The capitol riots on January 6th, 2021 left four insurgents and one law enforcement officer dead. The alternative social media platform Parler immediately became the focus of the investigation of this violent attack against democratically elected leaders of the 117th United States Congress. Was a social media platform used to coordinate the insurgents? Did Parler facilitate online radicalization against democratic leaders by allowing extremist content? An independent data analyst used scraped geolocation data from Parler users to create an interactive map to identify insurgents, track their movements and establish links to content posted by Parler users as they attempt to disrupt the certification of the electoral college vote and beyond. Another group of researchers wrote a captivating research paper about Parler’s account and content mechanisms. The researchers drew upon a large set of data. Analyzing more than 120 million pieces of content from more than 2 million Parler users they demonstrate the inner workings of account level content and content level moderation. It is an invaluable read to better understand Parler’s operations and how the platform managed to grow throughout the second half of the Trump presidency culminating in the capitol riots. But, perhaps more importantly, their contribution offers insights into Parler’s role of creating a platform for extremist content, its detrimental influence on American politics and the preventable translation into real world harm.
tl;dr
Parler is an alternative social network promoting itself as a service that allows its users to “Speak freely and express yourself openly, without fear of being deplatformed for your views.” Because of this promise, the platform become popular among users who were suspended on mainstream social networks for violating their terms of service, as well as those fearing censorship. In particular, the service was endorsed by several conservative public figures, encouraging people to migrate there from traditional social networks. After the events of January 6 2021, Parler has been progressively deplatformed, with its app being removed from popular mobile stores and the entire website being taken down by their hosting provider. In this paper, we provide the first data-driven characterization of Parler. We collected 120M posts from 2.1M users posted between 2018 and 2020 as well as metadata from 12M user profiles. We find that the platform has witnessed large influxes of new users after being endorsed by popular figures, as well as a reaction to the 2020 US Presidential Election. We also find that discussion on the platform is dominated by conservative topics, President Trump, as well as conspiracy theories like QAnon.
Make sure to read the full paper titled An Early Look at the Parler Online Social Network by Max Aliapoulios, Emmi Bevensee, Jeremy Blackburn, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, and Savvas Zannettou at https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.03820
A recent study on compliance with health recommendations investigated the effects of exposure to partisan media on our attitudes and behaviors. Understanding the value-attitude relations towards public health information is important to structure an effective media narrative. This is to successfully minimize the harm of the coronavirus caused by non-compliance with health recommendations. Moreover it sheds a light on the importance of a healthy, bi-partisan media diet.
tl;dr
Exposure to right-wing media has been shown to relate to lower perceived threat from COVID- 19, lower compliance with prophylactic measures against it, and higher incidence of infection and death. What features of right-wing media messages account for these effects? In a preregistered cross-sectional study (N = 554) we test a model that differentiates perceived consequences of two CDC recommendations—washing hands and staying home—for basic human values. People who consumed more right-wing media perceived these behaviors as less beneficial for their personal security, for the well-being of close ones, and the well-being of society at large. Perceived consequences of following the CDC recommendations mediated the relationship between media consumption and compliance with recommendations. Implications for public health messaging are discussed.
Make sure to read the full paper titled Why is right-wing media consumption associated with lower compliance with COVID-19 measures? by Vladimir Ponizovskiy, Lusine Grigoryan and Wilhelm Hofmann at https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5b3cn
Source: Sean Hannity, Media using coronavirus coverage as political weapon, Published on March 10, 2020 by Fox News on YouTube
Under the theory of planned behavior, a triad of beliefs (attitude towards the coronavirus, normative acceptance of coronavirus personal protective measures, and control of adherence to coronavirus health information) feeds into a consumer’s evaluation to form intent to behave in a certain way. A recent German study applied the theory of planned behavior to predict a consumer’s attitude towards health information recommending to frequently wash hands and to observe stay-at-home guidance to minimize the risk of contracting or spreading COVID-19. Specifically the recommendations of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Research in health communications demonstrated that even when the health information is intentionally designed to evoke a behavioral change, relevant and non-redundant, the actual behavioral change in the consumer is negligible.
