If you’ve ever wondered how the right-wing media ecosystem operates and why it’s effective, try viewing it as a form of improvisational theater or improv.

In the wake of the 2024 U.S. elections, everyday people and political pundits alike have been trying to make sense of the results and the related observation that many Americans seem to be experiencing very different realities. These realities are shaped by very different media ecosystems.

Democrats tend to trust institutional media and network news more than Republicans. In contrast, Republicans have developed what they see as a more trustworthy and explicitly partisan alternative media ecosystem that has rapidly evolved and flourished in the internet era.

Cultivating robust alternative media has been a political strategy of the right for decades. Given the interactive nature of social media and ongoing investments by the right in digital media, the right-wing media ecosystem has become a highly participatory space filled with influencers, political elites and audiences.

These players engage in year-round conversations that inspire and adapt political messaging. The collaborations are not tightly scripted but improvised, facilitated by the interactivity of digital media.

For all these reasons, we, as researchers of information ecosystems and influencer culture, find it useful to think of right-wing media as a kind of improv theater. This metaphor helps us understand the social and digital structure, culture and persuasive power of right-wing influence, which is reshaping politics in the U.S. and around the world.

Elements of improv in right-wing media

Influencers are the performers in this real-life improv show that plays out on a stage of social media newsfeeds, podcasts, cable newsrooms and partisan online media outlets. The performers include political pundits and media personalities as well as a dynamic group of online opinion leaders who often ascend from the audience to the stage, in part by recognizing and exploiting the dynamics of digital media.

These influencers work together, performing a variety of roles based on a set of informal rules and performance conventions: sharing vague but emotionally resonant memes, “just asking questions” to each other, trolling a journalist, “evidencing” claims with data or photos – sometimes taken out of context – all the while engaging each other’s content.

Just as in improv, performers work daily to find a game from their audience, internet forums and each other. The “game” in improv is a concept or story with a novel element around which a performance revolves. Once a compelling game is found, performers “raise the stakes,” another improv concept where the plot intensifies and expands.

Performers follow a loose script, collaborating toward a shared goal. Digital media environments provide additional infrastructure — the platform features, networks and algorithms — that shapes the performances.

Their performances, both individual and in interaction with each other, help influencers attract and curate an audience they are highly in tune with. As in improv shows, the political performers may use a technique called a callback: referencing a previous line, exchange or game that the audience is familiar with. Or performers might react to calls from an engaged audience that cheers, jeers and steers the actors as the show unfolds. The audience may also prompt an entire skit by bringing a story to the attention of influencers or politicians.

From this perspective, influence doesn’t just flow from influencers on stage and out to the audience, but also flows from the audience to the influencers. These dynamics make the right-wing media ecosystem extremely reactive. Feedback is instant, and the right “bits” get laughs and likes. Influencers — and political leaders — can quickly adapt their messaging to their audiences’ tastes, preferences and grievances, as well as to the events and trends of the day, unencumbered by the lag of traditional news media.

Actors and audiences in right-wing media also engage in transgressive, controversial or even offensive bits, as they test the boundaries of their shared tastes, expectations and — for the political performers — ideologies.

Like a lot of improv shows, these performances feel intimate and authentic. Audience members can talk to the performers after and sometimes during the show. They can also be invited “on stage” when an influencer elevates their content.

It may be just for a single scene, but there is also opportunity for lucky, savvy or persistent contributors to become part of the theater of influencers. This increases the motivation to participate, the excitement and the sense among audience members that they are truly part of the show.

‘They’re eating the pets’

One example of right-wing media as improv came in fall 2024 when then-candidate Donald Trump baselessly claimed from a debate stage that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating pets.

Prior to Trump referencing them, rumors of pet-eating had been circulating in local Springfield Facebook groups. These claims were amplified when a local neo-Nazi leader discussed the issue in a recorded town hall meeting, which circulated in apps like Telegram and Gab. Influencers who monitor these channels elevated the story, finding a new game with a novel element.

