• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. disinformation>

How conspiracy theories became more personal, more cruel and more mainstream after the Sandy Hook shootings

Amanda J. Crawford
December 20, 2021
Remembering Sandy Hook

The legacy of the Sandy Hook shootings in 2012 continues to reverberate nine years later, including in how conspiracy theories have changed since the tragedy.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP via Getty Images

Crawford is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut.

Conspiracy theories are powerful forces in the United States. They have damaged public health amid a global pandemic, shaken faith in the democratic process and helped spark a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021.

These conspiracy theories are part of a dangerous misinformation crisis that has been building for years in the U.S.

American politics has long had a paranoid streak, and belief in conspiracy theories is nothing new. But as the news cycle reminds us daily, outlandish conspiracy theories born on social media now regularly achieve mainstream acceptance and are echoed by people in power.


As a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut, I have studied the misinformation around the mass shooting that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. I consider it the first major conspiracy theory of the modern social media age, and I believe we can trace our current predicament to the tragedy’s aftermath.

Nine years ago, the Sandy Hook shooting demonstrated how fringe ideas could quickly become mainstream on social media and win support from various establishment figures – even when the conspiracy theory targeted grieving families of young students and school staff killed during the massacre.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Those who claimed the tragedy was a hoax showed up in Newtown, Connecticut, and harassed people connected to the shooting. This provided an early example of how misinformation spread on social media could cause real-world harm.

New age of social media and distrust

Social media’s role in spreading misinformation has been well documented in recent years. The year of the Sandy Hook shooting, 2012, marked the first year that more than half of all American adults used social media.

It also marked a modern low in public trust of the media. Gallup’s annual survey has since showed even lower levels of trust in the media in 2016 and 2021.

These two coinciding trends – which continue to drive misinformation – pushed fringe doubts about Sandy Hook quickly into the U.S. mainstream. Speculation that the shooting was a false flag – an attack made to look as if it were committed by someone else – began to circulate on Twitter and other social media sites almost immediately. Far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and other fringe voices amplified these false claims.

Jones was recently found liable by default in defamation cases filed by Sandy Hook families.

Mistakes in breaking news reports about the shooting, such as conflicting information on the gun used and the identity of the shooter, were spliced together in YouTube videos and compiled on blogs as proof of a conspiracy, as my research shows. Amateur sleuths collaborated in Facebook groups that promoted the shooting as a hoax and lured new users down the rabbit hole.

Soon, a variety of establishment figures, including the 2010 Republican nominee for Connecticut attorney general, Martha Dean, gave credence to doubts about the tragedy.

Six months later, as gun control legislation stalled in Congress, a university poll found 1 in 4 people thought the truth about Sandy Hook was being hidden to advance a political agenda. Many others said they weren’t sure. The results were so unbelievable that some media outlets questioned the poll’s accuracy.

Today, other conspiracy theories have followed a similar trajectory on social media. The media is awash with stories about the popularity of the bizarre QAnon conspiracy movement, which falsely claims top Democrats are part of a Satan-worshipping pedophile ring. A member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has also publicly denied Sandy Hook and other mass shootings.

But back in 2012, the spread of outlandish conspiracy theories from social media into the mainstream was a relatively new phenomenon, and an indication of what was to come.

New breed of conspiracies

Sandy Hook also marked a turning point in the nature of conspiracy theories and their targets. Before Sandy Hook, popular American conspiracy theories generally villainized shadowy elites or forces within the government. Many 9/11 “truthers,” for example, believed the government was behind the terrorist attacks, but they generally left victims’ families alone.

Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists accused family members of those killed, survivors of the shooting, religious leaders, neighbors and first responders of being part of a government plot.

Newtown parents were accused of faking their children’s deaths, or their very existence. There were also allegations they were part of a child sex cult.

This change in conspiratorial targets from veiled government and elite figures to everyday people marked a shift in the trajectory of American conspiracy theories.

Since Sandy Hook, survivors of many other high-profile mass shootings and attacks, such as the Boston Marathon bombing and the Charlottesville car attack, have had their trauma compounded by denial about their tragedies.

And the perverse idea of a politically connected pedophile ring has become a key tenet in two subsequent conspiracy theories: Pizzagate and QAnon.

The kind of harassment and death threats targeting Sandy Hook families has also become a common fallout of conspiracy theories. In the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, the owners and employees of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor alleged to be part of a pedophile ring that included politicians continue to be targeted by adherents of that conspiracy theory. In 2016, one man drove hundreds of miles to investigate and fired his assault rifle in the restaurant.

Some people who remain skeptical of the COVID-19 pandemic have harassed front-line health workers . Local election workers across the country have been threatened and accused of being part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election.

The legacy of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook is a legacy of misinformation – the start of a crisis that will likely plague the U.S. for years to come.

The Conversation

From Your Site Articles
  • Podcast: How to address the disinformation problem - The Fulcrum ›
  • Disinformation spreaders should be barred from public office - The ... ›
  • Colo. redistricting chair removed for spreading election lies - The ... ›
  • Poll finds conservatives believe QAnon conspiracy theories - The ... ›
  • Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Opinion | Will you fall into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole? Take ... ›
  • The Most Popular Conspiracy Theories in America ›
  • COVID: Top 10 current conspiracy theories - Alliance for Science ›
  • Conspiracy theories: Why beliefs like QAnon flourish — and how to ... ›
disinformation

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Improving voter engagement for all Americans

Barbara Smith Warner
11h

Meet the Faces of Democracy: Carly Koppes (R-CO)

Michael Beckel
Mia Minkin
Ariana Rojas
11h

Deaflympians battle for sport & awareness

Howard Gorrell
28 March

Voters must hold politicians accountable

David L. Nevins
28 March

Democracy has no off-years

Ashley Spillane
28 March

Podcast: Harnessing the power of juries

Our Staff
28 March
Videos

Video: Can bipartisanship survive the rise of the independent voter?

Our Staff

Video: Ted Lasso cast at the White House press briefing

Our Staff

Video: The hidden stories in the U.S. Census

Our Staff

Video: We asked conservatives at CPAC what woke means

Our Staff

Video: DeSantis, 18 states to push back against Biden ESG agenda

Our Staff

Video: A conversation with Tiahna Pantovich

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Harnessing the power of juries

Our Staff
28 March

Podcast: Partial truths & corporate fables

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
27 March

Podcast: Risky business: More bank collapses ahead?

Our Staff
27 March

Podcast: Talkin' Politics & Religion Without Killin' Each Other: Barbara McQuade

Our Staff
24 March
Recommended
Improving voter engagement for all Americans

Improving voter engagement for all Americans

Voting
Meet the Faces of Democracy: Carly Koppes (R-CO)

Meet the Faces of Democracy: Carly Koppes (R-CO)

Elections
Video: Can bipartisanship survive the rise of the independent voter?

Video: Can bipartisanship survive the rise of the independent voter?

Deaflympians battle for sport & awareness

Deaflympians battle for sport & awareness

Pop Culture
Voters must hold politicians accountable

Voters must hold politicians accountable

Big Picture
Democracy has no off-years

Democracy has no off-years

Elections