2020 US Election: The Home Stretch

October 31, 2020

It’s the last few days of a long campaign…

But even if, as seems to be the case, we are in for a Biden victory, this will not hasten the end of a deeply worrying turn. The volume and virality of misinformation — perhaps most infamously exemplified in 2020 by the rise of QAnon — is here to stay, even if Trump peacefully leaves office.

The infrastructure is available and the playbook is well-known. No doubt disinformation targeting minorities including women and Black people will continue — just ask Kamala Harris. Strategies will mutate and evolve and adapt as new policies are formulated. Critical in fighting all this will be media literacy, ongoing education, friction, slowing things down, and a slew of other measures that I might outline another time.

But surely a big part of it has to be a scalable solution to countering the threat of deceptive, coordinated campaigns. That’s why I’m excited to be exploring such solutions with Kinzen.

(Side note: you should check out some of our recent blog posts if you want to learn more about what we do. I wrote on the LSE Journalism AI blog about the role of journalists in this new age of “algotorial”, as Daniel Ek of Spotify puts it; that is, the convergence of editorial and algorithms. And Kinzen CEO Mark Little posted twice this week: one on the problem with how we are developing content moderation solutions right now, and another on some of the exciting possibilities we are exploring which are part of the many solutions we need to fix the information crisis. If you want to keep up to date, sign up to our weekly newsletter at kinzen.com.)

So this week instead of going about the usual roundup of emerging narratives and platform reactions, I thought for this edition — the last one before November 3 — we could take a step back and reflect on the wider trends we’ve seen this year. (This is supposed to be the slow social media newsletter after all.)

I will do so, however, with a little bit of curation from articles published in the last week as per usual.

The call is from inside the house

One clear development since 2016 is that domestic disinformation appears to be a much bigger threat than meddling by foreign powers. In fact, the US is so polarised now that many reports have indicated how foreign operators don’t have to create or concoct; they can simply push and prod at the cleavages in American society that are so regularly exposed by domestic bad actors.

This is not to say they have gone away you know. The Russians, Chinese and Iranians have all been accused of election interference, but the scale of what’s happening domestically, and from inside the White House itself, is on another level.

As my former colleague Claire Wardle wrote this week, “The fissure between left and right, between the religious and atheists, between the coastal elites and those who live in the “flyover states” emerged decades ago, and the canyon continues to widen today at an ever-faster rate. Foreign actors can do whatever they want to speed things along, but there’s little they can do that America isn’t already doing to itself.”

The integrity of the election is called into question months out from voting

For the last few weeks this roundup has focused a lot on ballot misinformation. I expect that to continue in overdrive in the coming weeks unless there is a landslide victory one way or the other.

This week, The New York Times reported on how a “tsunami” of misinformation is overwhelming election officials. Let’s hope we’re not in for weeks of discussions about hanging chads and the like.

Monitoring multiple languages

One big worry, particularly as it relates to the key state of Florida, is the spread of misinformation in Spanish. We’ve seen reports on this quite a bit in recent days and weeks, but I fear the dominance of English means there’s a lot more happening that hasn’t yet been uncovered.

With COVID, it became clear throughout 2020 that a multi-language approach is crucial in combatting misinformation. Examples abound of the same voice note re armies on the streets jumping from one country to another as lockdowns swept most of the world.

(In Kinzen I’m privileged to learn from editorial colleagues who are experts in misinformation in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Arabic and Russian.)

Your text messages are a battleground

Hardly a new trend but one that is incredibly difficult to understand because of the nature of the medium. Text messaging and networks like WhatsApp continue to be problematic. Part of the danger here is that a text message is where we are psychologically vulnerable: maybe we’ve grown accustomed to not trusting everything we see on social media but a text message delivered straight to our phones?

On Thursday, I noted two stories that offered insights in this regard. Reuters reported that volunteer moderators are looking for misinformation about Biden on WhatsApp targeting Indian-Americans. And The Washington Post reported that, as the election draws nearer, there is a surge of misinformation in texts and over email. Earlier in the week, Protocol and The New York Times reported on the proliferation of disinformation campaigns through text messaging.

Watch out for the armchair election analysts

In so many ways, we often forget how the democratisation of information enabled by the internet and social platforms can be a really great thing, but it creates new weaknesses even as it builds strengths. That’s why this NBC News report is fascinating on how an architect in Brooklyn has a massive responsibility to make sure his unofficial Twitter account, with over 200,000 followers, is extremely cautious in calling the election. Despite all the potential for an innocent mistake and unseen consequences, he plans to go ahead and make the call.

The growing confidence of militias

It seems every day there is a new report about the disturbing rise of militia groups. Consider the plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Nevertheless, I am hoping we look back on this note in the weeks, months and years to come and find that I was wrong to put a spotlight on this potential problem. Sadly, there is a real chance that “election observers” armed with guns intimidate election officials, further complicating an already complicated count with so many millions of postal ballots. How could various militia groups across the country — emboldened by Trump’s dog whistles — impact this election? What will they do if they don’t like the result?

This week, OneZero reported on how far-right militias are preparing for the election on alternative platforms such as Zello, MeWe, Parler, Gab, and Rocket.Chat, “stoking fear about post-election unrest, encouraging their compatriots to prepare for uprisings in major cities.”

The Daily Beast reported on leaked Boogaloo chats which reveal fantasies about killing random civilians and support for law enforcement.

But his emails

First off, as always, you should go and read Zeynep Tufekci on the Hunter Biden story.

It seems at this point that the supposed controversy simply didn’t stick in the way that the Hillary Clinton one did. I will gladly argue as to the reasons why with you over a pint when this pandemic is over, but two stories on this really stood out this week.

First, NBC News reported that “a fake persona laid the groundwork” for the whole thing. The story identifies Martin Aspen, the author of a fake intelligence document about Biden, as a fabricated identity.

Second, the AP reported after digging in on the whole controversy, finding that “Even if the emails in the Post are legitimate, they do not validate claims that Biden’s actions were influenced by his son’s business dealings.”

Finally, what can we expect?

I strongly suggest that if you are thinking about the impact of misinformation on election night or trying to get ahead of it in the days to come, check out this excellent report from the Election Integrity Partnership. It is the culmination of research from experts in the field including Kate Starbird, Michael Caulfield, Renee DiResta, Jevin West, Emma Spiro, Nicole Buckley, Rachel Moran, and Morgan Wack. Grab a cuppa first though, it’s a long read. And take a deep breath.

As Nina Jankowicz wrote this week, the ultimate victim of disinformation is democracy. Let’s hope it’s not bloodied and wounded on Tuesday night.

Talk to you next week.