Looking Ahead to 2020

As the 2020 presidential campaign looms, there are concerns that disinformation will again be a factor in the election.  According to Politico, the Democratic National Committee has warned all candidates to be prepared to avoid a repeat of 2016.  In an email, the DNC advised, “[A]ll campaigns should expect to see heightened disinformation and discourse manipulation activity leading up to, during, and after the debates with the goal of polarizing opposing Democratic supporters” (Lizza, 2019, para. 6).  In September 2019, the DNC flagged more than 40 “misinformation incidents” that caused more than 4,000 social media accounts to be removed (Lizza, 2019).

Already, Russia has signaled it was prepared to interfere again in the upcoming election.  On October 21, 2019, Facebook announced it had removed a series of Russian-backed accounts that had been posing as Americans weighing in on election issues in swing states.  The fake accounts would praise Donald Trump while attacking his rival, former vice president Joe Biden (Romm & Stanley-Becker, 2019).  The accounts appear to have ties to the Internet Research Agency and used Instagram to post content and memes related to the campaign. 

Researchers have raised several other red flags, as well.  In a report, Disinformation and the 2020 Election: How the Social Media Industry Should Prepare, Barrett (2019) made some alarming predictions about the next election: (a) “Deepfake” videos will be created and shared; (b) domestic disinformation will be more widespread than falsehoods created and spread from overseas actors; (c) disinformation campaigns online will target voter suppression, (d) for-profit organizations based in the U.S. will be used to disseminate falsehoods, and (e) “Iran and China may join Russia as sources of disinformation” (p. 1).  Barrett believed that disinformation created at home will exceed the amount of fake content coming from overseas actors.

Jamieson (2018) concluded her book with a dire warning: The United States is vulnerable, and what happened in 2016 could happen again.  For this reason, I believe that social media users need to be better informed about efforts to manipulate their beliefs.  

For years, social media sites took a hands-off approach and did not employ such fact-checkers, allowing untruths to flourish (Solon, 2016).  Recently, Facebook and Twitter have been stepping up efforts to suspend suspicious accounts that spread falsehoods.  However, given the public’s tendency to like and share stories that align with their beliefs, there will continue to be a market for fake news.  Furthermore, suspending accounts has a limited effect: where old ones die, new ones quickly pop up.  The result is a virtual game of “whack-a-mole” for social media platforms and their fact-checkers.  The rise of hyperpartisan sites masquerading as mainstream news outlets, as well as advances in artificial intelligence and deepfake technology will not make the problem go away anytime soon.  That poses a threat to the pursuit of truth.  For these reasons, it is vital to continue researching the phenomenon of disinformation on social media.  As George Orwell ominously noted, “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.  Lies will pass into history” (as cited in McIntyre, 2018, para. 1).

For a look at the many resources I consulted for this project, please click here.