Now most beliefs do not necessarily result in behavioral change. It requires a certain type of belief: value-instantiating beliefs (VIB). These are personal beliefs derived from perceived consequences of objects, actions or events that are measured against personal values. For example, a value might be security of family and self. An action might be compliance with health information. Sentences such as “COVID-19 is dangerous”, “Social distancing restricts my freedom” or “Masks offer no protection” demonstrate the range of strength and impact on the value-attitude relations of a consumer. This study applied VIBs to differentiate consumer compliance with simple coronavirus protections based on their exposure to either right-wing or left-wing media. Right-wing media were represented by Fox News, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Breitbart. Left-wing media were represented by CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, and the Washington Post. Here the underlying hypothesis rests on the idea that right-wing media, in direct comparison to left-wing media, is less likely to present COVID-19 health information in the form of CDC recommendations as positive and is more prone towards downplaying the protective measures over individual liberty or personal self-determination. Therefore, the researchers focused on features of COVID-19 information that is likely to induce an assessment or a behavioral change, i.e. recommendations designed to stress the importance of hygiene and self-isolation within one’s personal bubble in the context of COVID-19. The goal was to map out relevant elements that influence attitudes towards COVID-19 protection measures and the behavioral compliance with them.
They found that consumers of right-wing media register CDC recommendations as less meaningful to their security and in line with their values. This results in less positive attitude towards COVID-19 health information and lower compliance with simple coronavirus protections. In other words, the more Fox News a person consumed, the more indifferent was that person’s attitude towards the positive effects that washing the hands and staying at home has on their health. This led to higher infection rates and death. The researchers were limited by a number of factors, however, ranging from establishing causality between media consumption that translated into behavior and tracking these changes over a longer time period. They were nevertheless able to demonstrate that not just individual health but the health of the general public and its ability to combat the COVID-19 pandemic is influenced by the accuracy of the presentation of health information concerning COVID-19 and highlighted the associated risks of ignoring them. This research helps media professionals to reframe their presentation of health information and it offers valuable insights to develop countermeasures against political abuse of health information through partisan media.
The political and diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia have been in decline for the past decade. Geopolitical tensions between the two nations increased steadily leading to more and more political propaganda of their respective state media. This is also reflected in their government policy documents. These propaganda efforts resulted in a number of influence operations ranging from coordinated inauthentic behavior to create a false narrative to intentional spread of disinformation to undermine the political integrity of the other side. A recent article by researchers of the University of Sheffield and Bard College examined 135 journalistic pieces of American and Russian state media to better understand how their propaganda is portrayed in both countries. It’s an important contribution to better understand emerging public crisis, appropriate content policy response and future diplomacy.
tl;dr
The period of growing tensions between the United States and Russia (2013–2019) saw mutual accusations of digital interference, disinformation, fake news, and propaganda, particularly following the Ukraine crisis and the 2016 US presidential election. This article asks how the United States and Russia represent each other’s and their own propaganda, its threat, and power over audiences. We examine these representations in US and Russian policy documents and online articles from public diplomacy media Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and RT. The way propaganda is framed, (de)legitimized, and securitized has important implications for public understanding of crises, policy responses, and future diplomacy. We demonstrate how propaganda threats have become a major part of the discourse about the US–Russia relationship in recent years, prioritizing state-centred responses and disempowering audiences.
How does the United States influence its own citizens by the ways in which it represents the propaganda efforts of Russia at home? How is American propaganda portrayed in Russia? Contrary to popular belief the United States is actively conducting influence operations to disseminate propaganda in foreign countries and at home. Under the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, known as Smith-Mundt Act and it’s 2012 modernization amendments, the U.S. government is free to extend propaganda efforts to public broadcasters and radio stations foreign and domestic. In Russia, the situation is quite different: state-owned media, strategic use of broadcasting and information technologies are a central feature of the current government. Recent legislation aimed to pressure opposition and restrict freedom of speech and assembly are only surface examples of Russia’s soft power approach in foreign and domestic policy. President Putin defined soft power as “promoting one’s interests and policies through persuasion”, which has translated into Russian public diplomacy initiatives that use a combination of international broadcasting and web-based social networks to engage foreign publics.
