A tweet from the Republican Party of Texas is getting a lot of attention because it compares testing for COVID-19 to voting.
It shows a long line of people waiting in the cold to get tested for the virus. The text says: "If you can wait in line for a covid test, you can wait in line to vote."
Sam Woolley is the director of the propaganda lab at the UT Austin Center for Media Engagement calls that a false equivalency.
"This is a version of what some social media users have called 'rage farming' online," Woolley said. "It is an attempt to get people to engage, no matter what their engagement is, if it's angry or happy. Social media acts as an amplifier and it's a numbers game."
And it worked. The meme got a lot of attention. He says the goal was to divide and conquer and adds it is interesting that it came from the official GOP account in Texas. Woolley said: "Frankly, that's not a normal thing to see. Official GOP or Democratic accounts engaging in this kind of rhetoric."
He says the meme was the number four trending thing on Twitter, so the Texas GOP achieved their goal.
As far as the content goes, Woolley says it's a false equivalence.
"It's comparing two things that are very different," Woolley said. "Texas is going through a massive spike in COVID cases and a lot of people are hurting. Comparing that to the voting situation in Texas, which is also problematic. Texas has some of the most repressive voting rights in the country and people experience very long lines. It might be better to tweet out something about how we might be able to do better at both (COVID testing and voting) of those things."
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