The Rules of Contagion

It’s not just bots that use this targeting strategy. Following the 2018
shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Florida, there were reports that the shooter had been a member of a
small white supremacist group based in the state capital Tallahassee.
However, the story was a hoax. It had started with trolls on online
forums, who’d managed to persuade curious reporters that it was a
genuine claim. ‘All it takes is a single article,’ noted one user. ‘And
everyone else picks up the story.’[105]
Although researchers like Watts and Nyhan have suggested that
people didn’t get much of their information from dubious online
sources in 2016, it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. ‘I think it really
matters, but it doesn’t quite matter in the way that people think it
does,’ said Watts. When fringe groups post false ideas or stories on
Twitter, they aren’t necessarily trying to reach mass audiences. Not
initially, at least. Instead, they are often targeting those journalists or
politicians who spend a lot of time on social media. The hope is that
these people will pick up on the idea and spread it to a wider
audience. During 2017, for instance, journalists regularly quoted
messages from a Twitter user named @wokeluisa, who appeared to
be a young political science graduate from New York. In reality,
though, the account was run by a Russian troll group, who were
apparently targeting media outlets to build credibility and get
messages amplified.[106] This is a common tactic among groups who
want ideas to spread. ‘Journalists aren’t just part of the game of
media manipulation,’ suggested Whitney Phillips, who researches
online media at Syracuse University. ‘They’re the trophy.’[107]
Once a media outlet picks up on a story, it can trigger a feedback
effect, with others covering it too. A few years ago, I inadvertently
experienced this media feedback first hand. It started when I tipped
off a journalist at The Times about a mathematical quirk in the new
National Lottery (at the time, I’d just written a book about the science
of betting). Two days later the story appeared in print. The morning it
was published, I got an 8.30am message from a producer at ITV’s
This Morning, who’d seen the story. By 10.30am, I was live on
national television. Soon after, I received a message from BBC Radio
4 ; they’d also read the article, and wanted to get me on their flagship