Russia’s constitution declares Russia to be a democratic state with a republican form of government and state power divided between the legislative, executive and judicial branches. However, the policy changes introduced by Vladimir Putin have effectively turned Russia’s political system into a particular type of post-totalitarian authoritarianism. Similarly, the United States political system is a federal constitutional republic of checks and balances between the executive, the legislative and the judicial branch. While the United States and Russia differ greatly with regard to their political systems, their respective mechanisms, construction and response to propaganda afford valuable insights for communication researchers.
To start, it is important to understand propaganda and its variation in public diplomacy. The researchers elaborate on the intricacies of finding the appropriate terminology but suggest propaganda to be
“a process by which an idea or an opinion is communicated to someone else for a specific persuasive purpose”
Public diplomacy reaches a step further by extending a state’s policy objective to an international audience through intercultural exchanges, advocacy and international broadcasting. The researchers examined 90 articles by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and 45 articles by Russia Today through a critical discourse analysis in an effort to compare and differentiate between moral representation, reporting on government actions, actors and victims. They then parsed it with threats to national security and national identity. They found that both the United States and Russia view and portray propaganda as an external threat orchestrated by a foreign actor using conflict-related, binary language with no room for compromise. Both countries’ propaganda language widely used scientific and technology metaphors to create an impression of sophistication beyond the comprehension of average Joe. Mere exposure to this type of propaganda is assumed to be enough to rally citizens; actual persuasion was not apparently an objective for either U.S. or Russian state media.
While the United States understands propaganda as a foreign threat against the national security of the West, Russian documents use foreign to clarify the externality of influenced communications or misinformation without specific location labelling in the context of propaganda. The United States often portrays itself as ‘leader of the free world’ with the oldest free democracy whereas Russia is depicted as a morally isolated, neo-soviet autocracy. Russia often diametrically portrays the United States by its flawed political system redirecting the Russian audience to the shortcomings of American democracy and conflicting political leaders. Both the United States and Russia construct propaganda in similar ways using similar elements: (1) they present a national security threat to the state and its international reputation while (2) they reframe domestic political problems as foreign-induced, which then justifies a strong, determined state response. This fear-driven approach to portray propaganda as something that can only be mitigated by a strong government response tends to disenfranchise citizens, induces chilling effects that lead to censorship and undermine civic engagement.
As both the United States and Russia will likely continue to lace state media with its propaganda citizens can learn to be vigilant when interacting with content online, in particular if the overall messaging of the content presents itself in a binary fashion. To counter disinformation, policymakers must better communicate policy solutions and focus on media literacy and education. Lastly, government officials can contribute to decrease propaganda and polarization by reframing their political narrative through an infinite mindset with choices and compassion.
A recent study investigated YouTube’s efforts to provide more transparency about the ownership of certain YouTube channels. The study concerned YouTube’s disclaimers displayed under the video that indicate the content was produced or is funded by a state-controlled media outlet. The study sought to shed light on whether or not these disclaimers are an efficient means to reduce the impact of misinformation.
tl;dr
In order to test the efficacy of YouTube’s disclaimers, we ran two experiments presenting participants with one of four videos: A non-political control, an RT video without a disclaimer, an RT video with the real disclaimer, or the RT video with a custom implementation of the disclaimer superimposed onto the video frame. The first study, conducted in April 2020 (n = 580) used an RT video containing misinformation about Russian interference in the 2016 election. The second conducted in July 2020 (n = 1,275) used an RT video containing misinformation about Russian interference in the 2020 election. Our results show that misinformation in RT videos has some ability to influence the opinions and perceptions of viewers. Further, we find YouTube’s funding labels have the ability to mitigate the effects of misinformation, but only when they are noticed, and the information absorbed by the participants. The findings suggest that platforms should focus on providing increased transparency to users where misinformation is being spread. If users are informed, they can overcome the potential effects of misinformation. At the same time, our findings suggest platforms need to be intentional in how warning labels are implemented to avoid subtlety that may cause users to miss them.
