At first, it appears they've arrived to help. Groups distributing bottled water and jumping in to clean up after hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters.
But as a new 60 Minutes investigation featuring Graphika found, it's oftentimes white nationalists and other extremist groups.
Their goal? To create attention-grabbing content to post online to spread their narratives, build stronger influence, and reach brand new audiences.
Graphika's Executive Chairman and founder Dr. John Kelly spent more time with CBS News' Lesley Stahl following his broadcast interview for 60 Minutes Overtime, sitting down to unpack in more detail how online networks shape perception of real-world events.
Kelly told Stahl that "these conspiracy theories are useful to them and so they use them. People engage with that content. It's there because people are clicking on it and they like to consume it. And so they can pick this stuff up that they think may resonate with a larger audience to help build their following and build their exposure."
And it's not just white nationalists using this playbook. Graphika consistently observes that China, Russia and other U.S. adversaries utilize the same tactics.
"Russia and China put a great deal of effort into building their capability to manipulate publics through digital means around the world. And it's a sophisticated system. These countries are pouring billions of dollars into these capabilities.
With China, he shared, this comes in the form of thousands of fake accounts and personas that seed, generate or post content - followed by a second wave of fake accounts attempting to amplify the content. Oftentimes, that content is then engaged with by notable accounts, such as those run by ambassadors or state media.
The end goal, Stahl summarized, is to portray America as a failing nation with systems that do not work.
"What we see China doing is taking narratives that portray the U.S. government as being ineffective or not operating in the interests of American citizens and boosting those narratives," Kelly said.
He shared an example of an American message making a comparison between a disaster in North Carolina and a scene of Kyiv, Ukraine which was then picked up by a Chinese influencer and slightly altered to work to their advantage.
They also discussed how artificial intelligence is changing the online content amplification game by generating high quality, engaging imagery that creates a lasting attention-grabbing, emotional impact.
"You might think it's real at first, but it almost doesn't matter if you think it's real," Kelly said. "Once you've encountered it, it's had its emotional impact. It's gotten your attention. Content that is highly engaging, whether you think it's real or not - it serves the purpose."
Kelly also pointed to an AI-generated image of a little girl holding a puppy in the aftermath of a flood as evidence of the impact that an image can have - even if it's clearly not real or has been confirmed as fake.
"The impact of this is not that you think this is a real little girl with a real puppy," Kelly stated. "You might at first glance. It's that it is so emotionally gripping and powerful. And so AI - it's not so much about fooling people into thinking something is real that's not. It's about engaging them with content that is extremely high quality, extremely emotionally evocative, gets their attention, and helps to move them somehow."
What this coverage by CBS News surfaces is part of a broader pattern: how narratives take shape and spread in moments of high attention and why organizations need visibility into these dynamics before they escalate.
Understanding online activity like the content featured on 60 Minutes is what Graphika’s Decision Intelligence Platform is designed to uncover - how narratives are evolving, where they're coming from, and what's driving their impact. To learn how Graphika can help your organization, book a demo with our team and hear more about how it works.