A Reddit post of a photo of a man holding a bird walking down the street was taken out of context by influencers and falsely used as “evidence” of immigrants eating pets. Memes, particularly those made by artificial intelligence, started spreading rapidly, catching the attention of politicians including Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who shared them. This raised the stakes of the improv game by tying these smaller memes to a larger political narrative about needing to stop migration at the southern border.

The improv act reached its zenith when Trump and then vice presidential candidate JD Vance elevated the claims during the week of the September debate. They presented the claims with both seriousness and a bit of a tongue-in-cheek awareness that the point of the story was not necessarily about immigrants but about the attention the narrative garnered. Vance even acknowledged the whole thing could “turn out to be false.” Veracity was not the point of this improvisation.

Growing body of research

The metaphor of right-wing media as improv emerged through research, conversation and collaboration facilitated by the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, where we work.

One of us, Kate Starbird, and colleagues studied the role of political influencers in election-denying rumors after the 2020 election, finding right-wing political campaigns to be participatory efforts that were largely improvised. In related work, media researcher Anna Beers described how a “theater of influencers” on the right could be identified through their interactions with a shared audience.

Doctoral student Stephen Prochaska and colleagues built on sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s work to characterize the production of election fraud narratives in 2020 as “deep storytelling” – telling stories with strong emotional resonance – between right-wing influencers and their online audiences.

In her study of right-wing influencers, one of us, Danielle Lee Tomson, described the performative collaboration between influencers as kayfabe, a performance convention in professional wrestling of wrestlers agreeing on a story arc before a seemingly real wrestling match.

These studies all draw on different theories and apply different methods, but they converge on the ideas of improvisation, style and participatory audiences as integral to the success of right-wing media ecosystems.

A persuasive performance

In political improv, factuality is less important than the compelling nature of the performance, the actors, the big story arc and the aesthetic. The storylines can be riveting, engaging and participatory, allowing audiences to play their own role in a grand epic of American activism.

When considered this way, the persuasive power of right-wing media to everyday Americans comes into fuller focus. When there is a 24/7 chorus of collaborative internet influencers engaging their audiences directly, institutional media begins to feel too far removed and disengaged to have a comparable effect.

Danielle Lee Tomson, Research Manager, Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington and Kate Starbird, Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned an infodemic, a vast and complicated mix of information, misinformation and disinformation.

In this environment, false narratives ? the virus was ?planned,? that it originated as a bioweapon, that COVID-19 symptoms are caused by 5G wireless communications technology ? have spread like wildfire across social media and other communication platforms. Some of these bogus narratives play a role in disinformation campaigns.

The notion of disinformation often brings to mind easy-to-spot propaganda peddled by totalitarian states, but the reality is much more complex. Though disinformation does serve an agenda, it is often camouflaged in facts and advanced by innocent and often well-meaning individuals.

As a researcher who studies how communications technologies are used during crises, I?ve found that this mix of information types makes it difficult for people, including those who build and run online platforms, to distinguish an organic rumor from an organized disinformation campaign. And this challenge is not getting any easier as efforts to understand and respond to COVID-19 get caught up in the political machinations of this year?s presidential election.

Rumors, misinformation and disinformation

Rumors are, and have always been, common during crisis events. Crises are often accompanied by uncertainty about the event and anxiety about its impacts and how people should respond. People naturally want to resolve that uncertainty and anxiety, and often attempt to do so through collective sensemaking. It?s a process of coming together to gather information and theorize about the unfolding event. Rumors are a natural byproduct.

Rumors aren?t necessarily bad. But the same conditions that produce rumors also make people vulnerable to disinformation, which is more insidious. Unlike rumors and misinformation, which may or may not be intentional, disinformation is false or misleading information spread for a particular objective, often a political or financial aim.

Disinformation has its roots in the practice of dezinformatsiya used by the Soviet Union?s intelligence agencies to attempt to change how people understood and interpreted events in the world. It?s useful to think of disinformation not as a single piece of information or even a single narrative, but as a campaign, a set of actions and narratives produced and spread to deceive for political purpose.

Lawrence Martin-Bittman, a former Soviet intelligence officer who defected from what was then Czechoslovakia and later became a professor of disinformation, described how effective disinformation campaigns are often built around a true or plausible core. They exploit existing biases, divisions and inconsistencies in a targeted group or society. And they often employ ?unwitting agents? to spread their content and advance their objectives.

