Debunking a politically motivated rumour on Reddit: the context of the 2024 U.S. Republican presidential campaign

Rumour is a type of mis- or disinformation to which insufficient attention has been paid in information behaviour research so far. In general, rumours can be defined as “unverified information statements in circulation that arise in contexts of ambiguity, danger or potential threat” (DiFonzo and Bordia, 2007, pp. 19–20). A recent example of contexts of this kind is COVID-19 pandemic which gave rise to numerous rumours about its origin (Guo et al., 2025). One of the domains in which rumours proliferate is politics (Kwak et al., 2020). This is particularly the case in times of significant political events such as presidential elections. For example, during Barack Obama’s campaign for president in 2008, rumours were spread about that Obama is secretly Muslim (Layman et al., 2014). The assessment of the credibility of political rumours of this kind is a demanding task because falsity is not a defining characteristic of rumour (Fine, 2007, p. 6). Rumours can be true, false or something in between. Since the 1990s, professional fact-checking services such as PolitiFact and Snopes have made attempts to verify or refute political rumours (Savolainen, 2024). In addition, online discussion forums offer possibilities to debunk false political rumours (Edy and Risley-Baird, 2016). To achieve this, online communities may identify factual inaccuracies in the rumours and offer counterevidence.

The present investigation contributes to information behaviour research by examining how politically motivated false rumours are debunked in online discussion. To this end, a sample of 37 Reddit discussion threads with 1755 posts focussing on a rumour distributed during the 2024 U.S. Republican presidential campaign were analysed. An attempt was made to find out how the online participants debunked unverified statements claiming that Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio steal and eat pets. The rumour was politically motivated because it was spread to boost the Republican presidential campaign by persuading voters with a critical view on illegal migration. To this end, the Republican Vice President Nominee J.D. Vance and President Nominee Donald Trump were particularly active in distributing the “pet” rumour. The findings of the present study deepen our understanding about the informational credibility of political rumours, specify the ways in they are approached in online discussion and demonstrate how and by which criteria such rumours are debunked.

The article proceeds as follows. First, in order to create background, the concept of rumour is characterized in greater detail, followed by a review of studies on political rumours and their debunking. Thereafter, the research framework and the empirical research setting will be specified, followed by the report of the findings. The last sections discuss the research results and reflect their significance.

In general, rumours can be understood as “extra-factual sources of information in that they are either unverified or unverifiable at the time of transmission” (Greenhill and Oppenheim, 2017, p. 661). Therefore, the recipient of a rumour does not quite know whether or not to take it seriously (Michelson and Mouly, 2004, p. 191). This is because the initiation of rumour may be underpinned by some element of “truth”, no matter how obscure the evidence. As rumours are intended to influence their recipients’ attitudes and behaviour, rumours often take the form of emotionally resonant narratives (Greenhill and Oppenheim, 2017, p. 661). An effective rumour is characterized by simplicity: it uses only one central idea as a core and is thus easy to remember. Effective rumours are also vivid so that they stimulate mental pictures with strong emotional content (Becket, 1988, pp. 331–332). Early attempts to define the features of rumour include the typology developed by Knapp (1944, pp. 23–24). Pipe dreams express wishes and desires of those among whom they circulate, while bogies are derived from people’s fears and anxieties. Wedge drivers are aggression rumours motivated by hatred, and they aim at dividing people. A rumour of this type is toned with derogation, blame, or attack towards a specific target group. The claims about pet eating among Haitian immigrant communities exemplify wedge-driving rumours.

Similar to rumours in general, political rumours can incorporate both truthful and untrustworthy information. On the continuum ranging from “certain truth” to “certain falsehood”, however, political rumours tend to be towards the “certain falsehood” end of the spectrum (Mlambo and Zimunya, 2016, p. 148). In addition to the veracity of the political rumours, they vary regarding the extent to which they are benign or harmful (Schneider, 2023, pp. 185–186). Political rumours are not necessarily harmless narratives. In the worst case, hostile wedge-driving rumours can persuade neutral audiences to turn against a group of people, for example, migrants and unleash chaos in a community (Garrett, 2011; Petersen et al., 2023).

