As the US prepares for next year’s midterm elections, and the slew of foreign and domestic online disinformation and propaganda likely to accompany

Global Democracies Need to Align to Fight Disinformation

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2021-07-09 06:00:03

As the US prepares for next year’s midterm elections, and the slew of foreign and domestic online disinformation and propaganda likely to accompany it, it is crucial to develop sensible social and legal protections for the groups most likely to be targeted by digital spin campaigns. While the timing is right, we must create a renewed blueprint for democratic internet governance so we can protect the diverse array of people affected by ongoing problems in the space.

For the last two years the Propaganda Research Lab at the Center for Media Engagement at UT Austin has been studying the ways in which various global producers of social-media-based propaganda efforts focus their strategies. One of the lab’s key findings in the US has been that these individuals—working for an array of political parties, domestic and foreign governments, political consulting firms, and PR groups—often use a combination of private platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram and more open ones like Facebook and YouTube in bids to manipulate minority voting blocks in specific regions or cities. For instance, we’ve found that they pay particular attention to spreading political disinformation amongst immigrant and diaspora communities in Florida, North Carolina, and other swing states.

Samuel Woolley (@samuelwoolley) is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and program director of propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement, both at UT Austin. His book The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth discusses how we can prevent emergent technology from being used for manipulation. Miroslava Sawiris (@MiraSawiris) is a senior research fellow at GLOBSEC. She has led research projects analyzing the impact of disinformation campaigns on electoral processes in Europe and societal vulnerabilities to information manipulation. She is a review board member of the Konspiratori.sk project advocating for defunding disinformation sites, and she leads GLOBSEC’s Alliance for Healthy Infosphere, which joins organizations from 7 EU member states advocating for meaningful regulation of the digital space.