The Pervasion of Online Misinformation in the Age of Social Media

Marcus Pruitt
Jul 8
8 min read

We live in an era where misinformation spreads on social media mostly unchecked, without any meaningful safeguards. From soft TikTok rumors about celebrities to policy-shaping misinformation surrounding immigrants and other marginalized groups, this misinformation has a significant impact on our digital and physical landscapes.

According to a study published by the National Library of Medicine, “modern technology generates unprecedented quantities of misinformation. This exacerbates its potential to cause harm both on the individual and the societal level.”

The Misinformation Crisis Explained

Misinformation and falsehoods have always been present in the media landscape, but the advent of social media and its subsequent integration into our everyday lives have helped exacerbate the issue. And with the lack of effective safeguards to combat and prevent misinformation before it spreads, we risk being informed about the world through stories that are, oftentimes, completely false or misrepresented.

Take the rumor about the popular Mexican-inspired fast food chain, Chipotle Mexican Grill, going bankrupt in early 2025. The rumor began swirling around on social media when the news outlet Unión Rayo reported the closure of Farmesa Fresh Eatery, a Chipotle spin-off restaurant, on March 20, 2025. The story featured an image of the Chipotle logo when first published, causing mass confusion about the operation status of the fast-food mega-giant.

On platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X, customers broke out into panic over the apparent bankruptcy of the chain. TikToker @damnhowyoufoundme expressed profound disbelief in a video about the closure, asking “where else am I supposed to go?!” and talking about how “I will chain myself to them doors, and I’m not playing!” Fellow TikToker @bigdawgdani_ also took to the platform to show her receipts from the store, saying “how chipotle going bankrupt but i’m there every 2 days.” X user @KY0RBY even posted a reaction video of an old man screaming in disbelief with the caption “CHIPOTLE GOING BANKRUPT?!??!” All within three days of the initial story’s print. The posts have since received 1.1 million, 26.3k, and 3,875 views, respectively.

The case was disproven within a week of the story’s break, but its virality and people’s willingness to believe it showed how quickly misinformation, at the very least, can spread, and in worse cases, become fact. In larger, more charged cases, this spread of misinformation can shake up how we view inter-relational conflicts, groups we aren’t a part of, and the state of the world we live in.

Take the online manosphere space, for example. According to UN Women, the manosphere is “a loose network of communities that claim to address men’s struggles - dating, fitness or fatherhood, for example - but often promote harmful advice and attitudes.” In the manosphere, harmful advice and attitudes are typically delivered through a social media rabbit hole filled with videos that promote suspicions of infidelity and a lack of trust, among other harmful beliefs.

The videos also tend to be chock-full of misinformation.

Look at some of the manosphere (and manosphere-adjacent) content on Instagram and TikTok, where some users post presumptuous hypotheticals about how their partners are being unfaithful. These posts typically insinuate that women can’t be trusted around any man who isn’t their partner, that there are no “real men,” and that relationships require stringent rules and regulations to thrive. Although these experiences are extremely case-specific and aren’t indicative of group behaviors, the sheer volume of posts promoting them is enough to make them seem true to users.

This is due to something called the illusory truth effect, which Psychology Today defines as “the tendency for any statement that is repeated frequently, whether it is true or not, whether it is even plausible or not, to acquire the ring of truth.”

In the context of relationship content, this means repeated exposure to the aforementioned genre of posts can cause one to gradually believe them to be true. And with how easy it is to broadcast your beliefs online, what these posts insinuate can quickly become a pseudo-truth as more and more people amplify their messages, no matter their validity. This same formula can be applied to a host of other beliefs and behaviors, too, from politics to social relations and cultural understanding.

On a grander scale, we can see it influencing things like immigration policy and public opinion, with many right-wing politicians spreading false information about groups that they claim to be violent and unlawful, like protestors and undocumented immigrants, then often using it as a justification to crack down on those groups.

But how? How is it that things that are false and relatively easy to disprove are so quickly shaping the facts we live by?

How Misinformation Spreads

While the illusory truth effect helps sell misinformation as fact, other factors help solidify it as such. You’re more likely to believe misinformation if it:

Emotionally charges you.
Targets someone or something you don’t like.
Comes from a source you align with or believe to be credible.

Take the false report of a Venezuelan migrant takeover in Chicago. Back in September 2024, a 911 call was made about a group of 32 armed Venezuelans who reportedly took over an apartment building in the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood. Following the call, false claims of the takeover began to spread online (even being circulated by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk), accompanied by a video of a fleet of police vans posted underneath the L tracks and audio from the police scanner the night of the call.

These claims were met with comments like “This is only the beginning. Truly terrifying times we live in,” “I think they want race wars. Lockdowns incoming. Helps to fortify the election,” and “Kamala’s America. They can cross the border, arm themselves and the police aren’t even equipped to fight back because they’re hamstrung” in online right-wing spaces. Spaces where migrants aren’t particularly well-liked, to say the least.