There are several cases showing how racial-, ethnic- and religion centred wedge-driving rumours can have negative political consequences. For example, in times of the US 2008 presidential election, about three in five Americans had heard the false rumour that President Obama is not a natural-born American citizen, which would render him ineligible to hold the presidency (Berinsky, 2023). A related rumour during the 2008 presidential election asserted that Barack Obama is secretly Muslim, despite news stories, fact-checking Web sites, and the words of Obama himself in televised interviews where he described his Christian faith (Hollander, 2010, p. 55). The above rumours fell on fertile ground because many Americans tend to exhibit antipathy towards cultural “out-groups” (Layman et al., 2014, p. 535). On the other hand, despite their public refutation, wedge-driving rumours tend to be durable and relatively resilient to debunking efforts. This is due to political rumours often circulating within online “echo chambers” defined by political homophily (Shin et al., 2017). That is, like-minded people continue to propagate politically motivated rumours, despite the emergence of countervailing information”.

In general, debunking refers to the act of exposing the falsehood, inaccuracy, or unreliability of widely accepted or circulated viewpoints, theories, or rumours (Zhang et al., 2024). Debunking involves providing evidence, logical reasoning, or empirical data to reveal the truth, correct misconceptions, and eliminate trust in erroneous beliefs. Debunking messages serve as persuasive information that aims to rectify misconceptions and diminish rumour credence. Paek and Hove (2019) identified three approaches to rumour debunking. Denial is simply a direct counterstatement to the original rumour without supporting evidence, whereas refutation involves countering the rumour with factual evidence. Finally, the attack approach includes responses that contain threatening information or potential punishments directed at rumourmongers. The debunking of rumours is dependent on how people judge their credibility. The extent to which a rumour is believed is dependent on argument quality, that is, the rumour recipient’s perception of the strength of the information within a rumour (Lin et al., 2022). Moreover, the rumour receiver’s perception of the rumour sender’s competence and trustworthiness affects the credibility of a political rumour (Yin et al., 2018). In addition, the evidence offered by the rumour sender influences the believability of a rumour; for example, videos can be effective in this regard (Lin et al., 2022, p. 1330).

False political rumours are often debunked by the media and professional fact-checking services such as PolitiFact and Snopes (Savolainen, 2024). In addition, online discussion forums enable the exchange of ideas and opinions, as participants evaluate rumours, persuading others to refute them (Kwak et al., 2020). For example, eyewitnesses can offer powerful counterevidence if they submit posts to online forums, drawing on their longtime observations suggesting that a political rumour is baseless (Edy and Risley-Baird, 2016, pp. 596–597). Using Reddit data from 2007 to 2015, Dang et al. (2016) examined how users respond to political rumours in social media. The study focussed on the false rumour “Obama is Muslim”, due to its persistence and popularity. The findings indicate that the online participants approached the rumour in three major ways: supporting it, refuting it, or joking about it. Users supporting the Obama rumour usually posted only short comments containing no evidence or explanation (Dang et al., 2016, pp. 781–782). In contrast, those refuting the rumour provided facts and in-depth explanations. Finally, users joking about the rumour usually made sarcastic comments to indicate that the rumour should not be taken seriously. More recently, Zhang et al. (2024) examined the persuasiveness of cognitive versus affective appeals in debunking false rumours about COVID-19. The results indicated that cognitive appeals, including argument adequacy, evidence quality, and source credibility, as well as affective appeals such as emotional arousal significantly influenced debunking message persuasiveness.

The present study examines the debunking of the politically motivated rumour which was disseminated during the 2024 U.S. Republican presidential campaign. Starting in the beginning of September 2024, claims spread online that Haitian (illegal) immigrants were stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. The claims began with a local Facebook group post asserting that a local cat had been butchered. The claim spread quickly among far-right online groups. Somewhat later, the author of the original Facebook post and the neighbour who told her the story admitted that it was based on a rumour from people with whom they had not spoken (Brewster and Howard, 2024). In addition, the pet rumour was debunked by officials and professional fact-checking services. Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck called the rumour disinformation, while Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, rebuked the rumour, saying, “This is a piece of garbage that is simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all.” He also emphasized that these (Haitian) “people are here legally” (Picciotto, 2024). Similarly, the Police in Springfield announced that there is no evidence to support the rumour (Chatelain, 2024). Snopes – a fact-checking service – analysed a video footage authentically documenting an incident in which a Haitian immigrant in Springfield ate a cat. Snopes found out that an Ohio woman who was accused of the killing and eating of the cat is not an immigrant, not Haitian and not from Springfield. Therefore, the rumour was rated as “False” (Kasprak, 2024).

