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Anna Clarkson
Dr. Stansberry
COM 460A
5 April 2018

Never Again: A Social Media Movement and its Hoaxes in the Digital Age

Introduction

On February 14, 2018, Valentine’s Day, a former student entered Marjory Stoneman

Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and opened fire, killing 14 students and three staff

members. One of the survivors is Emma González, an 18-year-old senior. She quickly became

a face of the student-led response that morphed into the Never Again MSD advocacy group and

the March for Our Lives demonstration. In March, she and other survivors were featured on

Teen Vogue’s digital cover (the magazine is digital-only as of November 2017). An

accompanying video showed González ripping a gun-target poster. An unknown individual took

that video and doctored it into a GIF that showed her ripping the United States Constitution.

While it is unclear exactly where and from whom the image originated, it is thought to

have come from 4chan, described by New York magazine’s news blog Daily Intelligencer as an

“infamous troll haven”. According to a BuzzFeed News article about hoaxes surrounding the

Parkland shooting and its survivors, the GIF was first tweeted by Gab, a social network popular

with white nationalists and the alt-right, on March 24. Four hours after they posted the doctored

GIF, and 15 minutes after it was debunked by Don Moynihan, a University of Wisconsin-

Madison professor, Gab followed up with a tweet that read:

Spread and Reaction of the GIF

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Popular right-wing figures shared the GIF of González ripping the Constitution, and it

quickly spread on Twitter and other social medias. González herself has only been using Twitter

since shortly after the shooting, but already has 1.55 million followers (as of April 4, 2018).

Besides showing her ripping the Constitution, the doctored image made her under-eyes appear

darker. The actor Adam Baldwin tweeted the fake image, and later defended it as “political

satire”. Jesse Hughes, the frontman of the band Eagles of Death Metal (the band that was

performing at The Bataclan in Paris when it was attacked by terrorists in November 2015),

posted the image to his Instagram, calling González "the awful face of treason" and a "survivor

of nothing”. He later deleted it, along with four other posts criticizing the March for Our Lives

protests. The deleted posts were followed up a few days later by an apology video.

In debunking the fake GIF, Moynihan tweeted out both the fake and real ones side-by-

side on March 24. In a follow-up tweet, Moynihan said it is possible that the account he saw the

image on might have been a Russian bot - the account was later suspended. Phillip Picardi, the

Chief Content Officer of Teen Vogue, also tweeted the real and fake images side-by-side. He

followed up with a series of tweets that read, in part (the images have been removed):

Teen Vogue’s Executive Editor, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, also tweeted out both images. It does

not appear that González ever directly addressed the issue, nor does it appear that it impacted

her reputation, at least with those familiar with the movement. It was quickly debunked; many
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people only saw the doctored image when it was coupled with the real one. As the image was

spread around the same day as the March for Our Lives, it is hard to assign any impact on her

social media following to the image itself, as it would have grown that day anyways - especially

due to the amount of press coverage her speech at the march in Washington got.

Looking at the Twitter response beyond the Teen Vogue executives, much of it is about

how the image is fake, and criticizes those who created and spread it. The controversy was not

as covered by the mainstream media as it was on social media. Using the top 15 most trusted

news outlets, as ranked by Business Insider in 2017, six mentioned the image (in a headline)

and eight did not (Google News was one of the top 15, but was not counted as it is an

aggregator and does not publish original content). Of the eight, two were broadcast news

networks (NBC and CBS) that had articles on local affiliate websites, but not their main page.

Another outlet, the BBC, mentioned the image in an article, but it was not the main focus. One

of them, the Wall Street Journal, is business-focused, so the controversy would not fall into their

normal coverage sphere.

#NeverAgain Movement

By using social media, the Parkland students have been able to craft and spread their

message. They give interviews to various news outlets, planning it out initially from one of the

leader’s living rooms. According to a New Yorker feature, the group and movement was started

primarily by Cameron Kasky, who started by posting on Facebook after the shooting, which led

to an op-ed on CNN’s website, which in turn led to TV interviews. That night, he and friends got

together at his house and began planning a movement. They came up with #NeverAgain and

launched a Facebook page in the late hours of February 14. They created social media profiles

and refined their message. Never Again MSD was officially launched the following day.

