Over the past month, hundreds of homes have been destroyed and thousands forced to evacuate as deadly fires swept unchecked across the US west coast.
As the fires raged, another worrying parallel has emerged: the spread of dangerous disinformation campaigns, which are dismissed by scientists, police and emergency personnel, yet perpetuated by politicians and online troll bots.Emergency responders in the US are fighting unsubstantiated social media content that blames coordinated groups of arsonists for starting the fires.
"Conspiracy theories and misinformation take valuable resources away local fire and police agencies working around the clock to bring these fires under control. Please help our entire community by only sharing validated information from official sources."“I am physically and emotionally exhausted.
Dr Timothy Graham, a senior lecturer on social media analysis at the Queensland University of Technology, examined hundreds of online accounts that were pushing the #ArsonEmergency hashtag on Twitter during the bushfire crisis. "When I analysed a really large dataset of tweets, I noticed there were these hotspots of activity getting red-flagged by these bot detection tolls."
Dr Graham said one can never be sure whether an account is completely automated, or if it's fully or partially human-controlled.
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