Notwithstanding, the pet rumour was politicized and it was taken as an asset in the Republican presidential campaign. On 10 September 2024, Vice-Presidential Nominee J.D. Vance wrote that “in the last several weeks, my office has received many enquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbours’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumours will turn out to be false.” Despite this reservation, Vance encouraged supporters to continue posting and “keep the cat memes flowing” (Maher, 2024). The rumour was also disseminated by Donald Trump. During the Harris – Trump presidential debate on September 10, Trump claimed that “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there” (Mangan et al., 2024). Despite many news outlets debunking these claims after the debate, Vance continued to amplify them, posting multiple pieces of misleading evidence in support. In a September 15 interview, Vance again defended the claims, saying they were “the first-hand accounts of my constituents”, while also acknowledging that they were false, calling them a meme (Garrett, 2024). Despite the debunking efforts, the rumour continued to spread and led to serious consequences. Springfield City received dozens of bomb threats accompanied by anti-Haitian messages, targeting schools, hospitals, government buildings, and businesses (Taylor, 2024).

The literature review indicated that rumours represent information sources that as emotionally resonant narratives offer unverified or unverifiable statements about an issue. Hostile political rumours functions as wedge drivers which can lead to serious social consequences. To fight false political rumours, the media, professional fact-checking services and participants of online communities make attempts to debunk baseless claims of this kind. In order to examine the role of online communities in rumour debunking in greater detail, an empirical study was made by focussing on the ways in which Redditors – the registered participants of Reddit discussion threads debunked the politically motivated rumour about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets.

While developing the research framework, the findings of prior studies on rumour debunking were used, complemented by categories inductively identified from the empirical data. Guided by prior studies on the topic, the research framework of the present investigation is based on the assumption that rumour debunking occurring in online communities incorporates two major constituents. First, online participants make use of one or more approaches to rumour debunking. Second, the participants justify rumour debunking by drawing on diverse criteria.

As to the identification of approaches to rumour debunking, the findings of Paek and Hove (2019) offered a useful point of departure. They demonstrated that online participants make use of three debunking approaches: denial, refutation and attack. However, the preliminary analysis of the empirical data revealed that taken as whole, these three approaches do not provide a sufficiently nuanced picture of the debunking approaches employed by the Redditors. As explained in the findings section of the present study, the Redditors made use of seven diverse approaches to disprove rumours, including, for example, condemning rumourmongering, indicating negative consequences of rumour dissemination, and expressing emotional reactions. Nevertheless, refutation identified by Paek and Hove appeared to be a constitutive element in their judgements since the Redditors often debunked the pet rumour by simply drawing on the fact that the rumour or similar false claims were already refuted in the media, for example. In the present study, this approach to rumour debunking was named as drawing on prior refutations. Paek and Hove (2019) also identified the attack approach. In the Redditors’ debunking efforts examined in the present investigation, this requirement manifested itself in the approach named as demanding responsibility from rumourmongers. Furthermore, the findings of Dang et al. (2016) were used to identify approaches to rumour debunking. The above study found that one of the approaches is joking about the rumour. Accordingly, in the present study, this approach was named as joking about the rumour and its disseminators.

The list of approaches to rumour debunking was complemented by categories identified inductively from the empirical data. One of them is presenting personal opinion about the rumour. Redditors used this approach while they depicted their own beliefs about why the pet rumour was created and disseminated. Furthermore, the Redditors drew on moral appeals suggesting that rumourmongering is a form of blameworthy action and should therefore be disapproved in society. This approach to rumour debunking was named as condemning rumourmongering. Closely related, the Redditors critically characterized the negative consequences of rumour dissemination. This approach was named as indicating negative consequences of rumourmongering. Finally, the approach of expressing emotional reactions was identified from the empirical data. This approach incorporates the expression of negative emotions such as disgust and fear towards rumourmongers.

For the identification of criteria used in rumour debunking, a few prior investigations were particularly relevant. Zhang et al. (2024) found that the provision of evidence is a significant criterion which is used to debunk political rumours. In this regard, the counterevidence offered by local eyewitnesses can be particularly effective if they can demonstrate that the rumour is baseless (Edy and Risley-Baird, 2016). Moreover, as proposed by Lee and Kim (2022), the veracity of information and source impartiality are important criteria while debunking false rumours. This is because the extent to which a rumour is taken seriously is dependent on the extent to which a source offering information about a rumour is perceived as offering factual and unbiased information. Lin et al. (2022) showed that argument quality, that is, perceived strength of the information about the rumour and the nature of reasoning used by rumourmongers is an important criterion used in rumour debunking. As suggested by Yin et al. (2018), people also draw attention to the perceived competence of the rumourmongers, that is, their abilities to evaluate the nature of the rumour and the consequences of its dissemination. Finally, to substantiate the list of criteria used in rumour debunking, the criterion of perceived honesty of the rumour disseminator was identified inductively from the empirical data.