Jaclyn Corin, a junior at MSD, began pleading on social media the day after the shooting

for people to contact their representatives. She was put in touch with a Florida congresswoman
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and eventually organized the trip to Tallahassee where the students met with lawmakers. Corin

and Kasky merged their efforts the day after the shooting, and other students joined in - David

Hogg, Sarah Chadwick, and Emma González are among the most-recognized. All three had

gone viral because of their action after the shooting - Hogg for a passionate TV interview

demanding that elected officials do something, Chadwick for a tweet she sent to President

Trump saying she did not want his condolences, and González for her “We call B.S.” speech.

Two days later, the March for Our Lives was being planned, along with a rally - and

meetings with lawmakers - in Tallahassee, Florida’s capital. By the weekend, multiple MSD

students had become faces of the movement, a combination of their appearances on TV - both

in the form of interviews and rallys - and their social media presence and savvy. Members of

Never Again spread out to Washington, D.C., New York City, and Parkland to speak with media

and attend funerals.

Growing up seeing school shootings (and other mass shootings) being covered in the

news, the MSD students understood that they had to make an active effort to keep their stories

in the news; to not let them fade and the next news cycle kick in. Unlike victims of previous

school shootings, like the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, MSD

students are able to communicate their beliefs and turn them into action. Darrell Miller, a Duke

University law professor, spoke to CNBC and said the difference between Parkland and

previous shootings "is that the survivors today are kids who have grown up in a world saturated

with media and the internet … they know how the media can coordinate like-minded individuals

to make things happen”. The members of Never Again MSD have refenced themselves as

members of the “mass-shooting generation”; they have grown up surrounded by news coverage

of various mass shootings, especially ones at schools. They have grown up doing active

shooter drills in addition to fire drills.

Some of the Never Again MSD members were featured on a March 2018 cover of Time

magazine, and the feature article noted that, “They’re young enough to be victimized by a
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school shooting, but old enough to shape the aftermath. Like many teenagers, they’re at a

peculiar stage in their lives where they feel at once vulnerable and invincible, highly social yet

impervious to the etiquette expected from adults”. The students do not have the lobbying firms

or major donors threatening to cut funding if they do or not follow a certain agenda.

They have also turned considerable attention towards the midterms in November 2018,

as they realize the unlikelihood of gun control measures being passed by a GOP-controlled

Congress; one of the main features of the March for Our Lives was registering voters. The

students are not just calling for gun control writ large, but for specific measures, like

comprehensive background checks and a ban on assault weapons (like the AR-15 that was

used in the Parkland shooting). The students have already had success at home - in March,

less than a month after the shooting, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature passed various

gun violence prevention measures, including raising the minimum age for all gun purchases to

21. The Washington Post called it a “stunning” victory over the NRA.

The Parkland students, those involved in Never Again and those not, have stayed in the

news cycles, despite the fact that it has been almost two months since the shooting. One of the

recent headlines involved Fox News personality Laura Ingraham, who criticized Parkland

student and Never Again MSD leader David Hogg for not getting into some of the colleges that

he applied to. The internet, including Twitter, quickly came to Hogg’s defense. He called for his

followers to boycott her advertisers, leading to many of the advertisers pulling their ads. She

announced on March 30 that she would be taking a break from hosting.

Research and Statistics

When looking at gun control statistics, there are no official government figures on the

causes of mass shootings, shootings in general, or what can be done to prevent them. The FBI

releases statistics every year that include information on gun crimes (like the number of

homicides), but they rely on law enforcement agencies to provide the data, and it is not in real-
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time. In 1996, with the Dickey Amendment, Congress banned the Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention from performing any research on gun violence as a public health dilemma, or

that could appear to advocate for gun control. The recent omnibus spending bill, passed in

March 2018, included language that allows the CDC to perform research on the causes of gun

violence, but did not include any funding. Instead, nonprofit organizations and educational

institutions perform their own research.

