Maintenance in progress

an analysis found that during wildfires and heatwaves, online influencers, partisan outlets and political figures repeat false claims about the causes of the events, and platforms do not slow the spread. the structural detail is the displacement: emergency information — evacuation routes, heat warnings — competes for attention with the recycled falsehoods and loses. the same claims reappear event after event rather than being invented fresh, which suggests a stock of reusable narrative rather than a reaction to any particular fire.

media-monitoring analysis, western outlets