And, as stated earlier, the takeover wasn’t real.

It was quickly debunked after seeing virality, with Block Club Chicago reporting that when responding to the 911 call, officers found no evidence of 32 armed Venezuelans. But, already having been reported on by right-leaning outlets like Right Journalism, Libs of TikTok, and Alabama Gazette, the claim had spread considerably. With how fast information travels on the internet, claims like these often catch wind quickly, and the lack of checks and balances only helps contribute to our increasing belief in misinformation.

You can also see it in the way Sean “Diddy” Combs’ federal trial was covered online, or through the optics of President Donald Trump’s 2025 migrant crackdown. In the case of the crackdown, ICE raids on communities and arrests of legal and illegal U.S. citizens at warehouses, clothing manufacturers, and Home Depot parking lots have been spun as arrests of MS-13 gang members and violent criminals to maintain the guise of “law and order.” This narrative serves not only as a false justification but also as an inspiration for hatred and intolerance towards immigrants, as they tend to be depicted as heartless, bloodthirsty gang members.

In the case of the Diddy trial, false celebrity appearances and hearsay about the happenings in the courtroom created a dropoff in terms of what people believe and what’s actually true. TV Host and Journalist Mona Kosar Abdi, who covered the trial extensively from inside the courtroom, had to clear up some of the misinformation that had been spreading on social media. The misinformation ranged from rumors about an arrest warrant for Ellen DeGeneres for being involved with Diddy to a claim that Diddy’s mother was “sprinkling little Diddies over the cheese,” which Abdi traced back to a YouTube channel that regularly posts AI-generated stories and an AI-narrated TikTok story without any sources, respectively.

The emotionally charged and focusing on a disliked figure elements that qualify something as misinformation were inherent here, as Diddy was on trial for federal sex and racketeering charges (which most find reprehensible). If that wasn’t enough, these Al-generated stories are often framed with newspeak and graphics, narrowly avoiding pinpointing their word as fact through words like “reported” and “allegedly” whilst pairing orderly narration with false quotes, graphics, and information, making them seem like a credible source.

While the misinformation in the Diddy case primarily consisted of information surrounding Diddy’s past, the misinformation surrounding immigrants has evidently led to real consequences in the present, from the alleged torture claims by immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported and accused of being an MS-13 member following debates about images of his hand tattoos and a Chicago Bulls hat being gang-related, to Trump going on national television and spreading the claim that immigrants were eating dogs.

As evidenced by the cases listed above, once certain criteria are reached, misinformation can easily seem believable. With the hyper-connectivity of the internet, this belief can become widespread overnight, blurring the lines of what we think to be true and what the actual facts are.

So if it’s that easy for misinformation to spread, how exactly do we change our predicament before we don’t know what’s true?

How to Spot and Avoid Misinformation

Start by verifying the authenticity of the information you consume online, especially if it fits the criteria for misinformation. Psychology Today says to “automatically consider and investigate alternative possibilities about any claims you hear, particularly those that align with your views and feelings on the topic.”

On top of that, they suggest being wary of repetitive claims that favor positions of groups you identify with until verifying the facts, avoiding automatic acceptance of compelling information unless you have vetted data to support their truth, and not being afraid to question the info you get from others. Specifically, ask for a source for the information.

For example, if you’re scrolling through TikTok and come across a post that claims your celebrity was arrested for suspicions of being connected to an overseas embezzlement crime or scam with a Norwegian prince, check who posted it, look the story up online, and see if any credible news outlets with reputations for consistently reporting truth and facts backed up by multiple sources reported on it. It’s as quick as two Google searches, and it can save you a lot of headache if you find out the story was false.

On top of practicing this form of information consciousness, it’s important to take note of the accounts spreading misinformation so we can ensure that we maintain these truths. In an ideal world, misinformative AI-generated content would be properly regulated and sufficiently notify the audience of its artificial origin (whether it be via labels or audio messages) to make its falsehoods apparent, but with the current direction of AI growth, the most we can do is make ourselves aware. Whether it’s by physically taking a note of the accounts spreading information, blocking them, or making posts bringing attention to them is up to you, but at the very least, you should try to find a way to make them known. That way, you’ll be less likely to be caught off guard or led to believe in falsehoods.

If you already practice information consciousness and take notes of where you find rampant misinformation, spread the word on how you do so and encourage others to do the same. If we all stand by without speaking up, we can’t expect to see change. But if we help educate our communities on how misinformation spreads and how to combat it, we can help maintain definitive truths.

Sources (In Order)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/high-octane-women/202312/how-to-combat-our-susceptibility-to-misinformation/amp

The Pervasion of Online Misinformation in the Age of Social Media

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