As policy experts engage in a nuanced discussion about the best practices for instruction when the new school year starts, the all-out push from President Donald Trump and his administration for in-person learning -- regardless of safety concerns due to the coronavirus pandemic -- dominates the conversation about school reopenings in the right-wing Facebook ecosystem.
Media Matters analyzed over 420 Facebook posts about school reopenings during the coronavirus pandemic from right-leaning Facebook pages between 4 p.m. EDT on July 8 and 4 p.m. EDT on July 15 in order to understand the narratives currently being spread among the right-wing Facebook ecosystem. We found that posts from these pages earned a total of over 2.4 million interactions (reactions, comments, shares) on Facebook and averaged approximately 5,700 interactions per post.
On January 31, the federal government declared COVID-19 a public health emergency; nearly six months later, at least 137,000 Americans have died and cases continue to surge in parts of the country. Trump’s response to the pandemic is often called a failure, from his early efforts to downplay the virus to his promotion of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential miracle cure, his failure to adequately ramp up testing, his resistance to wearing a mask, and his sidelining of public health experts.
Amid these failures and surging cases, Trump is insisting that schools conduct in-person learning when instruction resumes after the summer break. This insistence is reportedly tied to Trump’s bid for reelection, which is seen as contingent upon the revival of the economy. Trump and his administration have even threatened to cut funding to schools that do not fully reopen or to give money to parents to seek other schooling options.
Public health and education experts are having a much more nuanced discussion as they agree that in-person classes are the preferred method of instruction but concede that in-person classes may not be safe as long as the virus’s spread is not contained in communities throughout the country. Polling suggests that parents are concerned about sending children to school and voters oppose Trump’s demand for full in-person instruction and his threat to cut funding.
In a now familiar cycle, Fox News and right-wing media are both amplifying and encouraging Trump and his administration’s push to fully reopen schools. This amplification is also occurring within the right-wing Facebook ecosystem, which plays a vital role in pushing misinformation and right-wing talking points across the platform, reaching thousands or millions of social media feeds.
Media Matters reviewed the top 10 Facebook posts about school reopenings amid the coronavirus pandemic from right-leaning pages and found that the majority of the posts amplify Trump and his administration’s calls for in-person instruction. Other top posts fearmonger about public schools and their teachers, calling teachers “left-wing political machines” and criticizing experts and the media.
Notably, the right-wing Facebook ecosystem also uses networks of Facebook pages to further amplify talking points and narratives. We found that one of the top 10 posts was shared numerous times among a network of accounts that promote articles from the right-wing website the Western Journal. The article in the post, which earned nearly 120,000 interactions on Facebook, was posted at least 22 times by pages affiliated with the Western Journal.
