If you need another example of how disinformation can actually hurt people and turn an emergency into a crisis, go back to the wildfires that consumed portions of California, Oregon and Washington last September.
The fires, historic in scale, burned some 5 million acres and thousands of homes and structures. Drought-like conditions throughout the Northwest allowed them to rage, and the resulting smoke cast a pall over the entire region. Officials and emergency responders had enough on their hands without having to convince people the threat was real.
But in Oregon, the situation was made worse by a stream of disinformation â rumors, really â on social media. As the fires spread, so did false claims that they had been deliberately set by antifa, a loosely organized group of far-left activists that clashes with right-wing organizations and has been labeled by conservatives as the source of all violence and disruption.