David: The key to these factions is the influencers. How have they become so powerful?
Renée: They have followers. Even influencers who believe in conspiracy theories have millions of followers right now. Traditional media doesn’t necessarily get that kind of readership on a given article or viewers on a given piece of content. But the influencer is algorithmically fed into your feed and has the ability to respond, to interact in a way that media brands often can’t.
David: How important are algorithms in helping these influencers spread their message?
Renée: The influencer needs to be seen by their audience, and having that relationship with their audience is key, but that’s always mediated by what the algorithm is going to show people, particularly as more and more of that feed space is determined not by who you follow at all, but by what it thinks you want to see.
David: In your book you write about Ali Alexander, an influencer who helped organize the Stop the Steal movement in 2020. How did people like Alexander become so influential?
Renée: People who are not Trump supporters may see him as a clown, but among the group he addresses, they trust him, they believe him, and he compels them to act. It is very important to realize the effect that relationships with influencers have in shaping reality or driving people to act in a certain way. They actually emerge from the crowd and receive their power because the crowd keeps interacting with them, supporting them, and motivating them.
David: Is this what Trump is doing?
Renée: What we see with Trump over and over again is what we call this bottom-up rumor mill, where people talk about things, they say them, they post them, they tag him, he retweets them, and then they have the benefit of that additional influence within the community. They’ve done their part, they’re fighting for the cause. We see him very skillfully working this system in Truth Social[where]he’s constantly amplifying fans and followers and engaging very heavily with the online fan base.
David: What are we missing from our current information environment?
Renée: What I find most alarming is that people have the ability to create realities by making something trending, to reinforce these conspiracy theories over and over again. There is an increasingly divergent set of realities where there is a deep conviction that has been built up over many, many years of reinforcing the same tropes and stories. You can’t just fix that with fact-checking.
David: And with the demise of the Stanford Internet Observatory, there are even fewer people to verify this data. Who or what was to blame for your departure from Stanford?
Renée: The chilling effect of Congressional Investigations and associated legal warfareThe politicization of research is real. Institutions need to wake up to what is happening. We have seen these tactics in the past, such as during the attacks on climate scientists a decade ago, but the strategy still works. If spurious research into politically inconvenient findings succeeds in intimidating institutions, there will only be more spurious research.
The chat room
Where do you get your political news these days (aside from WIRED Politics, of course)? Do you stick to traditional media (newspapers, broadcast television) or do you subscribe to political newsletters, podcasts, and social channels? Do you make a conscious effort to get news from different perspectives? Or do you think you live in an information echo chamber?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment on the site or email me at mail@wired.com.