136 Lyn Van Swol, Sangwon Lee, and Rachel Hutchins, “The Banality of Extremism: The Role of Group Dynamics and Communication of Norms in Polarization on January 6,” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research and Practice 26, no. 3 (2022): 239–251, https://doi.org/10.1037/gdn0000180.

137 As Van Swol, Lee, and Hutchins put it, “The fact that participants posted themselves on social media participating in the attack, without consideration of the consequences, suggests just how embedded they were in the norms of their network and isolated from dissent” (ibid.).

138 See P. B. Paulus and J. B. Kenworthy, “The Crowd Dynamics and Collective Stupidity of the January 6 Riot: Theoretical Analyses and Prescriptions for a Collectively Wiser Future,” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 26, no. 3 (2022): 199–219, https://doi.org/10.1037/gdn0000184: “Even with a limited security force, the crowd did not surge through the police lines until some crowd members (apparently instigated by certain crowd elements such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers) were able to breach the police lines with little consequence. The restriction of movement of crowd members on the Capitol grounds was thus disinhibited due to the lack of serious consequences. Contagion and imitation followed.” Paulus and Kenworthy examined the multifaceted psychological dynamics of mobilization in depth: “The crowd members were mobilized for action by both the social media process and the rally speakers to go to the Capitol to protest the election and demand a reassessment of the outcome. At that point, social control factors become the key elements that determine the outcome of the collective movement or action. Respected leaders inside and outside of the collective, the press, and clear messages from security elements or officials about the appropriate and inappropriate collective actions and consequences for violations can help minimize the potential for violent and destructive actions. An important factor in the occurrence of a hostile outburst is leadership. The leadership may be unintentional when the individual behaviors of some group members lead others to follow. In the case of the breaching of the police lines, the simple act of some in the crowd breaking through the lines may have led others to follow.”

139 Maria Polletta and Andrew Oxford, “Arizona GOP Asks Followers If They’re Willing to Die in Effort to Overturn Election Results,” AZ Central, December 8, 2020, https://www.azcentral.com /story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/08/arizona-republican-party-asks-if-followers-die-election-president-donald-trump/6488952002/.

140 Zachary Petrizzo, “‘Stop the Steal’ Leader Threatens ‘Something Bad’ Might Happen to D.C. Hotel After It Closes Doors to MAGA March,” Daily Dot, December 29, 2020, https://www.dailydot.com/debug/stop-the-steal-something-bad-hotel-harrington.

141 Daniel Lippman, “Facebook Bans Stop the Steal Organizer Ali Alexander,” Politico. January 12, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/12/facebook-bans-stop-the-steal-organizer-ali-alexander-458267.

142 Will Sommer, “‘Stop the Steal’ Organizer in Hiding After Denying Blame for Riot,” Daily Beast, January 10, 2021, https://www.thedailybeast.com/stop-the-steal-organizer-in-hiding-after-denying-blame-for-riot.

143 Sommer, “’Stop the Steal’ Organizer in Hiding.”

144 Derek Hawkins, Sarah Ellison, and Blair Guild, “What Tucker Carlson Said About Trump in Private Texts vs. on Fox News,” Washington Post, March 9, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/03/09/tucker-carlson-trump-texts-fox-news.

145 Brian Fung, “Parler Has Now Been Booted by Amazon, Apple and Google,” CNN Business, January 9, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/09/tech/parler-suspended-apple-app-store/index.html.

146 Alexander posted this to his Telegram channel on October 30, 2022, following the election; the post can be found at https://t.me/alialexander/5435.

147 “Post-election Lawsuits Related to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election,” Wikipedia, November 28, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related_to_the_2020_U.S._presidential_election.

148 Jennifer Agiest and Ariel Edwards-Levy, “CNN Poll: Most Republicans Care More About Picking a 2024 GOP Nominee Who Agrees with Them on Issues Than One Who Can Beat Biden,” CNN Politics, March 14, 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/14/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-2024-nominee/index.html.

149 Ryan Quinn, “Conservatives Sue, Investigate Disinformation Researchers,” Inside Higher Ed, June 23, 2023, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/research/2023/06/23/stanford-u-wash-faculty-fought-disinformation-got-sued; Nix and Menn, “These Academics Studied Falsehoods Spread by Trump.”

150 “Addressing False Claims and Misperceptions of the UW Center for an Informed Public’s Research,” Center for an Informed Public, March 16, 2023, https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/03/16/uw-cip-election-integrity-partnership-research-claims.

CHAPTER 6: AGENTS OF INFLUENCE

1 Matt Kodama, “#ColumbianChemicals Hoax: Trolling the Gulf Coast for Deceptive Patterns,” Recorded Future blog, June 12, 2015, https://www.recordedfuture.com/blog/columbianchemicals-hoax-analysis.

2 Adrian Chen, “The Agency,” New York Times, June 2, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html.

3 John Borthwick, “Media Hacking,” Medium, March 7, 2015, https://render.betaworks.com/media-hacking-3b1e350d619c.

4 Kodama, “#ColumbianChemicals Hoax.”

5 Borthwick, “Media Hacking.”

6 Chen, “The Agency.”

7 Haley Ott, Kerry Breen, and Duarte Dias, “What Is the Wagner Group, and Who Is Yevgeny Prigozhin? What to Know About the Russian Private Military Company,” CBS News, August 24, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wagner-group-who-is-yevgeny-prigozhin-russia-mercenary-private-military-company.

8 Associated Press, “A Russian Businessman Linked to Putin Admits to U.S. Election Meddling,” NPR, November 7, 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134878028/yevgeny-prigozhin-russia-election-interference-putin.

9 “Amid Infighting Among Putin’s Lieutenants, Head of Mercenary Force Appears to Take a Step Too Far,” AP News, June 23, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/putin-russia-ukraine-war-prigozhin-infighting-0e051f0a43522f57ef1810a8b03f6e62.

10 Patrick Smith, “Prigozhin Dismissed Security Fears Days Before Plane Crash, Video Appears to Show,” NBC News, August 31, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/prigozhin-dismissed-security-fears-days-plane-crash-video-appears-show-rcna102699.

11 Nicholas J. Cull, “Master of American Propaganda: How George Creel Sold the Great War to America, and America to the World,” PBS, accessed September 7, 2023, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/the-great-war-master-of-american-propaganda. Bernays worked alongside award-winning storytellers, artists, and advertisers, as well as national celebrities and around seventy-five thousand local citizens, who were prepped with pro-war talking points to deliver in presentations at community centers.

12 Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (London: Profile Books Ltd., 2020).

13 Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (New York: Vintage Books, 1973).

14 Renée DiResta and Joshua Goldstein, “Full-Spectrum Propaganda in the Social Media Era,” working paper currently under review. Available at http://reneediresta.com/fullspectrumpropaganda.pdf.

15 Philip N. Howard, “Why Governments Use Broadcast TV and Dissidents Use Twitter,” The Atlantic, June 14, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/why-governments-use-broadcast-tv-and-dissidents-use-twitter/276896.

16 In their study of the Tahrir Square protests, Zeynep Tufekci and Christopher Wilson found that Facebook and other social media platforms were critical to driving protest participation and spreading information that was not controlled by politicians. Zeynep Tufekci and Christopher Wilson, “Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations from Tahrir Square,” Journal of Communication 62, no. 2 (March 6, 2012): 363–379, https://doi.org/1460-2466.2012.01629.

17 David Patrikarakos, War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Basic Books, 2017).

18 For more on the concept of computational propaganda, see Samuel C. Woolley and Philip N. Howard, eds., Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation