To fight fake news, we went undercover on alt-right websites to spread the truth about the Syrian refugees. Told by the refugees themselves.

In 2016, Trump’s second travel ban, targeting people from predominantly Muslim countries, led to a rise of fear and misconceptions around Syrian refugees. Fake news were surging on Alt-Right media. So we set out to fight fake news by targeting alt-right media, and sharing the real story of Syrian refugees, told by refugees themselves.

Director: Cano Rojas

With a 24-hour notice, we boarded a plane to the Turkey/Syria border at the height of the crisis, when the regime took over Aleppo. We spent five days in nearby hospitals, clinics, and psychological wards speaking with, and interviewing over 40 Syrian doctors, nurses and patients who had been displaced, and wanted to help us spread the message. 

With our content, we first targeted InfoWars, a far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Alex Jones which has been linked to harassment of victims. We launched pre-roll ads disguised as alt-right content and served unsuspecting viewers a pro-refugee message. Next, we went after Breitbart, a far-right website masking itself as a news site, with over 17 million readers in 2016, by buying their media space and driving people to our website through banner ads. On Facebook, we served out video ad to fans of Donald Trump, Breitbart and InfoWars.

All messaging lead to our website where we revealed our true message: they’re not terrorists. They are just like us.

We exposed the truth to over one million alt right readers, with a click-through rate that more than tripled industry norms, Most importantly, we were able to change some peoples’ minds.