The AP reviewed public and private social media accounts of nearly 1,000 federal, state, and local Republican officials nationwide, many of whom have voiced support for the Jan. 6 insurrection or demanded that the 2020 presidential election be overturned, sometimes in deleted posts or now-removed online forums.
After the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, investigative reporters Garance Burke, Martha Mendoza and Juliet Linderman wanted to know if local, county and state Republican officials across the country were continuing to amplify online messages similar to those that had inspired the riot, and what they hoped to accomplish by doing so.
To find their answer, the trio turned to data journalism. When the right-wing aligned social media platform Parler was taken offline, Burke reached out to confidential sources and obtained a comprehensive Parler archive ahead of other media competitors. Then, data journalist Larry Fenn built a framework to ingest the 183 million posts and 13 million user profiles. Burke, Mendoza and Linderman turned to AP statehouse reporters for help and quickly built a spreadsheet of hundreds of names of local, county and state-level GOP officials to check against profiles on the social platforms.
Meanwhile, Burke got in touch with an artificial intelligence company that worked with AP to build an algorithm that could match those lower-level officials to Parler accounts, each hand-verified by AP reporters, allowing an unprecedented look at GOP officials’ unfiltered and archived posts on Parler.
But the team did not stop at Parler. Burke, Mendoza and Linderman mined the officials’ accounts on Gab, Telegram and other alternative platforms to which they had migrated, soon identifying a faction of lower-level Republican officials that have pushed lies, misinformation and QAnon conspiracy theories echoing those that fueled the violent U.S. Capitol siege. One recent Facebook post, for example, declared all able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 45 are part of the militia and should arm themselves.
Virginia State Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, front, attends a Senate special session in Richmond, Va., Feb. 11, 2021. Chase, who is seeking this year’s GOP nomination for Virginia governor, says it’s her right to say the November election was stolen. She attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington but says she did not go to the Capitol building. She has been censured by the Virginia Senate for an alleged “pattern of unacceptable conduct” and is suing.
AP Photo / Steve Helber
In an archived Jan. 10, 2021 post by Republican Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase on the social media platform Parler, Chase claims the text image she attached was from Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop.
Parler via AP
Londa Gatt, left, vice president of the Republican Women’s Federation of Michigan stands with others during the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol building in a photo provided to AP. Gatt says that in February the FBI knocked on her door to ask where she was on the day of the Capitol attack. She said she climbed the scaffolding outside the Capitol building “to take a picture of the whole view,” that she did nothing wrong and left the scene as things turned violent.
Photo via AP
Supporters of President Donald Trump climb the west wall of the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021, during a riot against the results of November’s election. An AP investigation found that lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election are gaining traction among local, county and state Republicans, who are using their online platforms to promote many of the same dangerous messages that led to the violent insurrection at the Capitol.
AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana
Manhattan borough GOP chairwoman Andrea Catsimatidis poses for a photo with President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani during a news conference in New York, Sept. 16, 2020. “Corporate America helped rig the election,” she retweeted after President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
AP Photo / Kathy Willens
A Feb. 2, 2021 post by Republican New Hampshire state Rep. Terry Roy on the social media platform Gab. From local commissioners to state legislators, elected and appointed officials are using the reach of their social media platforms, amplified by algorithms that boost extreme content, to influence their communities, city councils, county boards and state assemblies.
GAB VIA AP
Supporters of President Donald Trump, seeking to overturn the November election, gather during the storming of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.
AP Photo / John Minchillo
The reporters turned to experts who discussed how the messaging formed part of a broader debate over free speech online, and contextualized it to show why these elected and appointed officials’ influence matters: They recruit and promote GOP candidates to run for local office and help control the party’s messaging.
The trio reached out to many Republican officials for comment for both print and video, seeking to understand their perspective on online censorship, how they reach their constituents and whether they think their posts could incite violence. The reporters’ approach was rewarded: Some officials who were recently visited by the FBI, or who expressed sympathy toward a militia group whose members were arrested in the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, agreed to speak with AP.
As the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warn of more domestic terrorism and violent extremism, the reporters have shined a crucial light on a vocal and highly visible segment of the Republican Party. The story, which ran in English and Spanish, was widely circulated globally and across the U.S.; PBS NewsHour did a segment on the story interviewing Burke on air.
For harnessing the power of social media analysis, data science and AP’s state-level expertise in government accountability to reveal how lies and misinformation from the 2020 election have reached deep into the GOP’s state apparatus, Burke, Mendoza, Linderman and Fenn win AP’s Best of the Week award.
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