Source: RT, 2020 US elections, Russia to blame for everything… again, Last accessed on Dec 31, 2020 at https://youtu.be/2qWANJ40V34?t=164
State-controlled media outlets are increasingly used for foreign interference in civic events. While independent media outlets can be categorized on social media and associated with a political ideology, a state-controlled media outlet generally appears independent or detached from a state-controlled political agenda. Yet they regularly create content concomitant with the controlling state’s political objectives and its leaders. This deceives the public about its state-affiliation and undermines civil liberties. The problem is magnified on social media platforms with their reach and potential for virality ahead of political elections. A prominent example is China’s foreign interference efforts in the referendum on the independence of Hong Kong.
An increasing number of social media platforms launched integrity measures to increase content transparency to counter the integrity risks associated with a state-controlled media outlet proliferating potential disinformation content. In 2018 YouTube began to roll out an information panel feature to provide additional context on state-controlled and publicly funded media outlets. These information panels or disclaimers are really warning labels that make the viewer aware about the potential political influence of a government on the information shown in the video. These warning labels don’t provide any additional context on the veracity of the content or whether the content was fact-checked. On desktop, they appear alongside a hyperlink leading to the wikipedia entry of the media outlet. As of this writing the feature applies to 27 governments including the United States government.
The researchers focused on whether these warning labels would mitigate the effects on viewers’ perception created by misinformation shown in videos of the Russian state-controlled media outlet RT (Russia Today). RT evades deplatforming by complying with YouTube’s terms of service. This turned the RT channel into an influential resource for the Russian government to undermine confidence of the American public to trust established American media outlets and the United States government when reporting on the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. An RT video downplaying the Russian influence operation was used for the study and shown to participants with and without a label identifying RT’s affiliation with the Russian government as well as a superimposed warning label with the same language and hyperlink to wikipedia. This surfaced the following findings:
Disinformation spread by RT does impact viewer’s perception and is effective at that.
Videos without a warning label were more successful in reducing trust in established mainstream media and the government
Videos without a warning label but a superimposed interstitial with the language of the warning label were most effective in preserving the integrity of viewer’ perceptions
The researchers further discovered small changes in coloring, design and placement of the warning label increase the viewer taking notice of it and it helps with absorbing the information. Both conditions must be met because noticing a label without comprehending its message had no significant impact on understanding the political connection of creator and content.
I’m intrigued by these findings for the road ahead offers a great opportunity to shape how we distribute and consume information on social media without falling prey for foreign influence operations. Though open questions remain:
Are these warning labels equally effective on other social media platforms, e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, etc.?
Are these warning labels equally effective with other state-controlled media? This study focused on Russia, a large, globally acknowledged state actor. How does a warning label for content by the government of Venezuela or Australia impact the efficacy of misinformation?
This study seemed to be focused on the desktop version of YouTube. Are these findings transferable to the mobile version of YouTube?
What is the impact of peripheral content on viewer’s perception, e.g. YouTube’s recommendation showing videos in its sidebar that all claim RT is a hoax versus videos that all give RT independent credibility?
The YouTube channels of C-SPAN and NPR did not appear to display a warning label within their videos. Yet the United States is among the 27 countries currently listed in YouTube’s policy. What are the criteria to be considered a publisher, publicly funded or state-controlled? How are these criteria met or impacted by a government, e.g. passing certain broadcasting legislation or declaration?
