An ABC News article from 2020 detailed a Department of Homeland Security intelligence draft bulletin that warned “Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of US Candidates to Influence 2020 Election”. The article quotes the bulletin, which detailed that “this narrative will resonate with some American voters and reduce their confidence in him as a candidate”. The Russian campaign in question was said to be using “covert proxy websites and overt state media” to push these ideas beginning September 2019. The campaign targeted Joe Biden’s mental health and acuity via unsubstantiated or unproven means. This is in line with the Lexicon of Lies: Terms for Problematic Information reading’s determination of a social networking services’ “information operations”, which include “deliberate and systematic attempts to influence public opinion by spreading inaccurate information with puppet accounts” (Jack) This could be considered propaganda - “systematic information campaigns that are deliberately manipulative or deceptive” (Jack).
A University of Minnesota finding uncovered that 52 physicians across the United States, between January 2021 and December 2022, spread misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine and masks. This had a very wide reach, with the aforementioned doctors having a median of 67,400 followers. The biggest category of untrue information shared surrounded the vaccine, with topics also touching on issues such as mask efficiency, supposed government corruption and secrets, and the origins of the virus. While misinformation surrounding COVID-19 is nothing new, it becomes particularly dangerous when being shared by licensed physicians. The reading Defining Misinformation and Understanding its Bounded Nature: Using Expertise and Evidence for Describing Misinformation touches on this. It touched on the issue of expert consensus and misinformation, which is often readily available but include “incentives to disrupt and diminish perceptions of that expert consensus”. (Vraga, Bode) A technique outlined in the reading describes using “false experts to present a misinformation argument”. (Vraga, Bode) A licensed physician spreading misinformation (whether intentional or not) could be considered a false expert, especially if they practice in unrelated fields.
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