Elon Musk’s stream of tweets about the US election may look chaotic. My data suggests a troubling strategy

As voting booths across the US close and presidential election results are gradually decliningTech billionaire Elon Musk posted a flurry of tweets on his social network X (formerly Twitter). The same thing happened to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

At first glance, these tweets may seem chaotic and random. But if you look more closely, you begin to see a troubling strategy behind them—one that needs to be looked at closely to understand the inner workings of the campaign to return Trump to the White House.

The strategy has two immediate goals. First, overload the information space and thereby control attention. Second, to fuel the conspiracy theory that there is a coordinated campaign among Democrats, the media, and Big Tech to steal this election.

But it is important to understand that Strategy X is part of the Trump campaign’s grand strategy: a backup plan in the event of Trump’s defeat, designed to encourage the public to participate in a grand reshaping of reality through a metanarrative. widespread voter fraud.

Overwhelm the information space

Musk has long been a prominent X user, even before becoming the owner, CTO and executive chairman of the platform.

But as I reported last weekSince he endorsed Trump in July, his account has seen a sudden and abnormal increase in activity, raising suspicions about whether he has tweaked the platform’s algorithms to ensure his content reaches more people.

This trend has continued in recent days.

In addition to posting on X, earlier today Musk also held live discussion of “free form” on the election platform. This lasted almost an hour and a half. About 1.3 million people watched it. This is one of many live election discussions he has hosted in recent months, including with Trump.

In an information war, attention management is everything. Platforms are designed to maximize user engagement and attention above all else. This basic logic of social media is very easy to exploit: whoever controls the attention controls the narrative. In Australia, the Vote No campaign during last year’s referendum on Indigenous representation in government was master class on attention management.

By bombarding audiences, journalists and other key stakeholders with a constant stream of accusations, rumors, conspiracy theories and unverifiable claims, Musk and the Trump campaign are consuming all the oxygen of attention. When everyone is focused on you and what you are saying, they become distracted from what the other party is saying.

Both Musk and Trump want people to focus on the idea that the election will be stolen.

Fuel the Voter Fraud Narrative

Since the beginning of the year, rumors that the US presidential election could be rigged have been steadily gaining momentum. But in the last week leading up to Election Day, the situation has become overwhelming.

For example, starting on October 27, Trump began posting on X using the hashtag #TooBigtoRig. This refers to the idea that Trump will win the election by such a large margin that the result will be undeniable. Up until this point, the #TooBigToRig campaign had been driven by Trump supporters. Trump has now officially joined, giving him maximum legitimacy.

The past week has also seen a surge in posts using similarly themed hashtags such as #ElectionFraud, #ElectionInterference, #VoterFraud and #StopTheSteal.

Musk himself doesn’t use these hashtags very often (although other users’ responses to him are riddled with them). But he publishes materials that coincide with them. For example, this morning he retweeted the post who argued that the US electronic voting system is unsafe. Musk added: “Absolutely.”

He also has falsely accused Google of encouraging Americans vote for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

And as the first results began to arrive, Musk posted that Trump’s chances of winning are almost 70%.

“The prophecy fulfilled,” Musk wrote.

Joint disinformation

In many ways this has all the hallmarks joint disinformation. This concept, developed by computer scientist Kate Starbird and her colleagues, explains how ordinary people, politicians and powerful actors alike become active participants in spreading false narratives.

Unlike the top-down model of propaganda, collaborative disinformation describes how grassroots activists and ordinary people—often with strong beliefs and genuine intentions—help spread and advance narratives that are not based on fact. It is a collaborative feedback loop that involves both elite problem framing and collective sensemaking and collection of “evidence.”

Before war breaks out, there are clear signs of what is about to unfold, even if the country publicly denies that it is preparing for battle. Blood suppliestroops and weapons transported to the border in preparation for the invasion.

The same thing happens here, except that we are the weapon.

The deluge of tweets from Musk and Trump in particular sets the stage for a full-blown disinformation campaign aimed at undermining the election results.