Lastly, the cultural and intellectual background of the target audience is particularly interesting. Here is an opportunity to research the impact of warning labels with participants of different political ideologies, economic circumstances and age-groups in contrast to the actual civic engagement ahead, during and after an election
The 2019 Wordwide Threat Assessment warned of deepfakes deployed to manipulate public opinion. And while the 2020 U.S. presidential elections did not see an onslaught of deepfakes undermining voter confidence, experts agree that the threat remains tangible. A recent study conducted by researchers of the University of Amsterdam investigated the impact of political deepfakes meant to discredit a politician that were microtargeted to a specific segment of the electorate.
tl;dr
Deepfakes are perceived as a powerful form of disinformation. Although many studies have focused on detecting deepfakes, few have measured their effects on political attitudes, and none have studied microtargeting techniques as an amplifier. We argue that microtargeting techniques can amplify the effects of deepfakes, by enabling malicious political actors to tailor deepfakes to susceptibilities of the receiver. In this study, we have constructed a political deepfake (video and audio), and study its effects on political attitudes in an online experiment. We find that attitudes toward the depicted politician are significantly lower after seeing the deepfake, but the attitudes toward the politician’s party remain similar to the control condition. When we zoom in on the microtargeted group, we see that both the attitudes toward the politician and the attitudes toward his party score significantly lower than the control condition, suggesting that microtargeting techniques can indeed amplify the effects of a deepfake, but for a much smaller subgroup than expected.
Make sure to read the full paper titled Do (Microtargeted) Deepfakes Have Real Effects on Political Attitudes? by Tom Dobber, Nadia Metoui, Damian Trilling, Natali Helberger, and Claes de Vreese at https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220944364
Credits: UC Berkeley/Stephen McNally
Deepfakes are a subcategory of modern information warfare. The technology leverages machine learning to generate audio-visual content that imitates original content but differs in both intent and message. Its highly deceptive appearance renders it a potent weapon to influence public opinion, undermine strategic policies or disrupt civic engagement. An infamous deepfake example depicts former president Obama seemingly calling president Trump expletives. Online microtargeting is a form of social media marketing to disseminate advertisements tailored to the specific interests of an identifiable, curated audience. Within the political context microtargeting is used to spread a campaign message to a specific audience that is identified and grouped by characteristics to either convince the audience to vote for or against a candidate. There are a number of civic risks associated with deploying deepfakes:
Deepfake content is hard to tell apart from original and authentic content. While deepfake videos may signal some nefarious intent to a cautious audience, the potential impact of deepfake radio or deepfake text on voter behavior hasn’t been researched as of this writing
Political actors may leverage deepfakes to discredit opponents, undermine news reporting or equip trailing third-party candidates with sufficient influence to erode voter confidence
Used in a political campaign deepfakes may be strategically deployed to incite a political scandal or to reframe current affairs and regain control of an election narrative
The study created a deepfake video depicting an interview of a prominent center-right politician of a large christian democratic party. The manipulated part of the otherwise original and authentic content shows the politician seemingly making a joke about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ:
“But, as Christ would say: don’t crucify me for it.”
This content was shown to a randomly selected group of christian voters, who had identified their religious, conservative beliefs or voted for this politician in past elections. The researchers found that deepfakes spread without microtargeting the audience would impact the behavior towards the politician but not necessarily his political party. However, deepfakes tailored to a specific audience using political microtargeting techniques amplified the discrediting message of the deepfake therefore impacting both the behavior towards the politican and the political party. Interestingly, staunch supporters of the politician might be shielded from a lasting behavioral change due their own motivated reasoning (bias) derived from the politician’s ideology. For this group, the researchers argue a certain degree of discomfort or deviation from previous political ideology conveyed in a deepfake may reach a tipping point for staunch supporters to align with the results of this study but the limitations of this study may also indicate room for some unforeseen outcomes.
A roadmap to counter microtargeted deepfakes should include legislators passing regulations to limit political campaign spending online, which would directly confine a campaign to focus on their limited financial resources and weed out corporate interests. Second, new regulations should focus on the protection of personal-identifiable data. A microtargeting dataset includes location data, personal preferences and website interactions etc. While this data is valuable within a commercial context, it should be excluded from civic engagements such as elections. Academics will have an opportunity to discover insights on algorithm bias to improve upon the existing machine learning approach that is training generative adversarial networks with pre-conditioned datasets. Moreover, future research has an opportunity to further investigate the impact of manipulated media on voter education, confidence and behavior within and outside of political elections.
Here’s one of my favorite deepfake videos of president Trump explaining money laundering to his son-in-law Jared Kushner in a deepfake(d) scene of “Breaking Bad”