The major nonprofit organizations are Everytown for Gun Safety, the Giffords Law

Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the Brady Campaign, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and

the Violence Prevention Center. Everytown for Gun Safety conducts research through the

Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. Everytown was formed in 2014 from the combination

of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America - the latter

of which was formed in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. Everytown has a feature

on their website called “Gun Violence by the Numbers” that highlights gun statistics. Clicking on

each statistic jumps you to another place on the page, where they say where the data came

from and links to the source.

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The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence is affiliated with Gabby Giffords, the

Arizona Congresswoman who was shot in Tucson in 2011. Their website has a compilation of

outside research, pointing out statistics like in 2012, background checks blocked over 192,000

people from getting access to firearms, or that Missouri repealing their background check

requirement led to an increase of 16.1% in firearm suicide.

The Brady Campaign, re-named (from National Council to Control Handguns and later

Handgun Control, Inc.) after James Brady, President Reagan’s press secretary who was

wounded and permanently disabled during Reagan’s 1981 assassination attempt. Their website

has a page of “Key Gun Violence Statistics”, including that 96 people die every day from gun

violence, and 1 in 5 guns are sold without a background check.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, founded in 1974, is one of the oldest gun violence-

related organizations; it is a nonprofit advocating for the prevention of gun violence. Its sister

organization is the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. EFSGV’s website has fact sheets,

pointing out statistics like in 2016 over 14,000 Americans died via firearm homicide, and 85% of

suicide attempts via firearm are fatal.

On its face, it is harder to find legitimate organizations doing gun rights research than it

is for gun control research. Gun rights research is primarily done by the lobbying arm of the

National Rifle Association, the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. The NRA does not have a

clear page on their website for research or statistics, nor does the NRA-ILA. The latter has

posted responses to research by gun control groups like the Violence Policy Center for skewed

presentation of data, providing their own “honest axis”. Their website does not have research as

readily available, and under the tag “NRA survey” the most recent is from 2013.

A comparison of a Gallup poll from November 2012 to an NRA member poll from

January 2013 highlight the differences in results depending on what organization is doing the

polling. The NRA said they conducted the survey to “rebut bogus surveys by pollsters on the

payroll of antigun groups”. Their findings were that 89% opposed banning semi-automatic guns.
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In contrast, the Gallup poll found that 60% would vote for a law that would reinstate the Federal

Assault Weapons Ban.

A Fox News poll of registered voters from late March 2018 is seen below and compared

to their surveys from March and January 2013.

March 2018 March 2013 January 2013

Favor universal background checks 91% 85% 91%

Favor requiring mental health checks 84% 72% 83%

Favor raising the legal age to buy to 21 72% N/A N/A

Favor putting armed guards in schools 69% 51% 60%

Favor a ban on assault weapons 60% 51% 54%

Favor arming teachers, school 37% 42% N/A

officials

Views of the NRA Favorable: 49% N/A Favorable: 56%

Unfavorable: 45% Unfavorable: 33%

It is of note that January 2013 was a month after the Newtown shooting, where 20 kids and six

staff were killed. Views of the NRA have gone down, although the amount is not considerable.

With the exception of arming teachers and school officials, all of the questions saw an increase

in favorability (the question about raising the legal age was not asked in 2013). While Fox News

is generally seen as a conservative-leaning news outlet, this survey appears to be in line with

the general public views found through nonpartisan survey outlets like Gallup.

A top Google result when searching for gun rights statistics is americangunfacts.com,

which is headlined as “A factual look at Guns in America”. It presents statistics meant to favor

gun rights advocates, such as “Every year, guns are used over 80x more often to protect a life

than to take one!” and making a correlation between gun ownership rate (it ranks the United

States with the highest) and intentional homicide rate (it ranks the U.S. as much lower than the

top countries), insinuating that the more guns there are, the less crime there is. They have
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sources at the bottom, but for many - like the first mentioned - they used two different sources to

draw one conclusion.

