the resonance of a claim, and the ways this resonance aligns with participants’ individual and collective standpoint. From there, one can ask why this alignment matters, and how best to respond given the context, community, and stakes. The point of a folkloric framing isn’t to minimize truth, in other words. It’s to extract more meaningful kinds of truth.
The most basic entry point into these deeper truths is the fact that folklore is, to quote the American folklorist Alan Dundes, “always a reflection of the age in which it flourishes.”10 What gets reflected isn’t restricted just to the behaviors themselves, but rather is all the hybrid, overlapping forces—institutional and populist, corporate and grassroots, and emergent and established—that constitute the jumble of affect, tradition, and communication we refer to collectively as culture. To talk about folkloric expression of any kind, objectively true or objectively false, is to talk about this broader cultural context, encouraging a much more nuanced approach to unfolding narratives.
In the case of #Pizzagate, satanic sex ring claims against Hillary Clinton (and her campaign chair, John Podesta, her alleged coconspirator) spread, first and most basically, because they resonated. To reiterate, this resonance could have been born of trutherism or trollishness or anything in between. In any case, for any reason, these ideas connected with participants, prompting them to share, comment on, and generally play with the story. One recurring point of this engagement—again, whether framed winkingly or earnestly—was the presumption of Clinton’s corruption, evidenced by the “Lock her up!” meme, stemming from Clinton’s use of a private server to send State Department e-mails, that echoed throughout the election cycle. The sexist undercurrent of this meme cannot be overstated; as a number of journalists and cultural critics have highlighted, reaction to Clinton’s candidacy was suffused with misogyny, making the chant “Lock her up” an implicit referendum not just on Clinton, not just on her gender, but on female empowerment more broadly.11
For truthers and trolls alike, #Pizzagate thus provided a perfect memetic vessel for the idea that Clinton wasn’t just up to no good, she was up to the worst kinds of crimes imaginable, a feminist Satan unto herself. The meme of Clinton as ultimate evil doing ultimate evil, and getting away with it to boot, also tapped into much older memes about the (presumed) threat of Satanism and satanic ritual, which underscored a deluge of conspiracy theorizing in the 1980s and 1990s across media, now broadly referred to as the satanic panic.12 Although a relatively recent phenomenon, the satanic panic was itself drawing from centuries of occultist conspiracies, as Kembrew McLeod adeptly chronicles.13 Resonant memes layered over resonant memes layered over resonant memes, in this case with Satan all the way down.
The spread of the #Pizzagate conspiracy theory didn’t just hinge on the resonance of mutually reinforcing memes, however. It also spread thanks to a broad range of institutional gatekeepers, including the journalists who covered the story, the social media platforms that hosted links to the story, the algorithms used by these platforms that influence what on-site content is seen by whom, and the search engines that allowed people to easily find information about the story. Average citizens—beyond those actively bolstering the conspiracy—were also part of this jumble, as their collective engagement, outcry, and commentary on social media looped back into the overall cycle of amplification, spurring further coverage and further fodder for those actively peddling the narrative.
Etic accounts of #Pizzagate miss these deeper strata of cultural connectedness, getting stuck, instead, at the moment untruth is declared. But there is so much more to say and understand than the fact that #Pizzagate—that anything—is false. In some ways, that’s just the beginning of the conversation. Another caveat: this does not mean that one must sympathize with whatever resulting explanation, or maintain complicity in the face of violence, ignorance, and bigotry. It’s not OK, for example, that the owners of Comet Ping Pong had their lives upended because there is a nuanced folkloric explanation for why the story resonated. It’s not OK that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was torpedoed, at least in part, because people simply couldn’t stomach the idea of a female president.
That said, without considering how a particular belief coheres within a particular paradigm, censorious fact-checking risks being heard only by already sympathetic ears, thus becoming its own kind of fake news to those who disagree. Lewandowsky, Ecker, and colleagues’ findings affirm this point, noting that misinformation is best corrected not merely by saying facts at someone, but by filling coherency gaps left in the wake of a retraction.14 And that’s precisely what a folkloric approach has the power to do: rather than approaching narratives as true/false binaries, it allows observers to peer beyond the memes and identify—and, when necessary, to exactingly challenge—deeper cultural logics. It lets a different story be told, in other words, one that will help maintain our collective grip on what’s really real, and why that really matters.
1. Kali Holloway, “14 Fake News Stories Created or Publicized by Donald Trump,” AlterNet, January 17, 2017, http://www.alternet.org/media/14-fake-news-stories-created-or-publicized-donald-trump.
2. Will Oremus, “Trump Calls CNN ‘Fake News’ for Refusing to Run Ad Calling CNN ‘Fake News,’” Slate, May 2, 2017, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/05/trump-calls-cnn-fake-news-for-refusing-to-run-ad-calling-cnn-fake-news.html.
3. Louis Nelson, “Trump: Everyone Knows Russia Allegations Are ‘Fake News,’” Politico, March 20, 2017, http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-tweets-russia-ties-236243.
4. Craig Silverman, “This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News on Facebook,” BuzzFeed News, November 16, 2016, https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook.
5. Adam Goldman, “The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter’s Questions,” New York Times, December 7, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/us/edgar-welch-comet-pizza-fake-news.html.
6. Jeremy W. Peters, “Wielding Claims of ‘Fake News,’ Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media,” New York Times, December 25, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/25/us/politics/fake-news-claims-conservatives-mainstream-media-.html.
7. Ryan M. Milner and Whitney Phillips, “Dark Magic: The Memes That Made Donald Trump’s Victory,” US Election Analysis 2016 (Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture, and Community, Bournemouth University), November 15, 2016, http://www.electionanalysis2016.us/us-election-analysis-2016/section-6-internet/dark-magic-the-memes-that-made-donald-trumps-victory/.
8. Sandra Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is ‘Strong Objectivity’?,” in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (New York: Routledge, 1993), 49-82.
9. Stephan Lewandowsky, Ullrich K. H. Ecker, Colleen M. Seifert, Norbert Schwarz, and John Cook, “Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 13, no. 3 (2012): 106–131.
10. Alan Dundes, Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles and Stereotypes (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1987), 12.
11. Peter Beinart, “Fear of a Female President,” The Atlantic, October 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/10/fear-of-a-female-president/497564/; Emma Gray, “Can We Finally Admit It Was Always about Sexism, Never Emails?,” Huffington Post, March 7, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-mike-pence-emails_us_58bde0cce4b033be1467d150.
12. Richard Beck, “A Moral Panic for the Age of Trump,” Slate, December 6, 2016, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/the_comet_ping_pong_pizzagate_scandal_is_a_child_sex_ring_myth_for_the_age.html.
13. Kembrew McLeod, Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World (New York: New York University Press, 2014).
14. Lewandowsky et al., “Misinformation and Its Correction,” 116.