Selective exposure is the theory that people will try to actively seek and engage with news stories that re-affirm their own world-view and beliefs, while disregarding anything that contradicts or challenges them; regardless of how accurate either news story is.
InfoWars was founded in 1999 by far-right conservative and known shock jock Alex Jones, and is infamous for peddling conspiracy theories and fake news. Despite this, its readership levels have remained consistently high, with Jones himself admitting that it was pulling in over $20m a year [1] in 2018.
One of the reasons for this is because InfoWars specifically targets a segment of the right that no other media outlet does; conspiracy theorists who believe that the Left is run by pedophiles and demons (whether Jones was literal about this statement or not is unclear), and that events like Sandy Hook were false flags staged by the Left to hurt the second amendment [2].
This demographic already has a level of distrust in the mainstream media, and InfoWars takes full advantage of this by not only creating a filter bubble for its audience, where every news story is specifically targeted to confirm their pre-conceived notions, but also create an eco-system of its own; on-site advertisements and official merchandise is specifically designed to support that perception too. One of the most prominent product lines they sell is a series of water filtration systems, which sells well due to their frequent fear-mongering of how the government has put “chemicals in the water” that changes your sexuality [3]. Another successful brand of products is their line of supplements, and considering the level of distrust that both InfoWars and its readers have for mainstream medicine, it creates an alternative with products such as “Super Male Vitality” and “Brain Fuel”. These sell “500 [units] in an hour” according to former employees, despite them being scientifically proven to be ineffective [4].
InfoWars is, of course, no stranger to being proven wrong. As one of the pioneering websites for yellow journalism and the spread of disinformation, with famous examples including false claims against the HPV vaccine [5], the 2017 Las Vegas shooting [6] as well as the aforementioned controversy regarding Sandy Hook. This has led to backlash and mass black-listings for the site, from prominent platforms such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter [7], which still hasn’t seemed to deter its usual crowd from accessing it. While most news outlets would take a big hit from this kind of publicity, Jones & co. seem to thrive in it. This is because their primary readership has been so accustomed to what they’ve read that anything that challenges it, regardless of it coming from certified experts, is incorrect.
By continuously pumping out misleading articles and hit-pieces, InfoWars has created a culture of constant confirmation bias; where anyone who disagrees with you is a government pawn trying to further the Leftist agenda, and it doesn’t matter what the truth is as long as it’s something you believe in – no matter how far-fetched it might sound. Including the government trying to turn the “freaking frogs gay”.
Sources:
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/us/politics/alex-jones-business-infowars-conspiracy.html
[2] https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/sandy-hook-families-are-suing-alex-jones-what-he-said-about-shooting
[3] https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/internet/2017/03/they-re-turning-frogs-gay-psychology-behind-internet-conspiracy
[4] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/we-sent-alex-jones-infowars-supplements-to-a-lab-heres
[5] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/6/15160486/alex-jones-vaccines-autism-gates-fungus-health-conspiracy-theories
[6] https://www.newsweek.com/alt-right-conspiracy-theories-blame-antifa-mass-shooting-las-vegas-677075
[7] https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/06/technology/facebook-infowars-alex-jones/index.html