Various rumors have been spreading on social media–even Twitter, which usually moderates false claims–following the Paris attacks on November 13th, 2015.  We recently reported on Trump’s misattributed tweet earlier, and now we highlight another claim that is spreading in this emotionally charged environment: that 10,000 Syrian refugees (that’s apparently them in the image below, notably all young men) have recently arrived in New Orleans.

10,000 Syrian refugees have not arrived in New Orleans.  The image, according to snopes, was taken in Hungary in September 2015.  This claim, fueled by the emotional climate on social media due to the Paris attacks, a combination of anger, fear and increasing xenophobia, vastly inflated the reality of only two Syrian refugee families arriving in New Orleans. (Yet, the arrival has caused backlash from Louisiana republicans, including presidential candidate Bobby Jindal, adding to the momentum of false claims).  

Like the Trump tweet claim, this story has moderate spread for a false claim (as observed by TwitterTrails), and also very low skepticism.  Very little fact checking has affected the emotional spread of this claim.

If you are familiar with the Twittertrails.com system you can explore the story on TwitterTrails, or keep reading to see how strong emotions manifest in the spreading of rumors on Twitter.
http://twittertrails.wellesley.edu/~trails/stories/investigate.php?id=647751846

Specifics of Spreading

The claim that 10,000 Syrian refugees arrived in New Orleans actually started, in a different form, a few weeks before the Paris attacks.

There was a small amount of interest in two stories initially posted by The Hayride on November 2nd and 3rd.  These claims were more conservative in their claim: 10,000 refugees would possibly in the future be settled in Louisiana cities. Following the attacks in Paris, there was a spike in activity as the claim was transformed by a variety of conservative blogs; The Conservative Treehouse, The Powdered Wig Society and Top Right News were the most linked in our data.  On Twitter, the claim became that the 10,000 refugees had already arrived in New Orleans, with no screening by the Obama administration, and were an army of all male terrorists.  

There is a lack of variety in language in the data we collected, which is highlighted in the Propagation Graph below. This graph visualizes the tweets that were posted when the story broke on Twitter, gaining its first significant burst of activity.  The circles represent tweets, and tweets with near identical language are highlighted in the same color.  One tweet is highlighted below (you can explore the others in the interactive visualization on TwitterTrails)

Instead of writing original commentary on the story, people are just retweeting or pressing a share button from a blog post.  It’s a fast way to spread information without analysis or fact checking.  This “common color in propagation graph” is frequently a sign of an untrustworthy claim, all the information is originating from the same source.

But news had a better picture of truth. A Google search for “10000 syrian refugees in new orleans” brings up a variety of websites debunking the claim, including the top result: a conservative blog, The Right Scoop with a bald headline for a grounded blog post: NO, the rumor that 10,000 Syrian refugees arrived in New Orleans is NOT TRUE

And a line we, at TwitterTrails, appreciate:

“So you know that old saying, “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is?” Well there’s a corollary for the internet – if it’s really crazy and it outrages you and completely confirms your political biases, it’s probably not true either.”

When people are emotionally charged with fear and anger, their critical thinking abilities is the first victim. Truth is the next one.

Explore the claim on TwitterTrails: http://twittertrails.wellesley.edu/~trails/stories/investigate.php?id=647751846