We present the example of the “color revolution” claim as a case study in propagation tactics, reach, and potential broader adoption of meta-narratives. Their long-term nature makes them particularly challenging to respond to, as they are laying the groundwork to delegitimize a future event, setting the stage to have a claim to point back to if events play out in a certain way. They are distinct from simple delegitimizing content - a story of some ballots found in a ditch, a doctored video of voter fraud - which can quickly be fact-checked as individual incidents. These meta-narratives provide a long-term cohesive ideological unit through which a community can interpret events. What may previously have been isolated incidents with minimal social media traction may gain significant new weight when they are processed as additional evidence of an underlying conspiracy. The meta-narrative becomes a scaffolding on which any future event can be hung: any new protest, or newly-discovered discarded ballot, is processed as further confirmatory evidence that a color revolution coup is indeed underway, that there is a vast conspiracy to steal the election, and that the results will be illegitimate. This narrative is worth examining not for its content, but to understand how it weaves together a wide swath of discrete events into an overarching meta-narrative, involving both influencers and ordinary users in the process. One narrative in particular has emerged that links social protests and voting-related accusations, and in doing so, attempts to preemptively delegitimize the 2020 election: the claim that the United States is in the midst of a “color revolution,” a Deep State coup to steal or disrupt the re-election of the President of the United States. The combination of unprecedented circumstances and social unrest has contributed to an increase in conspiracy theories and partisan accusations of dirty dealing from both bottom-up grassroots social media chatter and top-down elite communications. Ongoing protests have exacerbated tensions, and widened partisan divides. Some state election results may not be available until days after November 3rd.

This election is taking place in challenging times: An ongoing pandemic means that tens of millions of Americans will vote by mail. Not because of the likelihood that the country won't know who won on election night - that’s happened before - but because for the first time, powerful American politicians and partisan media influencers are attempting to preemptively delegitimize the validity of the election itself. The 2020 election will be different from any other electoral process in U.S.

Meta narrative play