From Twitter to the Presidential Debate: Disinformation and Discrimination in the Digital Age

A guide to navigating disinformation on social media

Anyone who has been on X (Twitter), or any other forms of social media, have undoubtedly come across their fair share of conspiracy theories and fake news in one way or another. But beneath this innocuous facade lies something more malicious than the average user might expect: the hate speech subtly or blatantly embedded in the memes and the posts.

One prominent example of this is the blatant racism targeting Haitian migrants in the United States. Alt-right accounts on X have uploaded posts that suggested that Haitian migrants, particularly in Springfield, Ohio, killed domesticated pets for consumption. This is baseless slander: according to credible sources like the BBC and Reuters, there has been no evidence of Haitian immigrants stealing pets for food. However, on social media, where fact-checking is often missing, this narrative quickly went viral. Many people favoring right-wing beliefs even started to truly believe in it. The most significant believer—who may come across as a surprise given his position as a possible political leader of this country—is Donald Trump. In the recent presidential debate with Kamala Harris, he claimed that “they’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” And yet, despite all the facts and evidence that are available to us in the digital age, tenuous slander is ubiquitous throughout the United States, from the screens of our phones to national politics. If a presidential candidate can fall for disinformation, so can you.

So what can you, an ordinary citizen, do about it? Before you succumb to the allure of the easy dopamine high, please do remember that you have free will. Social media, as conglomerate as it is, is ultimately contained only on your phone. The phone is yours—and so is the thumb that you’re using to scroll through hours of endless content. You don’t have the choice to prevent disinformation, but you do have the power to stop it from getting into your brain.

First and foremost, fact-check the sources. Simply search up any given conspiracy theory and look for credible sources—meaning proper news media with facts and evidence supporting its assertions rather than a mysterious screenshot or a caption—confirming or disproving it. In fact, this applies to left-wingers as much as right-wingers. When former President Trump was shot during his campaign rally in Pennsylvania, a concerningly number of left-wing accounts speculated that the shooting was staged—a rumor with just as much evidence as the other one above.

Even among the reasonably reliable sources, be mindful of each publication’s own political biases when consuming their content. From left-leaning networks like CNN and The New York Times to right-leaning ones like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, a single event can be disseminated in two very different ways. Take, for example, Trump and his statement about the Haitian migrants and cats. The New York Times titled its article as “Trump Repeats False Claim About Immigrants,” whereas Fox News simply reported that “Trump discusses reports of migrants killing pets in Ohio town”—two very different connotations there. Remember, these news corporations constantly compete with each other to push their own narrative to unassuming consumers for engagement, advertisements, subscriptions, and for profit. Afterall, we’re living in a capitalistic world, and you’re the perfect customer—just like everyone else here.

So, before you retweet whatever post that pops up in your favorite social media app of choice, please take a moment to Google whatever you were just reading. Please save yourself the embarrassment of repeating blatant misinformation in front of your friends or family—or maybe even the whole nation.

Morgan Kim