Online Disinformation and Media Manipulation in Politics
Politicians have leveraged the power of online communication to air their policies during campaigns. During the 2016 U.S. general elections, President Donald Trump’s campaign team harnessed the power of big data analytics to conduct an online campaign through social media apps that lead to victory for the Republican representative. In five months, the Trump team paid out 44 million dollars on 5.5million Facebook ads as opposed to Hillary Clinton, who spent 28 million dollars on 66,000 ads. However, in March 2018, it emerged that Trump’s campaign breached data privacy rules through the misuse of Facebook data. Interestingly, the election results were converse to prior predictions by political reporters and analysts who expected the Democratic Party to win the presidential seat through Hillary Clinton. Currently, the world is undergoing the information age, where access to information is crucial for decision making. Due to the widespread access to the internet, most people rely on online platforms as a source of information. Nonetheless, the internet enables anyone from the world to spread the news to any part of the globe. As observed in the previous general elections, some of the campaign teams utilize online avenues to spread disinformation and enhance their propaganda. Hence, it is vital to understand the actors behind disinformation, the tactics they employ, and how this information impacts political outcomes.
Major Actors Behind Media Disinformation
Various actors play a part in spreading political misinformation through media outlets. One of the significant sources of misinformation comes from internet trolls. Described as people who intentionally act in a certain way to elicit an emotional response from their targets. Goblins in the U.S. are fond of making fun of mainstream media and deceiving journalists into publishing fake stories. In most cases, trolls engage in such behavior for their amusement or to highlight certain shortcomings of the mainstream media. However, Mihaylov, Georgi, and Preslav observed an emergence of hired trolls who were outsourced by political parties, companies, and politicians to publish fake news and posts on public forums such as chat rooms. For instance, various media reports have suggested the existence of Russian troll farms whose primary purpose is to spread misinformation to sway national and international matters in favor of the government. During the 2016 U.S. election, similar claims were raised about the use of Russian trolls in Trump’s campaign to spread fake news to American voters (Suárez-Gonzalo 27). However, it is difficult to prove such allegations because such groups have mastered the art of internet camouflage, and the Russian government denies the existence of such groups.
At times, politicians themselves are also liable for producing and spreading disinformation through various outlets. The vast social media followings enable politicians to air their political position and ideologies to garner voter support. The desire to gain popularity and more help may entice some candidates to knowingly or accidentally produce or spread misinformation to the public (Marwick & Lewis 21). Case in point, during the 2016 election, both Trump and Clinton engaged in mass misinformation during their campaigns. Before the election, Trump was a notorious conspiracy theorist, and during his attacks, he utilized conspiracy theories to influence right-wing factions. Nonetheless, the mainstream media aired the opinions as national news on the sole reason that they emerged from a politician who was vying for political office. For instance, in one of his interviews on Fox News, Trump supported a conspiracy theory that claimed that Ted Cruz’s father had a hand in the Kennedy assassination. On the other hand, Clinton attempted to influence mainstream Republicans because Trump’s ideologies were far-flung and based on conspiracy theories from individuals such as Alex Jones of Infowars. Additionally, Clinton described Trump supporters as a basket of deplorable full of racists, sexists, Islamophobics, and homophobic. Even though lying is not new to politics, it is vital to evaluate the level of politicians’ lies to prevent mass disinformation.
In light of the events of 2016 elections, scholars engaged in research aimed at shining a light on the involvement of Russia in spreading disinformation to U.S. voters. Nonetheless, researchers have observed that disinformation is an old tactic employed by foreign governments to amplify their agendas abroad (Mele et al. 40). Case studies of such governments include Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and China that have leveraged disinformation techniques to either promote authoritarian regimes or counter Western policies. Furthermore, it is essential to highlight the influence of hyper-partisan media outlets in promoting disinformation. Notably, highly partisan media outlets exist amongst left-wing and right-wing circles in the U.S. Currently, hyper-partisan media for right-wing groups include Truthfeed, Infowars, Breitbart, and the Daily Caller. In the leftist such media includes Bipartisan Report, Addicting Info, Occupy Democrats, and Daily Newsbin. Hyper partisan media outlets are characterized as actors that “combine decontextualized truths, repeated falsehoods, and leaps of logic to create a fundamentally misleading view of the world” (Tucker, J. et al., 26). Some scholars have described these media avenues as the core sources and disseminators of false information online.
Online Platforms used for disinformation
Actors behind disinformation prefer participatory and social media platforms where they can air controversial views. Such platforms include blogs and websites such as Infowars used to spread conspiracy theories. Additionally, there are also forums and message boards used to air controversial political ideologies. An example is 4chan/pol/ forum whose members exhibit characteristics of racism, xenophobia, and consistently aim at spreading hate (Coleman 120). Currently, mainstream social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are the most misused avenues if spreading political disinformation. An excellent example of social media use was observed in the 2016 election, where Cambridge Analytica, a company hired by Trump, utilized data from millions of Facebook users to conduct micro-targeting campaigns. Micro-targeting is a technique that leverages the powers of artificial intelligence and data analytics to generate tailored adverts that are more persuasive to the user. Micro-targeting fell within acceptable practices and was also used by Barrack Obama during the 2008 and 2012 elections. However, the testimony of Christopher Wiley, a Cambridge Analytica employee, revealed the use of psychological operations (PSYOPS) in micro-targeting. PSYOPS is an information warfare technique employed by the military to manipulate vulnerable individuals into supporting a given course (Suárez-Gonzalo 27). Thus, Trump’s social media campaign adverts were more manipulative as opposed to being persuasive.
