Case Report on Basic Misinformation: Astroworld
Misinformation in the media and on social media platforms, in general, are apparent when it comes to large-scale stories. In the case of Astroworld and the series of stories and perspectives that came from that mass casualty event, there is going to be some disinformation spreading in regards to the numbers correlating to the event, explanations to what happened and dispelling of conspiracies.
In a tweet regarding speculation on why there were casualties at the music festival, some Twitter users are turning to the conclusion that Travis Scott’s performance was a part of a satanic ritual. This user’s tweet linked a news story that had nothing to do with their claim and photo evidence of the crowd that they used to paint their narrative.
Exploring the post's metadata, we can see the interactions with the post, those disagreeing and correcting the misinformation and those users feeding into the claim of a satanic ritual. Another user commented saying rave music or the music Travis Scott was performing at Astroworld was meant to put the audience and the crowd into a trance.
The post was created the night after Astroworld took place, that Saturday, November 6 at 5:14 p.m. The comment following the original tweet up with claims of hypnotic frequencies came the next day on November 7.
The original author of the tweet mentioned did continue the thread with this comment, asking them to elaborate their claim and continued the conversation of misinformation.
This thread was found after using TweetDeck resources and seeing what was being said under the #AstroworldFest and in relation to the keyword ‘satanic’ and ‘evil’.
A big sign of these misinformed tweets and how to tell that it is, so to say, “fake news” is the random use of all caps in the words on the tweets, opinionated language and to top it all off, the photos used not really providing context to the situation or being explained properly.