Drawing on the above characterizations, the research framework with an illustrative example taken from a Reddit discussion thread is presented in Figure 1. The framework specifies seven approaches to rumour debunking and six criteria used in the debunking efforts.

Figure 1 suggests rumour debunking in online discussion is initiated by the opening post submitted by Participant 1. As the example taken from a Reddit discussion thread illustrates, the opening post presents a statement about a politically motivated rumour. The discussion starts when Participant 2 reacts to the opening post by presenting his or her judgement about the rumour. To debunk the rumour, he or she can make use of one or more approaches specified in Figure 1, ranging from the drawing on prior refutations to the expressing of emotional reactions. He or she can also ground the debunking of the rumour by making use of diverse criteria such as veracity of information and perceived honesty of the rumour disseminator. The discussion goes on when other participants (3, 4, 5 and so on) submit their posts, either reacting to the judgements made by prior participants or offering their own views on the debunking of the rumour.

Drawing on the research framework presented in Figure 1, the present investigation seeks answers to the following questions.

The empirical data were gathered from Reddit–a major social media platform founded in 2005 and currently headquartered in San Francisco. Reddit consists of individual forums called subreddits, which are mostly user-created and organized by topic of discussion. Subreddits are managed by volunteer moderators who enforce rules for posting. Redditors can join a forum to participate in posting and commenting on others’ posts (Eldridge, 2025). As of October 2024, Reddit had an estimated 1.2 billion monthly active users all over the world (Kumar, 2024).

The empirical data were downloaded in the beginning of November 2024 from the subreddit r/politics (https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/about/). It was chosen because it focusses on news and discussion about U.S. politics. To obtain an overall picture of politically motivated rumours discussed in the above forum, the discussion threads dealing with rumours spread during the ongoing U.S. presidential campaigns were read tentatively. As most of the rumours discussed by Redditors concentrated on the pet eating issue, it was decided to exclude rumours related to other topics. Thereafter, using the search terms rumour AND pet eating, altogether 114 potentially relevant discussion threads were identified from the r/politics subreddit. All of them took a critical approach to the pet rumour and made attempts to refute it. Thus, these threads were contributions to the debunking of a politically motivated rumour. As the present investigation focusses on the qualitative analysis of rumour debunking, a smaller sample appeared to be sufficient for the needs of the study. Therefore, using the criterion of data saturation, it was decided to take a subsample of the discussion threads. Data saturation occurs in the gathering of empirical material at the point at which collecting any further data will not produce value-added insights about the matter under investigation (Saunders et al., 2018, p. 1895). The saturation point was reached after taking the 37 first discussion threads from the results list. At this point it became evident that the inclusion of additional threads would not essentially change the qualitative picture of the debunking of the pet rumour. The sample of 37 threads offered a rich variety of posts indicative of how and by which criteria Redditors debunked the rumour.

The 37 discussion threads were initiated in the mid of September 2024 when the pet eating rumour was made public in the media. Examples of the opening posts indicative of the topics of the discussion threads include “JD Vance spreads racist rumor that Haitian immigrants are abducting peoples’ pets and eating them” (Thread 5), “Ohio police have no credible reports’ of Haitian immigrants harming pets, contradicting JD Vance’s claim” (Thread 17), and “Trump thinks Haitians eat dogs. We don’t” (Thread 36). The 37 threads contained altogether 1775 posts from the period of 15 September - 31 October 2024. Of them, 37 were initial posts, while 1738 were responses submitted by the Redditors. Altogether 1,160 individual participants contributed to the online discussion. The most active Redditors wrote 49 posts, while the majority of the contributors, that is, 732 participants submitted 1–2 posts. This indicates that most contributors to the discussion threads were occasional participants who were not interested to dig deeper in the rumour debunking. The number of posts per discussion thread varied from 10 to 228 posts; on an average, a thread contained 48 posts. The sample of 37 threads was downloaded in a separate file and coded by making use of the categories specified in Table 1.