Techniques Used in Disinformation
Online disinformation is aimed at targeting a multitude of people; as a result, various tactics have been crafted to aid in spreading disinformation. One technique is through manipulation of search engine algorithms to prioritize the appearance of disinformation media and stories. Given that it is a similar technique to normal adverting, some actors use existing spamming tactics such as the use of keyword stuffing, to spread their information. In traditional spamming, keyword stuffing involves the use of famous words to favor certain websites in search engine rankings (Tucker, J. et al., 30). Keyword stuffing is also utilized in online platforms through the use of keywords to extend the outreach of specific messages. For example, the use of hashtags in social media apps such as Twitter to trend a particular topic. Hackers are also hired to breach network infrastructures and target individual emails to reveal sensitive or damaging information about a given candidate. Hacking was one of the disinformation tactics employed against Hillary Clinton, where confidential emails from her campaign manager were leaked online. Afterward, online trolls and bots were utilized to spread propaganda through data collected from the emails.
Growth in technology has enabled the creation of bots, that is, software that is capable of interacting with people and generating social media content. Bots have gained popularity in the political scene where they are used to collect and spread content, increased social media following of politicians, and distribute political propaganda (Guilbeault, 37). During the first presidential debate of the 2016 election, it is estimated that bots contributed to about 20% of Twitter posts concerning the discussion. This is an alarming trend given that the bots represented approximately 0.5% of the voter population (Marwick & Lewis 38). Interestingly, pro-Trump bots were the most popular and contributed to a third of Trump’s supporters’ tweets. However, due to the complex nature of online bots, it is difficult to have an accurate account of the influence on presidential elections. Another method for disinformation is through selective censorship, where specific types of content are eliminated from online platforms (Badawy, Lerman & Ferrara, 165). For instance, Facebook allows the targeting of information to its users on a racial basis. Thus, propagators of disinformation leverage such features to exclude certain information for specific users while spreading other information that promotes their propaganda.
The consequence of Online Disinformation
Despite the in-depth research of online disinformation and propaganda, few scholarly works evaluate their influence on political outcomes such as political polarization. Majority of the scholarly works that review the impact of online disinformation are mostly journalistic reports that are based on the 2016 general election (Badawy, Lerman & Ferrara 166). Nevertheless, it is evident that fake news results in mass misinformation, which influences how people view news. For instance, despite the exposure of misinformation, some information may still change people’s beliefs and attitudes towards specific topics (Weeks 705). Moreover, disinformation also contributes to the growing distrust of mainstream media outlets. The ability of groups such as conspiracy theorists and trolls to manipulate media channels into airing false information weakens media credibility. Media distrust makes it hard for people to access accurate information, which results in people with little political knowledge (Jonathan 34). Such people end up voting on partisan lines, which undermines the purpose of democracy.
Conclusion
Part of the requirements of a democratic process is the presence of a free and fair election. In politics, access to credible information is a necessity for all citizens for them to weigh the policies of different candidates before making a final decision. In today’s world, the internet is the primary source of information for most people. However, the literature above is an example of how politicians have used the internet to spread disinformation through social media. Shockingly, the widespread availability of the internet allows even foreign governments to interrupt the democratic process of other states. The complex nature of some of the techniques used, such as a bot, makes it even harder to churn out the truth from the lies. At times, the disinformation from the online world makes it to the mainstream media stories, which affects the authenticity of such sources. Thus, the U.S. needs policies to regulate the use of online platforms for political campaigns to curb the spread of disinformation and propaganda.
Works Cited
Badawy, Adam, Lerman, Kristina, & Ferrara, Emilio. Who falls for online political manipulation?. In Companion Proceedings of The 2019 World Wide Web Conference, May 2019, pp. 162-168.
Coleman, Gabriella. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous. New York: Verso Books, 2014
Guilbeault, Douglas. “Automation, Algorithms, and Politics| Growing Bot Security: An Ecological View of Bot Agency.” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 19.
Jonathan M. Ladd, Why Americans Hate the Media and How It Matters (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
Marwick, Alice, and Rebecca Lewis. “Media manipulation and disinformation online. Data & Society Research Institute.” (2017).
Mele, Nicco, et al. “Combating fake news: An agenda for research and action.” Retrieved on October 17 (2017): 2018.
Mihaylov, Todor, Georgi Georgiev, and Preslav Nakov. “Finding opinion manipulation trolls in news community forums.” Proceedings of the Nineteenth Conference on computational natural language learning. 2015.
Suárez-Gonzalo, Sara. (2018). Your likes, your vote? Big personal data exploitation and media manipulation in the U.S. presidential election campaign of Donald Trump in 2016. Quaderns del CAC, XXI. 25-33.
Tucker, J., et al. “Social media, political polarization, and political disinformation: A review of the scientific literature, 2018.”
Weeks, Brian E. “Emotions, partisanship, and misperceptions: How anger and anxiety moderate the effect of partisan bias on susceptibility to political misinformation.” Journal of Communication 65.4 (2015): 699-719.