Epic Sock Puppet Theater

Epic Sock Puppet Theater is an animatronic puppet show where sock puppets perform real social media posts from documented "sock puppet" accounts — imposter profiles created to infiltrate groups, provoke people, and spread disinformation designed to polarize and divide the public. To keep viewers at a critical distance so they can reflect on this politically charged material, the puppets borrow techniques from Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theater: they break the fourth wall, address participants directly, and only perform when triggered by interaction, so that the participant is always implicated in the performance. The contradiction between the puppets’ playful construction and the seriousness of what they say provokes reflection instead of reaction, revealing the tactics used to spread disinformation so that they become easier to recognize the next time they're encountered.

Inoculation Through Controlled Exposure

The project is based on research showing that revealing a sock puppet helps people recognize other sock puppets later, and that controlled exposure can act as a kind of inoculation against future disinformation. Visitors scroll through a real dataset of posts made by documented fake accounts, each one performed by a puppet. The disinformation can be sorted according to multiple factors allowing participants to see how the same tactic can be used to target different groups or across topics. The dataset draws on material compiled by academic researchers, government agencies, journalists, and our own research, and can incorporate new campaigns as sock puppet tactics continue to evolve.

Photo: Astrid Mulder, courtesy of Science Gallery Melbourne

Breaking the Fourth Wall

The puppets only perform when a visitor interacts with them, addressing participants directly. The constructedness of the puppets is foregrounded rather than hidden, emphasizing the mechanical and role of technology in organized sock puppet campaigns. We documented our use of Brechtian distancing techniques in “Epic Sock Puppet Theater: artistic tactics for mitigating online disinformation” published in Artnodes 33 (2024).

Adaptability

In response to Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act of 2024, which banned the viewing of social media content for children under the age of 16, we developed a version of the project that explains disinformation tactics through a series of act-based performances that occasionally feature strongly contextualized social media disinformation posts. This version features banter between the puppets, who also directly address the audience. Examples of social media disinformation are presented but are first framed by explaining the tactic being used and situations in which it has been deployed. When being exhibited, the project can switch between the two modes of display to accommodate audiences of all age groups.

A Documented, Ongoing Threat

The World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Risks Report identifies misinformation and disinformation as a leading global risk, citing their use by foreign and domestic actors to widen societal divides and interfere with democratic processes. Documented sock puppet campaigns included in the project include: Chinese state-sponsored disinformation efforts, Russian interference in US and European elections, and US military use of sock puppets to promote intervention in the Middle East.