The coding was an iterative process in which the data were scrutinized several times by the author. The pre-defined categories specified in Table 1 were used to code all the data–while still allowing new codes to emerge. However, the content of all posts submitted by the Redditors fit into the existing categories defined in Table 1 and no new categories were needed to cover the data. The 1775 posts were assigned with altogether 2031 codes. Of them, 1,354 dealt with the approach to rumour debunking, while 677 focussed on the criteria used in debunking. A post was coded only once for a criterion category once it was identified for the first time in the post. In long posts in particular, it was not unusual that the same criterion was identified in several segments of the same post. In these cases, once a message was coded for a criterion category, other instances were simply ignored. On the other hand, a post could be assigned with several criteria indicative of the approach to debunking, for example, condemning rumourmongering and expressing emotional reactions, as well as the criteria by which the rumour was debunked, for instance, provision of evidence and the perceived honesty of the rumour disseminator. To strengthen the reliability of the coding, the initial coding was refined by repeated reading of the data. Miles and Huberman (1994, p. 65) noted that check-coding the same data is useful for the lone researcher and that code-recode consistencies should be at least 90%. To achieve this, several iterations were executed to ensure that the codes appropriately describe the data and that there are no anomalies.

In order to examine the relative share of the categories specified in Table 1, percentage distribution was calculated for individual items indicative of the approach to rumour debunking, as well as criteria used in the debunking. To this end, the number of codes assigned to a category, for example, presenting personal opinion about the rumour (n = 204) was divided by the total number of the codes dealing with the approach to debunking, that is, 1,354. Second and more importantly, the data were scrutinized by means of qualitative content analysis. To achieve this, the constant comparative method was used to capture the variety of the Redditors’ articulations (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, pp. 339–344). More specifically, the Redditors’ responses concerning the approaches to rumour debunking and criteria used in debunking were systematically compared per individual criteria. In this way, it was possible identify similarities and differences in the ways in which the Redditors, for example, presented their personal opinions about the rumour or how the participants evaluated the provision of evidence for the existence of pet eating.

The reporting of the qualitative findings incorporates an ethical issue because they are illustrated by quotations taken from the Redditors’ posts. Since the posts submitted to the r/politics subreddit are freely accessible to all readers, these posts can be seen as contributions which are intended to elicit public interest in the ways in which rumours are used in the 2024 U.S. presidential campaigns. Due to their public nature, the posts submitted to online forums may also be utilized for research purposes, provided that the identity of an individual contributor is sufficiently protected. To achieve this, the participants were identified by technical codes. For example, in R776-T18, R776 refers to a contributor who appears in the 776th place in the alphabetical list of 1,060 Redditors. Moreover, individual threads were referred to by using a technical code. For example, T-18 refers to a message that appeared in Thread 18. Second, all information about the submission dates for messages was deleted from the quotations. This procedure makes it more unlikely that an individual message and its author could be identified from the r/politics discussion threads.

As specified in Table 1, the Redditors made use of altogether seven individual approaches to debunk the pet rumour. The percentage distribution of the codes assigned to these approaches is presented in Table 2.

Table 2 indicates that the Redditors most frequently debunked the rumour by presenting a personal opinion about the creation and dissemination of the false claim about pet eating. Quite often, the Redditors debunked the rumour by referring to its prior refutations. Taken together, the three approaches indicative of the blameworthiness of rumour dissemination, that is, condemning rumourmongering, indicating the negative consequences of rumour dissemination, and demanding responsibility from rumourmongers comprised 28.7% of the codes assigned to the debunking approaches. The shares of debunking approaches of other kind were relatively small: the joking approach (10.8% of the codes) and expressing emotional reactions (1.8%).

Table 3 presents the distribution of the codes assigned to the criteria used in the rumour debunking.

The participants used altogether 6 diverse criteria to debunk the rumour. As Table 3 indicates, perceived honesty of the rumour disseminator was used most frequently as a criterion. In addition, perceived competence of the rumour disseminator was an important criterion. Altogether, these two person-related criteria comprised 54.1% of the codes assigned to the debunking criteria. This suggests that rumour debunking is strongly dependent on how people judge the sincerity and cognitive abilities of the rumourmongers. The rest of the criteria deal with the content of the rumour. Of them, the source impartiality was most frequent, followed by provision of evidence. In comparison, argument quality and provision of veracious information were employed less frequently while debunking the pet rumour.

One of the popular ways to debunk the pet rumour was simply to depict how it was refuted earlier in the media, for example. The reference to prior refutations offers an authoritative support for the assumption that the rumour is indeed baseless. To achieve this, Redditors often cited news published in legacy media, for example, CNN. Moreover, the participants depicted how the city officials had refuted the rumour.

The descriptive approach also manifested itself in the characterizations of similar rumours that were disseminated in other communities and found baseless.