Regardless of the perpetrator, disinformation functions on multiple levels and scales. While a single disinformation campaign may have a specific objective ? for instance, changing public opinion about a political candidate or policy ? pervasive disinformation works at a more profound level to undermine democratic societies.

The case of the ?Plandemic? video

Distinguishing between unintentional misinformation and intentional disinformation is a critical challenge. Intent is often hard to infer, especially in online spaces where the original source of information can be obscured. In addition, disinformation can be spread by people who believe it to be true. And unintentional misinformation can be strategically amplified as part of a disinformation campaign. Definitions and distinctions get messy, fast.

Consider the case of the ?Plandemic? video that blazed across social media platforms in May 2020. The video contained a range of false claims and conspiracy theories about COVID-19. Problematically, it advocated against wearing masks, claiming they would ?activate? the virus, and laid the foundations for eventual refusal of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Though many of these false narratives had emerged elsewhere online, the ?Plandemic? video brought them together in a single, slickly produced 26-minute video. Before being removed by the platforms for containing harmful medical misinformation, the video propagated widely on Facebook and received millions of YouTube views.

As it spread, it was actively promoted and amplified by public groups on Facebook and networked communities on Twitter associated with the anti-vaccine movement, the QAnon conspiracy theory community and pro-Trump political activism.

But was this a case of misinformation or disinformation? The answer lies in understanding how ? and inferring a little about why ? the video went viral.

The video?s protagonist was Dr. Judy Mikovits, a discredited scientist who had previously advocated for several false theories in the medical domain ? for example, claiming that vaccines cause autism. In the lead-up to the video?s release, she was promoting a new book, which featured many of the narratives that appeared in the Plandemic video.

One of those narratives was an accusation against Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. At the time, Fauci was a focus of criticism for promoting social distancing measures that some conservatives viewed as harmful to the economy. Public comments from Mikovits and her associates suggest that damaging Fauci?s reputation was a specific goal of their campaign.

In the weeks leading up to the release of the Plandemic video, a concerted effort to lift Mikovits? profile took shape across several social media platforms. A new Twitter account was started in her name, quickly accumulating thousands of followers. She appeared in interviews with hyperpartisan news outlets such as The Epoch Times and True Pundit. Back on Twitter, Mikovits greeted her new followers with the message: ?Soon, Dr Fauci, everyone will know who you ?really are?.?

This background suggests that Mikovits and her collaborators had several objectives beyond simply sharing her misinformed theories about COVID-19. These include financial, political and reputational motives. However, it is also possible that Mikovits is a sincere believer of the information that she was sharing, as were millions of people who shared and retweeted her content online.

What?s ahead

In the United States, as COVID-19 blurs into the presidential election, we?re likely to continue to see disinformation campaigns employed for political, financial and reputational gain. Domestic activist groups will use these techniques to produce and spread false and misleading narratives about the disease ? and about the election. Foreign agents will attempt to join the conversation, often by infiltrating existing groups and attempting to steer them towards their goals.

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For example, there will likely be attempts to use the threat of COVID-19 to frighten people away from the polls. Along with those direct attacks on election integrity, there are likely to also be indirect effects ? on people?s perceptions of election integrity ? from both sincere activists and agents of disinformation campaigns.

Efforts to shape attitudes and policies around voting are already in motion. These include work to draw attention to voter suppression and attempts to frame mail-in voting as vulnerable to fraud. Some of this rhetoric stems from sincere criticism meant to inspire action to make the electoral systems stronger. Other narratives, for example unsupported claims of ?voter fraud,? seem to serve the primary aim of undermining trust in those systems.

History teaches that this blending of activism and active measures, of foreign and domestic actors, and of witting and unwitting agents, is nothing new. And certainly the difficulty of distinguishing between these is not made any easier in the connected era. But better understanding these intersections can help researchers, journalists, communications platform designers, policymakers and society at large develop strategies for mitigating the impacts of disinformation during this challenging moment.

Kate Starbird, Associate Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.