Flooding the Zone
Etymology
The phrase comes from American football, where to "flood the zone" is to send more receivers into an area than defenders can cover. It entered political vocabulary through Steve Bannon, reported as advising allies to "flood the zone" so that the media could never focus. The sports image of deliberate overload maps neatly onto information warfare.
verb · /FLUHD-ing thuh zohn/
Overwhelming the public with such a torrent of claims, distractions, and contradictions that no single truth can gain traction.
What it names
A disinformation strategy whose goal is not to win an argument but to exhaust attention and make everyone give up on knowing what’s true — a crucial handle for understanding modern propaganda.
Example
Rather than deny the report, they flooded the zone with a dozen competing stories until nobody could tell what happened.
Related idea
A Gish gallop buries an opponent in a debate under too many claims to rebut; flooding the zone does the same to an entire public sphere.