Table 2 indicated that presenting personal opinion about the creation and distribution of false claims was the most popular approach to rumour debunking among the Redditors. Personal opinions are based on the participants’ beliefs about the nature of the pet rumour, as well as motives behind its dissemination. To this end, Redditors explained why in their view the claim about pet eating is baseless and should thus be disapproved. This was done by presenting a personal opinion about why immigrants do not harm companion animals.

Many of the opinion-based refutations depicted Redditors’ beliefs about why the rumour was created and disseminated. It was generally believed that it was done in order to boost the ongoing presidential campaign. It was suspected that Vance and Trump are well aware of the falseness of the racist rumour but still spread it to please voters holding anti-immigration views. On the other hand, the Redditors believed that the rumour is disseminated to divert attention from matters unfavourable to the party, for example, the critique addressed towards Project 2025. It is political initiative published by the American conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 aims to promote right-wing policies to reshape the federal government of the United States and consolidate executive power, under the premise that Donald Trump would win the 2024 presidential election.

Interestingly, some Redditors suggested that the ultimate reason for the distribution of the pet rumour is to meet the expectations of the supporters of the Republican Party. It was believed that they expect the presidential candidates to present provocative views on immigration. Trump and Vance then fulfil their wishes by spreading hostile rumours. Certain groups such as illegal immigrants are targeted because the political campaign has to identify “enemies” threatening the traditional values of American society.

The dissemination of a politically motivated rumour is also a moral issue. From this perspective, rumour debunking draws on moral appeals suggesting that the dissemination of false rumours should be considered blameworthy, reprehensible and thus subject to disapproval. The pet rumour was condemned because it was perceived as an action that unscrupulously served the pursuit of political power at the expense of offering truthful information. It was resented that someone in a high political position condescends to spread baseless rumours. Another issue giving rise to the condemnation of the rumour was that Vice-Presidential Nominee Vance continued the dissemination of the baseless claim, despite that it was proven false by the fact-checkers. Moreover, spreading a rumour without confirming its truthfulness is objectionable.

Closely related, Redditors made use of moral appeals to debunk the rumour. To this end, they adopted a persuasive strategy that targets the audience’s sense of right and wrong. More specifically, the pet rumour was debunked by demanding responsibility from rumourmongers.

On the other hand, presidential candidates ignoring their responsibilities towards citizens should be sanctioned. As one of the Redditors (R809-T10) put it, “He (Vance) should be taken right to court and held personally liable for the damage he has done”. Fellow participants voiced similar requirements.

One of the ways to debunk the pet rumour was to demonstrate that its dissemination had already led to serious consequences in Springfield. If people believe in the rumour and continue to spread it, there is a risk that the consequences will become even more severe during the ongoing presidential campaign. To this end, the participants identified concrete issues and risks arising from the pet rumour.

Even though the false claims about pet eating led to serious consequences particularly in Springfield, the debunking efforts also incorporated joking about the rumour. This approach may be an effective way to discredit false claims because putting them in a ridiculous light can decrease their credibility among people. Most of the humorous posts focussed on the ridiculing of the main disseminator of the rumour, that is, J.D. Vance. One of the participants (R285-T17) called him “a clown”, while another Redditor (R469-T13) reported that after having read about the rumour “I was laughing so hard I could not breathe”. One of the popular topics giving rise to ridiculing comments was Vance’s way to disregard the counterevidence offered by fact-checkers.

Both Vance and Trump were derided for their gullibility to rely on the hearsay of local individuals or the naïve reliance on videos about pet eating presented on television and social media forums.

Finally, the Redditors made use of emotional appeals to persuade fellow Redditors and people reading Reddit posts to believe that rumourmongering is a repulsive phenomenon and thus subject to disapproval. To this end, the Redditors expressed negative emotions such as anger, disgust and fear. Emotional reactions were directed towards Vance in particular because he was considered the main culprit behind rumourmongering. The affective approach was also used to elicit sympathy towards people subject to false claims.

Table 3 indicated that while grounding the debunking of the pet rumour, the criteria related to the personal characteristics of rumourmongers occupied a central role. In the following, criteria of this type are discussed first, followed by the criteria dealing with the content of the rumour.

The debunking of the rumour was often justified by drawing attention to the insincerity of the rumourmongers, most notably Vance and Trump. Most of the negative assessments of this kind were based on claim that the presidential candidates are lying intentionally. The dishonesty was explained by referring to their political ends, that is, preferring the pursuit of power over the provision of truthful information.

Dishonesty in the dissemination of the rumour was considered particularly serious because it was felt that the rumourmongers do not care about the counterevidence offered by fact-checkers. The rumour is spread even though its distributors know that it is baseless.

