Hurricane Helene brews up storm of online falsehoods and threats

The document analyzes how conspiracy groups and extremist actors exploited the aftermath of Hurricane Helene to spread falsehoods about FEMA, target public officials with antisemitic abuse, and incite violence. It highlights the convergence of climate denialism, election conspiracies, and hate speech, while criticizing the failure of X's moderation and Community Notes to curb the spread of harmful content.

• Misinformation regarding Hurricane Helene spread rapidly on X, with 33 posts containing claims debunked by the US government and the White House accumulating over 160 million views by October 7, 2024.
• A significant portion of the misinformation on X included overt antisemitism, with 30% of analyzed posts targeting public officials such as the Mayor of Asheville and the FEMA Director of Public Affairs, totaling 17.1 million views.
• False narratives about FEMA's aid processes led to credible threats of violence, including calls for militias to confront the agency and threats to shoot emergency responders.
• There is a documented crossover between networks promoting climate denialism and those spreading other extremist conspiracies, including anti-migrant narratives, electoral fraud claims, and antisemitism.
• Widespread falsehoods claimed that FEMA aid is a loan allowing the government to seize private property, despite FEMA's official statement that it cannot seize land or property.
• US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene promoted the false claim that Democrats can control the weather, a post that received over 41.5 million views.
• The document identifies a failure in X's moderation systems, noting that most high-traction false narratives lacked Community Notes and that the platform lacks policies to remove false content causing imminent real-world harm during crises.

APA

Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2024). Hurricane Helene brews up storm of online falsehoods and threats. https://www.isdglobal.org/digital-dispatch/hurricane-helene-brews-up-storm-of-online-falsehoods-and-threats/

Chicago

Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Hurricane Helene brews up storm of online falsehoods and threats. 2024. https://www.isdglobal.org/digital-dispatch/hurricane-helene-brews-up-storm-of-online-falsehoods-and-threats/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Institute for Strategic Dialogue |title=Hurricane Helene brews up storm of online falsehoods and threats |date=8 October 2024 |url=https://www.isdglobal.org/digital-dispatch/hurricane-helene-brews-up-storm-of-online-falsehoods-and-threats/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{instituteforstrategicdialogue2024hurricane, author = {{Institute for Strategic Dialogue}}, title = {{Hurricane Helene brews up storm of online falsehoods and threats}}, institution = {Institute for Strategic Dialogue}, year = {2024}, month = oct, url = {https://www.isdglobal.org/digital-dispatch/hurricane-helene-brews-up-storm-of-online-falsehoods-and-threats/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }