24 USA Today quotes Steve Bannon, who took over Breitbart News in 2012, describing the rise of the alt-right movement that Breitbart helped to galvanize: “You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump.” Mike Snider, “Steve Bannon Learned to Harness Troll Army from ‘World of Warcraft,’” USA Today, July 18, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/07/18/steve-bannon-learned-harness-troll-army-world-warcraft/489713001.
25 Emily St. James, “#Gamergate: Here’s Why Everybody in the Video Game World Is Fighting,” Vox, October 13, 2014, https://www.vox.com/2014/9/6/6111065/gamergate-explained-everybody-fighting.
26 Caitlin Dewey, “The Only Guide to Gamergate You Will Ever Need to Read,” Washington Post, October 14, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/14/the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read.
27 Study methodologies vary but range from 7 to 15 percent for staunchly antivaccine and up to 30 percent for vaccine hesitant. See Timothy B. Gravelle et al., “Estimating the Size of ‘Anti-vax’ and Vaccine Hesitant Populations in the US, UK, and Canada: Comparative Latent Class Modeling of Vaccine Attitudes,” Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics 18, no. 1 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1080/21645515.2021.2008214; Hannah A. Roberts et al., “To Vax or Not to Vax: Predictors of Anti-vax Attitudes and COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Prior to Widespread Vaccine Availability,” PLoS One 17, no. 2 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264019.
28 Sarah Elbeshbishi and Mabinty Quarshie, “Fewer Than 1 in 5 Support ‘Defund the Police’ Movement, USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll Finds,” USA Today, March 7, 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/07/usa-today-ipsos-poll-just-18-support-defund-police-movement/4599232001.
29 Political keywords in bios also became more prevalent. A study of keywords in Twitter user bios found that indicators of political identity almost tripled between 2015 and 2018. N. Rogers and J. J. Jones, “Using Twitter Bios to Measure Changes in Self-Identity: Are Americans Defining Themselves More Politically over Time?,” Journal of Social Computing 2, no. 1 (March 2021): 1–13, https://doi.org/10.23919/JSC.2021.0002.
30 B. J. Bethel, “GamerGate Meme War Shares DNA with Pro–Donald Trump Trolls,” Sydney Morning Herald, September 14, 2016, https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/gamergate-meme-war-shares-dna-with-prodonald-trump-trolls-20160914-grg052.html.
31 Sam Levin, “Millionaire Tells Millennials: If You Want a House, Stop Buying Avocado Toast,” Guardian, May 15, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/may/15/australian-millionaire-millennials-avocado-toast-house.
32 Renée DiResta, “It’s Not Misinformation. It’s Amplified Propaganda,” The Atlantic, October 9, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/disinformation-propaganda-amplification-ampliganda/620334.
33 Shahid Buttar (@ShahidForChange), “Why do you think #PelosiMustGo?,” Twitter, July 12, 2020, 11:59 a.m., Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20200712201533/https://twitter.com/ShahidForChange/status/1282389059768213504.
34 Emily Zanotti, “‘Pelosi Must Go’: Speaker Blasted from the Left over ‘Corporate Interests,’” Daily Wire, July 14, 2020, https://www.dailywire.com/news/pelosi-must-go-speaker-blasted-from-the-left-over-corporate-interests.
35 Chris Bail, Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021), 31–32.
36 Jay Van Bavel and Dominic Packer, The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities for Personal and Collective Success (New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2021), 29.
37 Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice, 5th ed. (1984; reis., Boston: Pearson, 2009), 99.
38 Cass R. Sunstein, “The Law of Group Polarization,” Journal of Political Philosophy 10, no. 2 (2002): 175–195.
39 Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions (New York: Hachette, 2022), 39–42.
40 Van Bavel and Packer, The Power of Us, 77.
41 Ibid., 170–171.
42 Steve Rathje, Jay J. Van Bavel, and Sander van der Linden, “Out-Group Animosity Drives Engagement on Social Media,” PNAS 118, no. 26 (2021), https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2024292118.
43 Freddie deBoer, “The YIMBYs and Social Capture,” FdB, Substack, February 27, 2023, https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-yimby-movement-demonstrates-social.
44 Sandra González‐Bailón and Yphtach Lelkes, “Do Social Media Undermine Social Cohesion? A Critical Review,” Social Issues and Policy Review 17, no. 1 (January 2023): 155–180, https://doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12091.
45 Thanks to Gary Zhexi Zhang for the metaphor.