The extent to which a person disseminating a rumour is taken seriously depends on the perceived competence of the rumour disseminator. Again, the Redditors adopted a critical view on the cognitive abilities of the presidential candidates resorting to the spreading of a politically motivated rumour.

The poor competence of the candidates was also assessed from the perspective of their abilities to lead the United States in the future years. Again, the judgements appeared to be highly critical, suggestive of that the dissemination of the pet rumour was a political mistake.

While debunking the content of the pet rumour, the reliance on biased information sources favoured by the rumourmongers was the most popular criterion. Many of the judgements presented by the Redditors were based on the view that Vance and Trump uncritically prefer information obtained from like-minded people and ignore information sources offering contrary evidence about pet eating.

The problem of relying on biased information sources was put in a broader context by referring to many people’s preference to uncritically believe in the views presented in like-minded sources. This offers a fertile ground for the proliferation of politically motivated rumours. On the other hand, belief in biased information sources is retained because the “believers” do not accept the possibility that they could be wrong.

The preference for biased sources among rumourmongers suggests that they would face difficulties in trying to provide convincing evidence for the existence of pet eating among immigrants. By drawing on the criterion of insufficient evidence, the Redditors were keen to reveal gaps in the provision of factual support for claims about immigrants harming companion animals.

In more detailed assessments, it was demonstrated that the evidence on which Vance and other rumourmongers had drawn is non-specific or inaccurate. Moreover, there appeared to be factual errors dealing with the place where the suspected pet eating had occurred.

To debunk the rumour, the Redditors also drew on the comments provided by people living in immigrant communities. The evidence offered by local eyewitnesses can be particularly effective if they have long-time experience about immigrants’ cultural traditions and ways of life.

The Redditors demonstrated that the pet rumour is not believable because the arguments employed by rumourmongers are of low quality. It was asserted that the claims about pet eating are based on poor reasoning and that there are inherent flaws in the arguments presented by Vance and Trump. Redditors claimed that one of the factors weakening the argument quality is the ignorance of fact checking and the reliance on unverifiable information. Poor argument quality was also related to the contradictory requirements presented by the rumour disseminators.

Redditors also revealed flaws in the logic used in the identification of people suspected of pet eating. Similarly, generalizations developed on the basis of a single incident were considered problematic. Moreover, it was critiqued that the argument quality decreased due to that the original (false) claims were repeated uncritically.

Finally, if the argument quality is poor, it is evident that rumourmongers face difficulties in trying to provide factual information supporting their claims. Drawing on this criterion, the Redditors demonstrated that the lack of veracious information cannot be replaced by prejudice and vague assumptions about pet eating. Moreover, such assumptions cannot replace factual information provided by the officials.

The present investigation offers a unique contribution to information behaviour research by examining how and by which criteria a politically motivated rumour was debunked in online discussion. The main findings are summarized in Table 4.

In a nutshell, the findings suggest that while debunking politically motivated rumours, online participants tend to draw on their personal beliefs about the nature of such rumours and the motives behind their dissemination. As the spreading of false claims for political ends is considered morally wrong, rumours are also debunked by drawing on moral appeals suggesting that rumour dissemination is a form of blameworthy action and thus subject to disapproval. Based on moral appeals, the dissemination of the false rumour is condemned, and its disseminators are requested to take responsibility for their action, particularly because rumourmongering gives rise to negative consequences in society. The rumour can also be debunked by drawing on its prior refutations, as well as making the rumour and its disseminators laughable in the eyes of the audience or presenting an emotional appeal against rumourmongering. The findings highlight the importance of person-related criteria such as the perceived honesty of rumourmongers and their perceived competence as criteria by which false rumours are debunked in online discussion. On the other hand, the rumourmongers’ preference for biased information sources, the provision of the insufficient evidence and the lack of veracious information can effectively undermine the credibility of a politically motivated rumour.

