Misinformation on Social Media Impacts California Wildfire Recovery Efforts

When Chad Comey’s five-story condo building burned down in the Palisades Fire early last year, all that remained was the parking garage, a brick and stucco wall, and a few charred trees. Comey’s street is now lined with empty lots stretching up into the green hills.

Comey, a musician and caretaker for his two disabled parents, has moved five times in the past year, searching for wheelchair-accessible housing while trying not to overstay their welcome with friends and family.

“I think we have a right to be angry,” Comey says. “I am housed, but I am homeless.”

The 32-year-old has relied on traditional news sources like the Los Angeles Times and LAist for information about the fires and their aftermath. However, many others turn to social media platforms, where misinformation has spread rapidly, influencing public perception and even affecting policy decisions.

According to Pew Research, more than half of Americans get at least some of their news from social media. In the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires that killed 31 people and burned an area roughly three times the size of Manhattan, this reliance on social media has had tangible consequences.

“In today’s day and age on social media, one kernel of truth can be spun off into reels and rage bait,” Comey notes. “There’s a lot of that.”

Max Boykoff, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies media and climate change, explains that these false narratives “are tactics to muddy the waters of public discussions,” distracting from how best to respond to disasters.

Senate Bill 549: A Casualty of Misinformation

One clear example of misinformation’s impact involves Senate Bill 549 (SB 549), says Julia Stein, deputy director for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law.

The bill, introduced last February, had two main purposes: helping local governments finance transit-oriented development and low-income housing, and creating a central hub to manage LA’s post-fire recovery. This hub was recommended by an independent panel of experts and local leaders to serve as a “single point of accountability” for residents who lost their homes.

However, last summer, incorrect narratives about the bill spread quickly on social media. A key false claim was that SB 549 would result in an influx of new, high-density affordable housing in fire-affected areas.

Spencer Pratt, a podcaster and former reality TV star who lost his home in the Palisades Fire, posted a TikTok video to his more than 2 million followers claiming that the bill would grant “LA County authority to purchase fire destroyed lots for minimal cost and convert them into low income housing” and “force low-income housing mandates.” The video received over 286,000 views, and similar messages spread through other influencers.

Stein explains that these claims were false: “You have injected this narrative that what this bill is trying to do is build dense, affordable housing and big apartment buildings in the Palisades. Even though the bill wouldn’t have done those things.”

The bill was designed to finance transit-oriented development only for areas within half a mile of “major transit stops” as defined by California law—rail stations, bus rapid transit stations, or ferry terminals. The Palisades neighborhood, located near the ocean in the Santa Monica mountains, does not qualify as being near such transit stops.

Just one day after Pratt posted his TikTok video, the bill’s author, California state Sen. Ben Allen, paused the legislation. Allen’s office received hundreds of calls and emails—far more than the few dozen calls typically received for hot-topic bills.

“I’m all for community engagement and public participation,” Stein says, “but, in this case, folks were reacting to information that was factually incorrect.”

Allen told NPR, “The absence of good journalism, along with misreads of the bill, allowed false narratives to spin around on the internet, which then impacted AI-generated descriptions of the bill, which people unfortunately turn to for information now. It hampered our ability to have a productive conversation on the matter.” He added, “I have no plans to move SB 549 forward.”

The delay in creating the centralized recovery authority has left many fire victims without clear guidance. “Right now,” Stein says, “folks don’t know where to turn.”

Rebuilding Trust in Official Information

Jake Levine, whose mother lost her home in the Palisades Fire, acknowledges the widespread mistrust of state and local agencies among many fire survivors. Levine, a former climate and energy director at the National Security Council who is now running for Congress in a district that includes the Palisades, suggests this mistrust may be partially justified.

A recent Los Angeles Times investigation found that the Los Angeles Fire Department deleted and revised drafts of a key report after the fires, changing words like “failures” to “primary challenges.”

“I think one of the reasons why people are looking for information from all sorts of sources is because the normal institutional sources that we rely on have allowed there to be a bit of a vacuum in terms of official and reliable information,” Levine says.

He hopes that in the future, more government agencies can share information directly with residents about issues like air quality after fires, so people don’t have to rely on potentially inaccurate information from commercial apps or social media.

Boykoff emphasizes the need for robust fact-checking by news organizations, especially as more people use AI for information without verifying original sources. “In that new environment, there is much higher potential for mis and disinformation,” he notes.

As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of disasters, addressing misinformation becomes even more crucial for effective disaster response and recovery.