Chronic. Firefox is everywhere, sure, but does it really matter? Even the observation that social networks have amplified the circulation of false information compared to a previous era is questionable: the electoral campaigns of the XIXe century often saw the spread of exuberant slander against rival candidates. Several studies have already shown that the capacity of fake news to change the opinion of voters was actually modest (The world February 8, 2017).
There is another, more worrying possibility, however: that infoxers discredit the true sources of information, that the producers of Firefox are often the first to denounce, especially when they publish critical information about them. We are already aware of the faltering public confidence in certain scientific procedures, such as vaccination. Does the Firefox risk creating a consensus on the idea that everyone has the right to their own truth, that all truths are equal?
Researchers at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California at Los Angeles studied the impact of the diatribes of Rush Limbaugh, host of the most listened to radio program in the United States, against the National Hurricane Center ( NHC), released just before the arrival of Cyclone Irma, in September 2017 (Political Storms: Emergent Partisans Skepticism of Hurricane Risks, Elisa Long, Keith Chen and Ryne Rohla, October 2019).
Rush Limbaugh believes the NHC hurricane hazard alerts are part of a conspiracy to publicize the myth of global warming. Her speech was echoed by influential commentator Ann Coulter, then widely publicized in mainstream media, followed by a massive increase in Google searches for expressions like "Hurricane fake news".
Influential denunciations
NHC alerts have a direct impact on individual decisions to evacuate their homes before the hurricanes arrive. The study authors created a large database from data provided by mobile operators, which allows them to calculate the proportion of residents in each electoral district who left their home in the days following an alert. of an impending hurricane.
They compared evacuation rates before the Rush Limbaugh broadcast (for Hurricane Matthew in Florida in September-October 2016 and Hurricane Harvey in Texas in August 2017) and after (for Hurricane Irma in Florida ). They also compared the evacuation rate in the electoral districts that voted for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016 for each of these hurricanes.
