In September 2024, US vice presidential candidate JD Vance amplified a rumour circulating on Facebook that Haitian migrants in the small Ohio town of Springfield, where Vance is a senator, had been eating people’s pets. Erika Lee, who made the original post, later confirmed that she had no first-hand knowledge about any such incidents and was merely repeating something that a neighbour had told her – that a cat had gone missing and its owner had suspected that a Haitian had eaten it. Screenshots of Lee’s posts snowballed online, in part thanks to Vance, and the alarmist story was repeated by Donald Trump on the podium during the presidential election debate. No-one in Trump’s camp bothered to verify the alleged incidents, and by the time the Mayor of Springfield wrote an op-ed in the New York Times to debunk them, more than 30 bomb threats were called in to schools and businesses in the town and Haitian residents were left in fear for their lives.
This is just one recent example of how misinformation, particularly that which is generated online, can cause harm in the real world and influence the political process. In fact, this US election cycle has seen many such cases. By October the Trump campaign had accused his opponent Kamala Harris of ‘not being Black’ because of her mixed racial heritage, a claim that has been repeatedly weaponized to accuse her of cosplaying a Black identity for political point-scoring.
