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The shooting of former U.S. President and 2024 presidential election candidate Trump on July 13 was the first major assassination attempt against a U.S. president or former president since the advent of the social media era.

After the shooting, when Americans turned to the internet for information, the flood of speculation, conspiracy theories, jokes, memes and emoticons once again highlighted the fact that social platforms have become the main source of information, including misinformation, for many people, and have also contributed to the current distrust and turmoil in American politics.

According to data from PeakMetrics, a web company that tracks online content, in the hours after the incident, mentions of Trump on social platforms surged to 17 times the daily average, with many expressing sympathy for Trump or calling for unity, but many others making unfounded and absurd claims.

Since the release of the chatbot ChatGPT at the end of 2022, the outbreak of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has played a significant role in the fabrication of fake news, and this time is no exception. According to analysis by Israeli technology company Cyabra, social platform robots have amplified false claims on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok, and images created by generative AI have emerged rapidly because this technology has greatly simplified the means of creating false information.

Cyabra's analysis noted that an image created using artificial intelligence was circulated on X that depicted a smiling Trump after the shooting.

From 1981 to 2024

Many Americans can't help but think of the last major assassination attempt on a US president.

In 1981, then-President Reagan was shot after giving a speech outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. He was in a "critical condition" when he arrived at the hospital, but he survived. The gunman, John Hinckley, had a crush on actress Jodie Foster and hoped to get her attention by assassinating the president. After the assassination, Hinckley lived in a mental hospital for decades and was released from court supervision in 2022.

Magically, after Trump was shot, a large number of netizens gathered on Hinckley's account on X and posted a large number of messages under his paintings. "John, are you in Butler, Pennsylvania (Editor's note: where Trump was shot) today?" someone asked.

After Trump was shot, a large number of netizens gathered on the account opened by Hinckley, who assassinated Reagan, on X, and posted a large number of messages under one of his paintings about cats.

The difference between 2024 and 1981 is stark. When Hinckley attacked Reagan, most Americans got their news from newspapers and broadcast television’s evening shows, a slow, ritualized, tightly gated media outlet. CNN was less than a year old at the time, and Reagan’s assassination did much to bring attention to CNN’s 24-hour programming.

By 2024, the "square" where Americans look for information mainly includes the social platform that changed its name from Twitter to X. It is not just the name that has changed. X's owner Elon Musk has completely transformed the social platform after acquiring it. He and his followers have completely abandoned the calm and objective approach of traditional news interviews, adopted a mechanism to encourage traffic with revenue, and disbanded the security and policy teams.

The American political news website POLITICO wrote that after several years of caution and strict review, the social platform landscape seems to have returned to an early, less regulated version of the Internet.

Not only that, Musk even turned himself into a protagonist on the platform. Less than 48 hours after the shooting, he began to focus on conspiracy theories that allegedly covered up the shooter's digital activities, and used the opportunity to immediately express his support for Trump's presidential campaign. Musk then turned to attacking the media, saying that "traditional media is a pure propaganda machine. X is the voice of the people." Just a few hours after the shooting, before the main details were confirmed, Musk began to attack the Secret Service, saying that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas "should be in jail."

Of course, it’s not just X or right-wingers who spread false information, there are also far-left accounts lamenting the failed assassination attempt on Trump.

Trapped in a spiral of development

After the shooting, there were several main types of statements that appeared online.

Many specious claims have sought to blame the attack on Trump's opponent, US President Biden.

Some voices on the left quickly claimed that the shooting was a self-directed self-torture tactic by Trump, while some Trump supporters suggested that the Secret Service deliberately failed to protect Trump in accordance with the White House's orders.

On July 14, the Secret Service refuted the claim circulating on social platforms that the Trump campaign team requested enhanced security before the rally on the 13th but was rejected. "This is absolutely wrong." Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the agency, wrote on X, "In fact, as part of the accelerated pace of campaign travel, we have increased protective resources, technology and capabilities."

The "echo chamber effect" has emerged, with Trump's supporters and opponents looking for evidence to support their own ideas. "If there was really danger, why did the Secret Service allow him to stop and take pictures?" one user wrote. The "echo chamber effect" refers to the fact that in a relatively closed environment, some similar voices are repeated continuously, making most people mistakenly believe that these distorted stories may be the whole truth.

An analysis by Israeli technology company Cyabra found that 45% of accounts using hashtags such as #fakeassassination and #stagedshooting were not real. An image created using artificial intelligence also circulated, depicting a smiling Trump after the shooting.

“Moments like this provide ammunition for online extremists because they often react very confidently to what’s happening without any real evidence,” Jacob Weil, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Associated Press. “People get caught in a spiral and they advance their own ideologies and conclusions.”

Others are hoping to cash in on the incident. On Monday, an account called "Proud Patriots" urged Trump supporters to buy their merchandise themed after the assassination attempt.

Benefits of social platforms

Social platforms can also play a positive role in exposing legitimate and useful information quickly after a breaking news event. The domain expertise of users in niche internet communities can reveal potentially relevant facts before “traditional media” do: multiple users on X pointed out that the accused gunman, Thomas Crooks, was wearing a T-shirt advertising the Demolition Ranch, an influencer who specializes in testing guns.

Jeremiah Johnson, author of Infinite Scroll, told POLITICO that after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, social platforms tracked the movements of law enforcement as they hunted for the fleeing bomber, naming some of the wrong suspects in the process. This was a new phenomenon for digital media platforms at the time, but has now become an important part of mainstream media opinion.

“Information travels at the speed of light, but sometimes it ends up being the wrong information,” Johnson said. “You have to be careful with this stuff.”

But in 2024, Musk’s X seems to have largely returned to the freewheeling spirit and lax regulation of the early internet, while generative artificial intelligence has given online extremists new weapons.