33 Notably, the Bush administration claimed that war with Iraq was justified because the country possessed weapons of mass destruction and were seeking to buy large quantities of yellowcake uranium to produce more nuclear warheads. Less than a year after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, however, it was announced that no weapons of mass destruction had been found. The only yellowcake uranium discovered in Iraq had been there since before 1991. See Wright Bryan and Douglas Hopper, “Iraq WMD Timeline: How the Mystery Unraveled,” NPR, November 15, 2005, https://www.npr.org/2005/11/15/4996218/iraq-wmd-timeline-how-the-mystery-unraveled. Also see Julian Borger, “There Were No Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq,” The Guardian, October 7, 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/oct/07/usa.iraq1.
34 Lasswell’s original formulation is “Who, Says What, in Which Channel, to Whom, with What Effect?” See Harold Lasswell, “The Structure and Function of Communication in Society,” in The Communication of Ideas: A Series of Addresses (New York: Institute for Religious and Social Studies, 1948), 37.
35 Elihu Katz and Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications (New York: Free Press, 1955), 16.
36 Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign, 3rd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).
37 Katz and Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence, 32.
38 Ibid., 1.
39 Ibid., 32.
40 This term, used somewhat interchangeably with Magic Bullet model in communication theory, has been apocryphally attributed to Harold Lasswell’s writings on propaganda per “Hypodermic Needle Model,” Wikipedia, last modified March 29, 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypodermic_needle_model.
41 Katz and Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence, 33.
42 Jon Askonas, “Life in an Alternate Reality Game,” New Atlantis, no. 68 (Spring 2022): 6–28, published online as “Reality Is Just a Game Now,” New Atlantis, https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/reality-is-just-a-game-now.
43 See Lippmann, Public Opinion; Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public (New York: MacMillan, 1925). Discussion of his debate with Dewey is examined at length in Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing, The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022).
CHAPTER 2: IF YOU MAKE IT TREND, YOU MAKE IT TRUE
1 Geoff Herbert, “Wayfair Responds to Sex Trafficking Conspiracy Theory over Cabinets with Human Names,” Syracuse.com, July 13, 2020, https://www.syracuse.com/business/2020/07/wayfair-responds-to-sex-trafficking-conspiracy-theory-over-cabinets-with-human-names.html.
2 Jessica Contrera, “A QAnon Con: How the Viral Wayfair Sex Trafficking Lie Hurt Real Kids,” Washington Post, December 16, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2021/wayfair-qanon-sex-trafficking-conspiracy.
3 Marc-André Argentino (@_MAArgentino), “13/ Spike B came at 5:36 am. This tweet was retweeted 71K & liked 139K times.…” Twitter, July 11, 2020, 5:27 p.m., https://twitter.com/_MAArgentino/status/1282063878571032579.
4 Contrera, “A QAnon Con.”
5 Amanda Seitz, “QAnon’s ‘Save the Children’ Morphs into Popular Slogan,” Associated Press, October 28, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-child-trafficking-illinois-morris-aab978bb7e9b89cd2cea151ca13421a0; E. J. Dickson, “What Is #SaveTheChildren and Why Did Facebook Block It?,” Rolling Stone, August 12, 2020, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/savethechildren-qanon-pizzagate-facebook-block-hashtag-1041812; “Save the Children Statement on Use of Its Name in Unaffiliated Campaigns,” Save the Children, August 7, 2020, https://www.savethechildren.org/us/about-us/media-and-news/2020-press-releases/save-the-children-statement-on-use-of-its-name-in-unaffiliated-c.
6 US Attorney’s Office, District of Columbia, “North Carolina Man Sentenced to Four-Year Prison Term for Armed Assault at Northwest Washington Pizza Restaurant,” US Department of Justice, June 22, 2017, https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/north-carolina-man-sentenced-four-year-prison-term-armed-assault-northwest-washington.
7 Adam Goldman, “The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter’s Questions,” New York Times, December 7, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/us/edgar-welch-comet-pizza-fake-news.html.
8 German Lopez, “Pizzagate, the Fake News Conspiracy Theory That Led a Gunman to DC’s Comet Ping Pong, Explained,” Vox, December 8, 2016, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13842258/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-fake-news.
