The Power of a Rumor

The civil unrest coupled with COVID-19 lockdowns and overall instability made 2020 an impactful year. With the murder of George Floyd came a tremendous push for a renewed civil rights movement. Social media played a major part in this movement in a variety of ways. Social media was a place for showing solidarity, spreading information quickly, and running crowdfunding campaigns. Social media allowed organizers to engage with a new audience and plan for a wider movement. Without social media, we would have likely seen much less interaction from the public. This expanded reach and attention also increased the opposition and radicalized a whole new group of people into racism. 

One way I personally saw these impacts was in my small town at the time of Klamath Falls, Oregon. At the height of the protests in the summer of 2020, agitators were spreading stories across social media of an impending “Antifa” attack on the local businesses in Klamath. It was said that they were coming on a bus and would be tearing apart Main Street during a planned local Black Lives Matter demonstration. I recall being incredibly frustrated because it was so incredibly illogical, the posts were clearly falsified, or misunderstood. Regardless, hundreds of locals showed up downtown in our tiny town to “protect” their businesses with bats, and semi-automatic rifles slung on their shoulders.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/klamath-falls-oregon-victory-declared-over-antifa-which-never-showed-n1226681

People were live streaming, and continuing to spread the message that Antifa was on the way, and local businesses were in danger. The local Black Lives Matter demonstrators gathered peacefully where they stated they would, and hundreds of counter-protestors posted up on the other side of the street to supposedly stop them (as they believed they were “Antifa”) from tearing the town apart. It was such a strange scene. Of course, there were no out-of-town agitators coming to break windows and set fires, and instead of protecting anything the counter-protestors just created a place of hostility, and fear, and there was irreparable damage to relationships in our small town as they screamed at the demonstrators. One person even reenacted Floyd’s murder by placing his knee on the neck of his girlfriend on the ground. It was truly a horrendous site to see. I never thought of my town the same way and was truly disgusted. We even made the national news for having been fooled by the fake social media reports of Antifa. I have since moved away, but it forever changed the way that I viewed my neighbors, and some still to this day believe the fake story. 

NBC Article on Klamath

Commentary by Journalist

As this story shows, social media has become a powerful tool for mobilization from all sides. white nationalists, Proud Boys, and other militant groups can add to their numbers through social media recruiting. Black Lives Matter and other social justice organizations conversely are able to do the same, to raise money, and to spread messages far and wide on gathering points and digital ways to engage. 

Social media has changed the way that we document history by allowing everyone to become an active member, we are all historians. We each have access to the tools to record and engage in our reality in ways that document history. This is important because it means that history is no longer able to be dictated by the few (at least it is not as easy). Plus the proliferation of social media and just smartphones, in general, ensures that there are often going to be many recordings of major events, offering multiple perspectives to be analyzed.