Another feature on the page compares the United Kingdom to the United States,

implying that the U.K. is

much more dangerous.

However, the sources they

use are based on the U.K.’s

Office for National Statistics

definition of violent crime -

“crimes against the

person”. This includes

“simple assaults, all robberies, and all ‘sexual offenses’”. In the U.S., the FBI defines violent

crime is “murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated

assault”. When PolitiFact compared the two countries using three crime categories for the U.K.

and the FBI definition for the U.S., the U.S. was still more violent, but not by a significant

amount. These crimes do not all involve firearms, despite the website trying to paint the fact that

the U.K. has banned firearms as being the reason for them being more dangerous.

The Gun Violence Archive presents up-to-date gun statistics on their homepage,

breaking down incidents by who was involved and what they were (i.e., mass shooting,

domestic violence). They have a page with a list of mass shootings by year. On their page for

2018, there are 57 results. However, using the definition established by Congress in 2012

following the Sandy Hook shooting - three or more killed - only nine qualify. The FBI does not

have a definition for mass shootings, so it is an oft-debated topic (although in the 1980s they

defined “mass murder” as four or more killed, according to the Washington Post). Six of the

2018 mass shootings would qualify under this definition. The Gun Violence Archive itself defines
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a mass shooting as four or more killed or injured, further broadening the definition. This

definition is used by the New York Times and the Washington Post, according to the latter.

Google Trends

Google Trends offers the ability to see the popularity of a search term over a specified

period of time. Because the use or search of #NeverAgain (or Never Again) could relate to

anything about the Parkland students, Emma González was examined instead. The search

filters were worldwide, February 14-April 4, and web search. There was no noticeable interest

until February 17 and 18, the former being the day she gave her now-famous “We call B.S.”

speech at a gun control rally three days after the shooting. Interest then fluctuated until March

24, when the Teen Vogue article came out, accompanied by the GIF that was doctored and

spread around the internet. However, it is hard to

quantify what the exact reason for this spike was,

as March 24 was also the day of the March for Our

Lives, where González gave another now-famous

speech that included silence that brought the

speech time to the exact length of the shooting.

Some social media users were claiming that her

silence alone was six minutes, leading her to tweet what is seen on the right.

The regions with the most interest were the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada,

Australia, and Ireland. When broken down into subregions, the states with the highest interest

were Vermont, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts. Florida was

number 6, with 61% of the interest produced by D.C., of note given the fact that the shooting

took place in Florida. This could also be due to the fact that the population of the states ahead

of Florida are far less - according to Google, “A higher value means a higher proportion of all

queries, not a higher absolute query count. So a tiny country where 80% of the queries are for
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‘bananas’ will get twice the score of a giant country where only 40% of the queries are for

‘bananas’”. According to the U.S. Census, Vermont and D.C. both have populations below

700,000, while Florida’s population is almost 21 million.

Going back to the worldwide view, the related topics, in order of popularity (sorted by

“Rising”, which is the biggest increases since the previous time period), are ‘Speech - Topic’,

‘Bullying - Topic’, ‘Enma González Bermello - Spanish Politician’, ‘March - Month, and Shooting

- Topic’. ‘Constitution - Topic’ ranked at number 18 when sorted by Rising and 19 when sorted

by Top. People were searching for Emma González wanting information about her speech, what

happened in Parkland, the event in D.C., and, presumably, Cuba due to the Cuban flag patch

she wore.

This patch caused controversy as some called her a “communist” (including Iowa

Representative Steve King, who posted a meme to his Facebook page that implied she

supported Fidel Castro) - in reality, she was honoring her father and grandfather, the former of

whom emigrated from Cuba in 1968. The bullying topic likely has to do with the rumors that

have sparked in the month of April that González admitted to bullying the Parkland shooter.

Although quickly debunked, this rumor, not unlike the Teen Vogue image, was widespread

among the alt-right online. Three of the top five related queries dealt directly with Parkland.

