Highway sharks - The growing threat of disinformation

By Tom Johansmeyer

In September 2022, a shark swam up Fort Myers, Florida highway. It didn’t’ attack any humans – at least in the conventional sense. The shark did usher in a new form of post-disaster problem, though: Weaponized disinformation.

Post-disaster disinformation certainly isn’t a new problem. From false hopes of support to promises of relief reduced or eroded by corruption, favouritism, and outright greed, falsehoods and lies have frustrated recovery efforts while costing affected societies everything from hope to their lives.

The weaponization of disinformation among people affected by disaster may have a long history, too, but the scale, speed, and impact possible today turn a difference of size into one of substance.

From elections to disasters

Disinformation campaigns related to Brexit, the 2016 US presidential election, and vaccine efficacy have illustrated the potential effects of falsehood and innuendo as hard power implements by states looking to disrupt the societies of their adversaries.

Natural disasters could be next. They are ripe for disinformation, particularly since the people affected are vulnerable, with constrained access to basic necessities such as food, water, shelter, and fuel. Institutions are tested, a situation worsened when they aren’t trusted to begin with. Fortunately, the threat is in its early stages, and there’s still time to do something about it.

Highway sharks aren’t real. Of course. The hoax seems to have begun with Hurricane Irene in 2011, later making appearances in the aftermath of Hurricanes Florence, Irma, and Ian (among others).

What is real, though, is the fact that hurricanes create an easy breeding ground for disinformation, particularly when local grievances leave a population willing to accept a narrative without regard to fact. Under these circumstances, state actors and enablers are more than willing to offer amenable messaging.

Disinformation is most effective when it has a hook – the more polarizing the better. That could be an election, a pandemic, or a social issue, as we see routinely today. Natural disasters offer a great hook.

Those affected await help from institutions they may not trust, and reasonably targeted disinformation can inflame preexisting grievances and concerns.

State-sponsored disinformation campaigns targeted specifically at natural disaster events have been neither widespread nor sophisticated so far. That’s about to change, and two recent cases illustrate the emergence of a disaster-related disinformation threat: Hurricane Ian’s highway shark and interference in Moldova related to its ongoing drought.

From Russia with shark

A news story in Sputnik International, a media outlet owned by the Russian Federation, purports to show sharks swimming through the streets of Fort Meyers, Florida. While the shark itself isn’t new, the context is. First, it wasn’t the work of online pranksters.

This time, it came from a large online publication. Sputnik generally appeared to reach 4-5 million visits per month. Further, the media outlet involved is owned and controlled by a state actor, and the content was part of a broader package of storm-related news.

In many ways, Sputnik’s attempt was amateurish. It lacked the nuance and subtlety of campaigns for Brexit and US elections. The source was traceable and the agenda easy to discern.

What did show some cunning, however, was the packaging, which had the shark as one component of a broader content campaign.

Sputnik published eight stories under the “Hurricane Ian” tag on its website. Three relatively clean news stories provide a veneer of respectability. One covers the storm path and another the number of fatalities from the event. The third picks up on a “hot mic” gaff by President Biden during a post-storm visit, which was also covered in the conventional media.

The remaining five stories, on the other hand, appear intended to advance an agenda. Only two of them mention Hurricane Ian in their headlines. One is the disinformation piece on highway sharks, which interestingly does not carry a byline (unlike the three “legitimate” articles). The other is a podcast episode entitled, “Government Abandons Hurricane Victims as Organisers Fill the Gaps.”

The remaining articles include references to Hurricane Ian in the bodies of articles as a secondary or tertiary story in pieces that cover multiple news items. Nonetheless, their headlines are provocative: (a) “White House Fumes Over OPEC+ Cut as Panic Sets in,” (b) “OPEC Might Cut Production, Africa’s Greatest War, FBI Puppetmasters?” and (c) “How the Corporate Media Escalates Risk of US-Russia Conflict.”

While the ham-fisted approach may be easy to spot, relying on readers knowing better remains a problematic defence in the face of a target audience that welcomes a validation of its own beliefs rather than the need to confront an inconvenient narrative.

This same dynamic is visible 9,000 km away from Florida, in Europe’s poorest country: Moldova.

Knocking on an open door

While the Gulf Coast of Florida found itself besieged by imaginary highway sharks, Moldova struggled under the weight of drought-adjacent foreign influence campaigns.

Clearly intended to inflame local tensions, erode faith in government institutions, and foment civil unrest, the methods and techniques used by TASS on Moldova resemble those of Sputnik in Florida, featuring a mix of oblique and overt messaging intended not just to question or criticise the Chisinau government but also to give permission to oppose the administration by showing others who already have.

Moldova’s ongoing drought stretches back to 2020 and has been characterised as “among the most severe in living memory.” Drought conditions have already been linked to civil unrest, which makes the occurrence of such a natural event an opportunity for specific disinformation campaigns that tap into local pre-existing grievances and advance an agenda of division and mistrust among factions in the state.

In fact, by doing so, the articles in TASS, among others, take advantage of the fact that some corners of Moldova are ready to embrace any message that counters the official line out of Chisinau.

Semi-autonomous regions in the small Eastern European country, Gagauzia and Transnistria, have shown themselves open to such campaigns, given their historical affinity for Russia and ongoing critic of Moldovan President Maia Sandu.

While the Florida campaign was something of a blunt instrument, the one in Moldova offers new, subtle, and potentially dangerous features. Articles in a state-sponsored news outlet can be taken seriously, even when they are questionable, but coverage similar in tone and content can gain more adoption when coming from a seemingly neutral source.

The Teller Report, for example, cites a TASS news story about Moldovan wheat yields declining by one third year over year due to the drought, although offering no link to the original news story. The publication has no “about” information, including ownership, and the story has no byline.

RT seeks to stoke feelings of fear and insecurity, like a firewood “crisis,” which was linked to the resignation of Moldova’s environment minister, even though credible outlets did not report the connection.

The red flags are easy to find if you have the inclination, background, and experience to look for them.

For most people, though, the warning signs simply do not register. Further, those who welcome the themes advances in such disinformation forums would see no cause for alarm anyway.

Rather, they would find reliable news validated by their own worldviews.

Toward a more resilient future

The addition of disinformation and foreign influence to the risk of disaster-induced civil unrest leads to an increasingly complex post-disaster environment.

The implication is that state actors and sponsors could use post-disaster vulnerability to inflame local grievances, erode faith in government institutions, and change the perception of the opportunity cost associated with civil unrest in a manner that makes the outbreak of violent protest, riots, and civil unrest much more likely.

Essentially, in addition to the disruptive characteristics of post-disaster information conflict, the risk of that disruption manifesting in the physical world increases, as well.

While the future may look grim, there’s cause for optimism. The problem is visible. We can see it, point to it, and do something about it.

The tide of disinformation can seem intimidating, even demoralizing. But for every such crisis of confidence we experience, we learn a bit more and come out a bit stronger.

For the weaponization of disinformation in the post-disaster environment, there’s also a key advantage: Geography. Natural disasters affect specific regions, generally those that are prone to specific risks, such as tropical storms, earthquakes, and floods.

Among tangible efforts toward resilience – which may include early response capabilities, training, and construction factors – it should be relatively easy to include not just easy to access official channels like apps and web portals, but also previews of what can be expected from official channels.

In Florida, for example, telling people at the beginning of hurricane season what a government response will look like, to include the sorts of information that would be provided and the methods that’ll be used, could be a good first step toward countering the disinformation that can be expected.

Physical preparations characterize the beginning of storm season, and information preparations should too.

Tom​ Johansmeyer is a POLIR PhD candidate at the University of Kent, Canterbury