澳大利亚的野火造成了悲剧性的损失，引发了虚假信息之战

澳大利亚的野火造成了悲剧性的损失，引发了虚假信息之战

Australia is struggling to cope with deadly infernos and faces losing nearly a billion animals in the terrible bushfires — but in the midst of those tragedies, authorities are also battling hoaxes and misinformation, including false reports of widespread arson. Many of the claims seek to suggest that arson, not climate change, was a key driver of the historic fires.

澳大利亚正在努力应对致命的地狱之火，并面临着在可怕的森林大火中失去近10亿只动物的危险——但在这些悲剧的同时，有关当局还在与恶作剧和虚假信息作斗争，其中包括关于大范围纵火的虚假报道。许多声明试图表明，纵火是历史上的火灾的关键驱动因素，而不是气候变化。

The hashtag #ArsonEmergency began trending shortly after the new year. Queensland University of Technology researcher Timothy Graham says he identified troll in social media accounts that tried to shift the narrative about the fires as being the work of dozens of criminals.

新年过后不久，#纵火案#的标签开始走红。昆士兰科技大学研究员蒂莫西·格雷厄姆表示，他发现了在社交媒体账户上试图改变火灾说法的挑衅帖子是数十名罪犯所为。

"We studied about 300 Twitter accounts driving the #ArsonEmergency hashtag to identify inauthentic behavior," Graham said Friday in an essay for The Conversation, which he co-wrote with fellow researcher Tobias Keller.

“我们研究了大约300个推特账号，这些账号都被贴上了‘纵火案’的标签，以识别不真实的行为，”格雷厄姆周五在为《对话》杂志撰写的一篇文章中说。他和同事托拜厄斯·凯勒共同撰写了这篇文章。

"We found many accounts using #ArsonEmergency were behaving 'suspiciously,' compared to those using #AustraliaFire and #BushfireAustralia," they said. "Accounts peddling #ArsonEmergency carried out activity similar to what we've witnessed in past disinformation campaigns, such as the coordinated behavior of Russian trolls during the 2016 US presidential election."

他们表示:“我们发现，与使用‘澳大利亚森林大火’和‘布什森林大火’的账户相比，许多使用‘纵火案’的账户行为‘可疑’。”“兜售‘纵火案’的账户所进行的活动，与我们在过去的虚假信息宣传活动中所看到的类似，比如2016年美国总统大选期间俄罗斯网络流氓的协调行为。”

As for who mounted the social media campaign to push the arson narrative, Graham and Keller say that while software tools allowed them to identify bots and trolls, they weren't able to trace the bogus accounts to any specific people or entities.

至于是谁发起了这场社交媒体运动来推动纵火的说法，格雷厄姆和凯勒表示，虽然软件工具让他们能够识别机器人和喷子，但他们无法追踪到任何特定的人或实体的虚假账户。

While arson has historically been one of the causes of Australian wildfires, the country is facing an unprecedented bushfire disaster. Since September, fires have now consumed an area larger than the states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire combined.

虽然纵火历来是澳大利亚野火的原因之一，但该国正面临前所未有的丛林火灾灾难。自9月以来，大火已经吞噬了比马萨诸塞州和新罕布什尔州加起来还要大的区域。

And a new "megafire" was created Friday when two blazes joined — covering nearly 1.5 million acres, as NPR's Scott Neuman reports.

据NPR新闻的斯科特·纽曼报道，周五，两场大火同时发生，面积近150万英亩，形成了新的“大火”。

The #ArsonEmergency campaign seems to have peaked around Tuesday, when thousands of tweets used the hashtag, Graham and Keller say.

格雷厄姆和凯勒表示，这场“纵火案”似乎在周二左右达到了顶峰，当时有数千条推文使用了这个标签。

Around the same time the bot campaign hit its crescendo, news stories about the wildfires also touted a police report in hard-hit New South Wales, where authorities recently announced that they have taken legal action against more than 180 people for fire-related offenses. But only a small fraction of those people face charges that might be construed as arson, and the figure also spans a period that began in late 2019.

与此同时，有关野火的新闻报道也在重灾区新南威尔士州宣传了一份警方报告。新南威尔士州当局最近宣布，他们已经对180多名因火灾相关罪行而被起诉的人采取了法律行动。但其中只有一小部分人面临可能被视为纵火的指控，而且这一数字也开始于2019年底。

The NSW police said that while 24 people were charged with deliberately lighting bushfires, 53 faced legal actions — which include a warning — for not complying with a statewide ban on fires. And the overall number also includes 47 people who were accused of not properly disposing of lit cigarettes or matches.

新南威尔士州警方表示，虽然有24人被控故意点燃山火，但有53人因不遵守全州范围内的禁火令而面临法律诉讼，其中包括警告。总人数还包括47人，他们被指控没有妥善处理点燃的香烟或火柴。

Conservatives in the U.S. also picked up on the arson thread, with President Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., retweeting a post about the arrests in New South Wales.

美国保守派人士也关注了纵火事件，特朗普总统的儿子小唐纳德·特朗普转发了一条有关新南威尔士州逮捕事件的帖子。

Australia's ABC reports, "Some of the misinformation includes the idea left-wing 'ecoterrorists' are behind some fires."

澳大利亚广播公司报道称，“一些错误信息包括左翼‘生态恐怖分子’是一些火灾的幕后操纵者。”

On Friday, an employee of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp in Australia raised concerns about the company's coverage of the wildfires, accusing the publisher of newspapers such as The Australian and the Herald Sun of carrying out an irresponsible "misinformation campaign."

上周五，鲁珀特•默多克旗下新闻集团在澳大利亚的一名员工对该公司对森林大火的报道提出了担忧，指责《澳大利亚人报》和《先驱太阳报》等报纸的出版商进行了不负责任的“误报运动”。