Whose reality? Propaganda in the age of social media

Propaganda has always been a part of conflict. But in the wake of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani's death, Americans got a glimpse of how easily misinformation can spread in this social media age. What to do?

Truth, it is often said, is the first casualty of war, and in the wake of the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani of Iran on Jan. 3, misinformation ran rampant.

In the days following the U.S.-led drone strike, the White House’s rationales for the attack shifted wildly. Initially, the Trump administration claimed that the general was plotting an “imminent” attack against Americans. Less than a week later, it was to prevent an attack on a U.S. embassy, or four embassies. Or maybe it was U.S. military bases. In the end, “it doesn’t really matter,” the president tweeted, “because of [Soleimani’s] horrible past!”

At the same time, social networks like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook began to overflow with doctored photos and outdated images, false rumors about the draft, and fake tweets from administration officials. In one sense, this is nothing new; war fighting has always had a psychological component, which includes spreading lies. But in another sense, the informational fog speaks to the defining epistemological issue of our era: the fracturing of the American public’s shared sense of reality.

“The objective seems to be to question the idea that anything is certain,” says University of Southern California historian Nicholas Cull. “In a world of uncertainty, the only one you can trust is the strongest guy in the room.”

One rumor claimed that the U.S. had instituted the draft. Another rumor claimed that LGBT people were exempt. Another claimed that felons were exempt. By the end of the day of the drone strike, the servers for the U.S. Selective Service System’s website had crashed.