Viral Lies: Information Disorder and the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States

Michelle Conklin-Kusel

Advisor: Douglas Eyman, PhD, Department of English

Committee Members: Sergey Samoylenko, Seth Kahn

Horizon Hall, #4225, and https://gmu.zoom.us/j/91517607806?pwd=AqZoNTLDsTdaAc7e4HXqs9Kj8LKaE5.1
March 27, 2026, 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM

Abstract:

Several members of the first Trump administration created and disseminated falsehoods and decontextualized information about the COVID-19 pandemic to hasten the end of the lockdown to bolster the president’s chances of re-election. Simultaneously, Anthony Fauci (then director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID]) was working to convince colleagues, politicians, and members of the public to rely on evidence-based science to guide their prevention, mitigation, and treatment strategies. After more than four years of a global pandemic that was exacerbated by disinformation (the intentional manufacture and dissemination of inaccurate information) and misinformation (the unwitting spread of erroneous content) (Wardle and Derakhshan 5), three consequences of the wicked problem of information disorder are evident within the public sphere: 1) Issues of public health have become overtly politicized in the US and globally, 2) faith in democratic processes and institutions is eroding in the United States, and 3) many Americans needlessly suffered and died from COVID-19 due to the overlap of these issues. The COVID-19 pandemic serves as an important site for the close examination of disinformation as a political phenomenon to identify the patterns of disinformation that emerged, highlighting the close linkages between public health and political messaging.

Because disinformation is often rooted in language use, particularly as information disorder disrupts logic and fact-based information dissemination, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) provides tools rhetoricians can employ to examine how language is used to increase and maintain power by evaluating language at a granular level. CDA tools and rhetorical theories were used to analyze the HHS emails (111 pages) as well as emails to and from Fauci (3,234 pages).  Decreasing information disorder will require the expertise of scholars in many disciplines, but rhetoricians are uniquely positioned to lead in this effort, as we possess the indispensable expertise to describe the strategies and tactics used to deceive the public and the knowledge to counter these assaults on fact-based narratives.