Fake News - Weapons of Mass Disinformation - Politics, Polls, and Social Media's Uphill Battle Against Fake News - The Economic Times
Fake News - Weapons of Mass Disinformation - Politics, Polls, and Social Media's Uphill Battle Against Fake News - The Economic Times
economictimes.indiatimes.com
Though “disinformation” entered the lexicon only towards the end of the Cold
War era, it had long been used as a covert tactic since the time of the centuries-
old Roman-Persian conflict. Derived from dezinformatsiya, a term said to be
coined by Joseph Stalin during the World War II, disinformation has morphed
into a monster that is capable of anything from sparking communal tension to
swinging elections in the age of digital warfare.
From nation states to political parties, today’s global geopolitical arena is riddled
with disinformation. Political camps are increasingly becoming similar to
medieval-era secret societies, but the only difference is that they are spreading
disinformation instead of revolutionary ideas. Further, political parties seem to
have no qualms about relying on such tactics every time elections approach. For
instance, sample the following developments: ●Russia and China have used the
pandemic to boost disinformation campaigns designed to interfere with foreign
elections. ●Russian-influence operations targeting the US and the European
Union are becoming increasingly undetectable. ●Certain governments in Africa
took to social media to spread disinformation and influence electoral campaigns.
●Myanmar witnessed a surge in hate speech and disinformation ahead of its
general elections on November 8. ●The Jair Bolsonaro government in Brazil is
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The year 2019 marked what was termed by sections of the media as the “first
WhatsApp election in India”, witnessing a sharp and targeted digital electoral
campaign. The Facebook-owned messaging app has got a more powerful
companion now which offers an even wider reach for the political narrative. Of
late, Twitter has seen intense activity as a platform for heated political debates,
allegations, and false claims, especially during the election season.
"When popular political figures share misinformation, it is more likely that their
most loyal supporters will believe the information."
— Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
Though the political storm in the US has somewhat settled with the conclusion
of the hotly contested presidential elections, other nation states continue to broil
in the face of disinformation campaigns. What makes the situation even worse is
the fact that several popular public figures have jumped on the digital-
propaganda bandwagon. While negative campaigning is nothing new in many
democratic nations, it has taken a more extreme form in recent years as we’ve
seen with candidates tagging their opponents with extreme labels, making
unfounded allegations about their opponents or voting procedures (such as
fraud) or even calling for the Opposition to be locked up,” says Dustin Carnahan,
assistant professor, Department of Communication, Michigan State University.
Any piece of information or misinformation, when shared by a popular political
figure, increases the likelihood of exposure due to their large following on social-
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media platforms. Exposure alone, when repeated, can raise the likelihood of
audiences believing false or misleading claims. Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen,
director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, agrees that
misinformation coming from the top is one of the most serious problems today.
“When popular political figures share misinformation, it is more likely that their
most loyal supporters will believe the information,” he says. It gives licence to
others who spread misinformation and increases the risk that attempts to limit
misinformation will be seen as politically motivated, he adds. “Disinformation is
intentionally false information, which definitely gains legitimacy when it is
shared by people in leadership positions,” reiterates Marietje Schaake,
international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and
international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial
Intelligence.
Now let’s take a look at the fake-news rank score of various leaders as projected
on the FakeRank tool developed by Adverif.ai, an ad-verification platform actively
involved in identifying disinformation using artificial intelligence.
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nearly 900 times in his tweets. Her research highlights that he redoubled his
efforts to bash the Fourth Estate ahead of the election results.
Fake news in the Indian landscape is a more deep-rooted problem. It gets an even
stronger footing when fuelled and funded by parties and politicians.
Ahead of the Bihar elections, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 9,500-strong IT cell
heads had formed around 72,000 WhatsApp groups for each booth to keep the
voters informed about the party’s initiatives and messages. The Indian National
Congress, on the other hand, in alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal, created
around 3,800 WhatsApp groups.
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According to a 2018 study by BBC titled “Duty, Identity, Credibility: ‘Fake News’
and the ordinary citizen in India”, 56.2% of the accounts followed by the Indian
prime minister’s personal handle are unverified. Furthermore, 61% of these
accounts sit in the cluster of pro-BJP amplifiers and have an average following of
25,370 and have an average of 48,388 tweets in their lifetime. Twitter handles of
other national leaders such as Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal, too, follow
unverified accounts but the proportion stands at 11% and 37.7%, lower than that
of Narendra Modi.
Election season is a busy time for the team of 45 people at the UK-based startup
that fights fake news, Logically. “Unfortunately, that is when we see the
mis/disinformation explode,” says its founder Lyric Jain. In the months prior to
the US elections, Logically deployed its industry-leading threat-detection
platform in the US to identify false information, coordinated inauthentic
behaviour, foreign interference, voter-suppression efforts, and activities
undermining electoral confidence. However, this election season has surpassed
the expectations of fake-news watchkeepers and fact-checkers. “In the US this
year, unfortunately we are seeing a significant amount of misinformation and
disinformation, more so even than in 2016,” Jain says. “But it’s not just volume
that’s cause for concern, it’s how it’s being generated and who’s behind it.”
While foreign interference is still an issue, the content that is being generated
and coordinated by domestic actors has seen by far a greater increase in the US in
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2020. Part of the upsurge is due to the events this year such as Covid-19, civil
unrest, and the rise of QAnon, which contributed to an incredibly febrile
atmosphere that has been driven largely by domestic forces and then amplified
by foreign actors.
“I think it’s fair to say that the [social media] platforms have had a mixed record
over the last few years,” says Jain of Logically. However, he adds that these
platforms were late in recognising the seriousness of the problem, and then spent
too much time on internal debates rather than taking action. But in recent
months, he believes, they have taken some positive steps and now seem to have
accepted the significance of the problem. But that may not be enough. The
challenge of misinformation and disinformation is huge, and their perpetrators
are both well organised and financially incentivised. Meanwhile, posts by popular
handles or profiles carrying fake claims or hate speech often go unchecked on
social-media platforms. By the time the respective content-moderation teams
take note of it, such posts would have gone viral. Carnahan explains that if a
politician posts fake news and it stays on the platform, he or she has
accomplished the goal of advancing a narrative that serves their electoral
purposes. On the other hand, if the social-media platform swings into action
quickly and removes the post, it is often blamed as being corrupt or pushing an
agenda against the said politician’s party.This blame game puts social media-
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platforms in a difficult spot. Though many are aware of the problem, they have
not been able to implement a solution due to behind-the-scenes manoeuvring by
politicians. Furthermore, platforms that take a stronger stand against fake news
run the risk of being subjected to accusations of political bias and investigations.
To subdue the impact of fake news during elections, Facebook last month
announced a moratorium on political ads in the period after the election day in
the US. But this was in contradiction with what the company’s CEO Mark
Zuckerberg had pledged initially — to not introduce any further election-related
policy changes.Twitter rolled out a feature encouraging users to add their own
comments when sharing a tweet by prompting "Quote Tweets" in place of
"Retweets". It also added additional warnings and restrictions on tweets with
misleading content around the US elections. The microblogging platform labelled
nearly 300,000 tweets with disputed and potentially misleading content during
the US electoral period from October 27 till November 11. Google, too, said that
it would impose a temporary post-election ban on political ads after the election
day to circumvent false claims about the electoral results. Despite these efforts,
the battle against fake news is only half won. The reason: Politicians always know
how to sidestep regulations when it comes to furthering their agenda. What are
the government and the authorities doing about it? Well, next to nothing.
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ll-battle-against-fake-news/primearticleshow/79224129.cms
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