They were: ‘emma gonzalez speech’, ‘emma gonzalez parkland’, ‘emma parkland’, ‘parkland’,
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and emma gonzalez march for our lives’. The Constitution did not appear in the rankings when

sorting by Top or Rising.

When looking at the popularity of ‘Emma González’ as a news search (i.e., Google

News) over the same period, the results ebb and flow much more. Like with the web search,

there is no noticeable interest until February 17 and 18, likely for the same reasons; she was not

well-known as a survivor of the Parkland shooting, nor as a member of Never Again MSD, until

that first speech. For the next five weeks, interest was up and down; on some days, the term

was at or near 25, which means it was a quarter as popular as it was at its peak - which came

on March 24 and 25 (it was half as popular on February 18). This was likely a combination of

people seeking information about the Teen Vogue GIF and the March for Our Lives.

Interestingly, in contrast with the web search, the region with the highest interest for

news search was Belgium, followed by the United States, Singapore, Morocco, and Switzerland.

As mentioned before, this could be due to the population of Belgium being much lower than the

United States (11.35 million, according to the World Bank). The subregions with the highest

interest were Vermont, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New York; a deeper dive into this

and what people in these locations are searching would be interesting, given that they are not

where the shooting took place.

The related topics (worldwide), in order, were ‘Bullying - Topic’, ‘Twitter - Social

networking service’, ‘Enma González Bermello - Spanish Politician’, and ‘Florida - U.S. State’.
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As mentioned before, the topic of bullying is likely due to the recent rumor that González

admitted to bullying the shooter. There were only four related topics, and there was not enough

data for related queries.

Next, the term ‘Emma González Constitution’ was looked at on Google Trends, from

March 23 (the day before the article came out) to April 4. The interest over time shows a clear

spike and rapid downfall of the term. March 24 was the first day with any noticeable interest,

followed by the peak on March 25. The interest was down to 6 (6% as popular) by March 28 and

has remained low since.

The related queries were ‘emma gonzalez ripping constitution’ and ‘emma gonzalez

ripping up constitution’, a clear relation to the doctored GIF. The United States showed far more

interest than others, with Canada having a score of 23 and the U.K. 4 (only three countries were

shown). The subregions with the highest interest were Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina,

Arizona, and Massachusetts; with the exception of Massachusetts, all of those states went for

Trump in 2016, although more research would be needed to make a correlation between that

and searching the image (which on its face does not mean you are spreading it). The metro

regions with the highest interest were Miami-Fort Lauderdale; Washington, D.C. (Hagerstown,

Maryland); Boston-Manchester, New Hampshire; Dallas-Fort Worth; and Atlanta. There was not

as much data available for the Emma González Constitution search, which may point to people

either using other search engines (like Twitter’s), Googling her and assuming there will be an

article without having to explicitly search for it, or they are just more prone to search for
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information on other aspects of her, like her speeches (which was evident in the related

searches and queries).

From the Google Trends data, it appears clear that the Constitution-ripping controversy

did not have a real impact on Emma González’s reputation, either negatively or positively. When

it happened, the media was so saturated with news about the March for Our Lives and her

speech, that it seemed to blow over quickly. The media (and general public, at least online)

appeared to focus more attention on her speech and the march itself than the Teen Vogue GIF.

This case also shows how quickly fake information gets shot down on the internet in the

digital age; people are constantly on Twitter and seeing a variety of information. It is often not

long before somebody with the knowledge to do so is able to verify something - or the opposite.

People were quick to defend González, knowing how the alt-right has the propensity to spread

false information and images online (which was also apparent with the meme about her Cuba

patch), and also knowing the potential consequences.

Other Parkland students have faced hoaxes of their own, the main one being that the

survivors and spearheaders of the Never Again movement are crisis actors - actors paid to go to

the scene of a tragedy and push a liberal agenda. This hoax was also spread largely by the alt-

right online. In today’s digital environment, it is important for people to have a skeptical eye for

any content that is not from reputable source; everybody needs to work together to call B.S. on

disinformation.