The assessment of the novelty value of the findings is rendered more difficult due to the paucity of prior studies on the topic. However, a few comparative notions can be made. The findings suggest that the wedge-driving political rumours such false as claims about pet eating can be effective because they are characterized by simplicity. As noted by Becket (1988, pp. 331–332), rumours of this kind use only one central idea as a core, evoke strong emotions and are easy to remember. Due to these qualities, the pet rumour spread quickly, and it was taken as a politically expedient asset in the Republican campaign. The findings also support prior observations about the negative consequences of the spreading of hostile rumours such as false claims asserting that President Obama is not a natural-born citizen (Berinsky, 2023). The findings lend support to the conclusion that as a part of debunking efforts, the Redditors made use of the debunking approaches identified by Paek and Hove (2019), although the present investigation offered a more nuanced picture of approaches of this kind. Similar to the findings of Paek and Hove (2019), the Redditors drawing on their personal opinions about the rumour sometimes drew on denial while asserting that in their view the pet rumour is false. Redditors also made use of refutation by describing prior or similar cases where the pet rumour was rebuked as baseless. On the other hand, Redditors seldom resorted to the attack approach that includes responses containing threatening information or potential punishments directed at those who spread the rumours. Requirements such as these were evident only in cases in which Redditors suggested that the rumourmongers should be sued for damages caused by rumourmongering.

The findings also support the observations of Lin et al. (2022) suggesting that the debunking of rumours is dependent on how people judge their credibility. Support is also lent to the assumption that the extent to which a rumour is believed is dependent on argument quality, that is, the rumour receiver’s perception of the strength of the information within a rumour (Lin et al., 2022). Moreover, the results confirm the assumption that the rumour receiver’s perception of the rumour sender’s competence affects the credibility of a political rumour (Yin et al., 2018). The findings also support the assumptions about the significance of sufficient counterevidence for rumour debunking (Edy and Risley-Baird, 2016, pp. 596–597). Finally, in accord with the observations of Dang et al. (2016), it appeared that rumours can be debunked by joking about them. In the present study, however, this approach remained quite marginal. This may be due to the serious nature of the pet rumour. Finally, support was lent to the findings of Zhang et al. (2024). They demonstrated that affective appeals such as emotional arousal can be used to convince people that the distribution of false rumours is a repulsive phenomenon.

The findings have theoretical implications for the understanding of political rumours as a type of disinformation subject to debunking efforts. Similar to conspiracy theories, such rumours represent context-sensitive and unverified information statements that are presented in times of threat or potential danger in particular. As exemplified by the false claim about pet eating among immigrants, hostile, wedge-driving political rumours represent disinformation because they are disseminated to mislead people in order to achieve particular political goals. On the other hand, in politically polarized societies, the debunking of such rumours is rendered difficult in that there are no longer generally agreed criteria by which politically motivated false claims can be refuted. Drawing on their political values and beliefs, individuals as well opposing groups of people can reject factual counterevidence against a rumour as something “fake”. Similarly, they can ignore debunking efforts which draw on one’s personal opinions or moral and emotional appeals. This means that there is no objective ways and criteria by which politically motivated rumours can be debunked so that the refutation is accepted by all.

This conclusion gives to the practical implications of the study. The debunking of false rumours is politically important because liberal democracies are premised on an active citizenry informed by accurate information particularly in times of election. If citizens’ voting decisions are based on false rumours, there is a danger that legitimacy of the democratic political system is undermined further. Therefore, fact-checking services, the media and online communities have no choice but continue their efforts to enhance the credibility of political information by debunking false claims distributed by rumourmongers. The refutation of political rumours is valuable because it helps citizens to view unverified information with a critical eye particularly when they seek political information from social media rather than traditional sources such as television, radio, or newspapers.

Reflecting the U.S. polarized political culture, politically motivated rumours occupied an important role in the 2024 U.S. Republican presidential campaign. The most important finding of the present study is that rumour debunking occurring in online discussion relies heavily on the participants’ personal opinions and moral judgements about the acceptability of the dissemination of false claims for political purposes. The findings explain why the creation and distribution of politically motivated false rumours are blameworthy and thus subject to disapproval. Another important finding is the central role of person-related criteria used in rumour debunking, most notably the perceived dishonesty of rumourmongers. All in all, the findings suggest that posts submitted to online discussion forums can usefully complement the debunking efforts made by professional fact-checkers and legacy media. This is because fact-checkers and the media tend to concentrate on the factual evidence for or against a rumour, while online discussions offer a broader view on the refutation of false claims by making use of various approaches to rumour debunking and a variety of criteria by which the rumour is disapproved.

As the present investigation focussed on a particular rumour disseminated during the U.S. 2024 Republican presidential campaign, there is a need to conduct comparative investigations focussing on rumours spread in other political cultures and contexts. An important topic of further research is to compare how the informational features of rumours are related to similar phenomena such as gossips, conspiracy theories and fake news. Context-specific comparative investigations are needed because it is evident that rumours, entertaining gossips and conspiracy theories will occupy a growing role in political discourse and thus potentially affect people’s voting decisions.