Facebook Frolics, Fomenting Fear and Begetting Bigotry Dept. 0
Der Spiegel explores how the German right uses Facebook and other forms of “social” media to spread lies about Syrian refugees. Here’s a bit; follow the link for the rest:
“Utter nonsense,” says the director of the Halberstadt zoo, Marina Breitschuh. No one plundered the zoo, she adds, and all the animals, including the goats, are doing just fine. There are also no right-wingers threatened with termination among the zookeepers, she says. Breitschuh was, however, familiar with the rumor of the slaughtered goats, but the story she heard allegedly took place in Erfurt. One call to the Thuringian capital was all it took to confirm: no missing animals.
“This is a very common pattern,” says Andre Wolf from Mimikama, an online platform in Austria that fights Internet abuse. Once a fabricated story is clearly refuted, those behind it will often uproot it to another location and begin spreading the rumor there. “Some stories are like old acquaintances,” says Wolf. “They resurface every few weeks or months from the depths of the Internet.”
Sound familiar?
