On Jan. 6, Hilary Izatt was watching TV when she began to worry.
"My husband and I are both political scientists; we're kind of nerdy; we watch C-SPAN a lot," Izatt says. "And when we were watching C-SPAN is when the rioters started breaking into the Capitol."
Izatt, 39, is a doctoral student in political science at the University of Michigan. She says her dad, who lives in Utah, had told her he was traveling to Washington, D.C., to join the massive pro-Trump rally planned for that day.
What she saw unfolding on the screen scared her.
A different — dangerous — reality
"I was mostly worried for his safety and I texted him and he got back to me and he just said, 'Don't believe everything you're watching on TV,' " she says. "So I don't believe like C-SPAN? I'm not sure what he meant by that."
"But it was this realization that I think we're coming from two very different realities."
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Izatt's father declined to comment, but Izatt says she believes he was not among the group that stormed the Capitol. Still, she's uncomfortable with the idea that he was there that day at all.
Like Izatt, many Americans are feeling like they've lost loved ones to a web of conspiracy theories and false information circulating online. A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, for example, found that only 1 in 5 Republicans accept Biden's victory.
Ideas have consequences
"Beliefs are real in their consequences," says James Hawdon, director of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech.
He says the widespread acceptance of disinformation is not only divisive but also dangerous for the country.
"We act on our beliefs. If you truly believe the country is under attack ... if this, of course, is not true ... obviously it poses a threat," Hawdon says.
People often latch onto pieces of misinformation that align with their worldview and gradually begin to accept even bigger lies, he says.
"You can get people to step, take small steps off the path of truth or reality or whatever you want to call it, more easily than taking a big leap," Hawdon says. "But once you've gone several yards off that path, then the big leap's pretty easy to make."
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Those ideas often are appealing because they validate part of a person's belief system or identity, Hawdon says, and they're difficult to shake.
Lost in "La-La Land"
Dennis, a retiree from Maryland — who asked that we use only his first name for fear of his safety in the current climate — has grown increasingly worried about his daughter's embrace of false ideas about the election.
"She's talked about the election being stolen and I've pushed back on that — you know, the standard, 'Where's your proof? And how do you suppose this happened?' " Dennis says.
His daughter, Paula, lives near Baltimore and works as an office manager. In an interview with NPR, she says her father told her she was "in La-La Land, but I really don't feel that I am."
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