Using Crowdtangle, Media Matters compiled a list of 6,081 posts created by Trump from January 1, 2020, to January 6, 2021, when Facebook suspended his account. We then compiled posts that were related to COVID-19, the presidential election, or Trump’s critics.
The resulting lists included 607 posts with COVID-19 related keywords, 1,045 posts with keywords related to the election, and 1,597 posts with harmful or dehumanizing rhetoric.
Three researchers independently coded each post to determine whether: 1) Facebook put a label on the post, 2) the post qualified as an incitement of violence, and 3) the post's main narrative was actually about COVID-19, the election, or contained harmful rhetoric directed at his critics.
We reviewed each post individually, and each post was given a final code if two of the three researchers independently awarded it the same code. The posts containing keywords from multiple categories were given multiple codes.
We searched for the following keywords in the post’s message, description, or image text to determine if it contained COVID-19 misinformation or talking points: “cases,” “China plague,” “China virus,” “China's fault,” “chinavirus,” “chloroquine,” “corona,” “coronavirus,” “COVID-19,” “COVID,” “cure cannot be worse,” “death rate,” “deaths,” “Democrat mayor,” “Democratic governor,” “face mask,” “Fauci,” “fault of China,” “front line workers,” “frontline workers,” “hydroxychloroquine,” “hydroxyzine,” “immune,” “infection rate,” “infection,” “it was China,” “kung flu,” “liberate,” “lockdown,” “lockdowns,” “more testing,” “mortality,” “Operation Warp Speed,” “operation warpspeed,” “Plaquenil,” “shut down,” “shutdown,” “shutdowns,” “stock pile,” “stockpile,” “swine flu,” “test,” “tested,” “testing,” “tests,” “the virus,” “therapeutics,” “vaccine,” “vaccines,” “ventilator,” “ventilators,” “virus,” “W.H.O.,” “World Health Organization,” or “Wuhan”.
We searched for the following keywords in the post’s message, description, or image text to determine if it contained election misinformation or talking points: “biggest scam,” “certification,” “certify,” “certifying,” “chosen electors,” “corrupt,” “corruption,” “count,” “decertification,” “decertify,” “decertifying,” “democratic process,” “Dominion,” “election fraud,” “election victory,” “election,” “electoral college,” “found ballots,” “fraud,” “fraudulently,” “Giuliani,” “Hawley,” “Jan 6,” “Jan 6th,” “Jan. 6,” “Jan. 6th,” “January 6,” “January 6th,” “January sixth,” “landslide,” “protect,” “recount,” “save America,” “signature verification,” “stolen election,” “Stop the Steal,” “StoptheSteal,” “swing states,” “vote dump,” “vote tabulation,” “voter dump,” “voter fraud,” “voter tabulation,” or “surrender caucus.”
We searched for the following keywords in the post’s message, description, or image text to determine if it contained harmful or dehumanizing rhetoric: “agitator,” “agitators,” “anarchist,” “anarchists,” “anarchy,” “anti-police,” “antifa,” “arson,” “arsonist,” “arsonists,” “Black Lives Matter,” “BLM protester,” “BLM protesters,” “BLM protestor,” “BLM protestors,” “BLM,” “burning our cities,” “chaos,” “church on fire,” “crazies,” “crazy,” “crime,” “defund the police,” “Democrat cities,” “Democrat city,” “Democrat run cities,” “Democratic cities,” “Democratic city,” “destroy our country,” “domestic terrorism,” “domestic terrorists,” “extremist,” “extremists,” “fake news,” “far-left,” “flag-burner,” “flag-burning,” “friendly protesters,” “friendly protestors,” “held responsible,” “hold them responsible,” “lamestream media,” “law & order,” “law and order,” “law enforcement,” “lawlessness,” “left-wing,” “liberal cities,” “liberal city,” “liberate,” “loot,” “looter,” “looters,” “looting,” “lowlifes,” “national guard,” “pathetic,” “peaceful protesters,” “peaceful protestors,” “protect,” “puppet,” “puppets,” “radical left,” “radical leftist,” “radical leftists,” “riot,” “rioter,” “rioters,” “scum,” “shooting,” “sleepy Joe,” “terrorist organization,” “terrorists,” “thug,” “thugs,” or “violent groups.”
The final lists included 516 posts with the COVID-19 related keywords, 363 posts with keywords related to the election, and 683 posts with harmful or dehumanizing rhetoric. Overall, 1,443 posts contained COVID-19 keywords, election-related keywords, and/or harmful rhetoric.
