On August 25th, 2014, a 9 year old girl accidentally shot and killed her gun instructor while learning how to fire an Uzi.  It sounds outrageous enough to be a hoax–an article from the Onion–but various high profile news media outlets confirm the tragic shooting, which captures international attention for days following the incident.

Investigating this story using the Trails system reveals what we would expect to see from a true story: dozens of verified accounts tweeting about it, receiving hundreds of retweets.  However, we also find a persistent though low profile attempt on Twitter to disprove this story.  In this post, we study the emergence of a spam-like conspiracy theory surrounding the accidental shooting.

Explore this story on TwitterTrails, or read on for our observations. Continue reading Girl Shoots Gun Instructor →