Digital Fractures. Disinformation, Democracy and the Media
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Digital Fractures. Disinformation, Democracy and the Media by Caroline Orr with Emma McIntosh Digital Fractures. Digital Disinformation, Democracy and the Media Democracy Disinformation, Digital Fractures. Disinformation, Democracy and the Media Vancouver, April 2020 Like many people, when I first saw the earliest memes and misinformation of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, I was both bemused and incredulous. They were so outlandish, crude and offensive: What could anyone possibly hope to achieve with them? But that was before we knew how shadowy corporate, political and state actors alike had collaborated to weaponize social networking data — some gathered legitimately, much of it illicitly. We didn’t know yet how they were collaborating to game those same social platforms to misinform, polarize and divide. And we had yet to learn how vulnerable our democracies are to their manipulation. This report, prepared by one of the leading researchers on organized online disinformation and manipulation, tells the story of how Canadian journalists and government worked together in defence of democracy, and in particular the integrity of the 2019 federal election. Caroline Orr focuses on one initiative in particular, Canada’s National Observer’s Election Integrity Reporting Project (since expanded and renamed the Democracy and Integrity Project). She has first-hand, frontline knowledge of how those events unfolded, how the EIRP grappled with the challenges of reporting on the often-nebulous figures behind disinformation campaigns, and how those campaigns respond by unleashing venomous threats and hate from some of the darkest corners of the Internet. This report serves as an important chronology of events, part of the larger history of defending and strengthening Canadian democracy. But even more important, it deepens our understanding of the evolving nature of those campaigns. And it uncovers two important insights we can’t afford to ignore: Canada’s National Observer © 2020 | 1 First, this is no longer a largely external threat. It’s become easy to think of online disinformation, misinformation and malinformation as the product of Russian bot factories — or similar state-sponsored campaigns run from China, Iran, Saudi Arabia or India. But as Fractures. Digital you’ll read in this report, domestic political forces have taken the Russian playbook and run with it. Disregarding manipulation from powerful interests within Canada in the coming years would be a grave mistake. Equally grave would be to assume we only need to worry about election campaigns. This report makes a second insight very clear: Online disinformation campaigns don’t just aim and the Media Democracy Disinformation, to manipulate elections. They are targeting ongoing civic conversations, public opinion and political perceptions. If we focus our efforts just on protecting elections from interference, we’re barely any more secure than we’d be by doing nothing. Bad actors can simply turn to manipulating the conversations and opinions between elections that determine their eventual outcomes. And there’s every sign they’re doing exactly that. Nothing underlines the importance of addressing this kind of manipulation more broadly — not just during elections, and not just as a matter of foreign interference — than the disinformation and conspiracy-mongering that’s flooded the internet throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Here the consequences are immediate (from potentially fatal behaviour by individuals who fall for hoax treatments to arson attacks on telecommunications equipment) and far-reaching (undermining public confidence in elected governments and medical and scientific authorities). What we learned on the road to the 2019 federal election and in the campaign itself is this: We need to rethink our approach to defending democracy. It can’t just be a narrow effort of safeguarding elections; this is not just a fight for the integrity of the ballot box. This is a battle to defend and strengthen the foundations of Canadian civil society. Nor is it just Canadian democracy that’s on the line. This battle is being fought today in nations around the world. And the only way we’ll be able to prevail is if we share the lessons we’ve learned and the stories of the success — and setbacks — we encounter along the way, as part of a global conversation among democracy’s defenders. We offer this report as one contribution to that conversation. Sincerely, Linda Solomon Wood Editor-in-Chief, Canada’s National Observer Canada’s National Observer © 2020 | 2 Digital Fractures. Digital Disinformation, Democracy and the Media Democracy Disinformation, Contents Introduction 4 National Observer’s Democracy and Integrity Reporting Project 5 Background and context 7 Disinformation in the 2019 election 12 About Canada’s National Observer’s Democracy and Integrity Reporting Project 17 Harassment and threats 22 Countering disinformation: Recommendations for journalists and newsrooms 24 Conclusions 30 Disinformation-Related Events Timeline 32 Canada’s National Observer © 2020 | 3 Introduction n May 2019, several dozen journalists gathered in a hotel in downtown Toronto Fractures. Digital to confront a problem plaguing democracies around the world: disinformation. With the 2019 federal election campaign fast approaching and the scandals Isurrounding election interference in the U.S. and U.K. still unfolding, the looming question in the room was: Will it happen here? Disinformation, Democracy and the Media Democracy Disinformation, Overwhelmingly, journalists and experts agreed that yes, it could. But as we would learn five months after the Toronto-based workshop, it didn’t happen here — at least not anything that neared the scope or magnitude of what happened in the U.K. or U.S. We’re still discovering new avenues through which disinformation and online manipulation may have influenced voters in Canada, but to date the evidence suggests that Canada’s efforts to ensure a free and fair election in 2019 were largely successful. Yet Canadians still faced a minefield of disinformation, hate speech and inflammatory propaganda in the lead-up to the election, and there’s evidence that foreign actors from Russia, China and India may have been involved in attempts to sway voters — and, in some cases, political candidates and parties. Government sources who talked with National Observer on condition of anonymity warned that foreign and domestic disinformation is still an ongoing threat, and said foreign actors were and still are exploiting divisive issues to further polarize Canadians. As one government source told National Observer, there are people actively trying to drive wedges in Canadian society -- people who are trying to undermine democracy [and] attack the “ social fabric binding Canada together. Canada’s National Observer © 2020 | 4 National Observer’s Democracy and Integrity Reporting Project Digital Fractures. Digital his paper examines the information environment in Canada in the lead- up to the 2019 federal election, focusing on how the media’s involvement helped to mitigate the impact of mis- and disinformation, and how this can Tbe replicated by journalists in other countries. Disinformation, Democracy and the Media Democracy Disinformation, It looks specifically at our own efforts in this area and draws on the observations and experiences of dozens of other journalists among the group of Canadian media outlets that devoted resources to combating disinformation ahead of the election. In the spring of 2019, National Observer launched our Election Integrity Reporting Project, (renamed the Democracy and Integrity Reporting Project after the election). EIRP was a reader-funded initiative in collaboration with the Institute for Sustainability, Education and Action’s (I-SEA) public service journalism project. Two full-time reporters were assigned to the project, with additional contributions from other staff and freelance reporters. The project broadly focused on two areas: disinformation around climate change and, in response to reader input, disinformation and the rise of hate. Between May and November 2019, National Observer published 65 articles through the EIRP, covering issues such as social media manipulation, partisan memes, online hate speech and viral hoaxes. Our reporting prompted responses from a wide range of people and entities, including politicians, social media companies, political campaigns, interest groups and activists. Readers engaged with the content and offered overwhelmingly positive feedback — as well as suggestions and tips that led to important investigations and coverage. Perhaps most importantly, National Observer showed that even small newsrooms can have a big impact. Defining the problem The way we talk about false content matters, and one of the most common terms we use — “fake news” — may be counterproductive. Public polling shows Canadians are divided over what it refers to, and many associate it with multiple meanings. Worse, the term has been weaponized by President Donald Trump to discredit news stories that are critical of his leadership or do not support his preferred narrative. Other regimes use “fake news” as justification for censorship laws targeting opponents of the ruling party, or wield the term as “undermining propaganda”: implying a commitment to truth and objectivity while discrediting factually correct criticism. Canada’s National Observer © 2020 | 5 Our project adopted definitions consistent with those proposed by First Draft News. The three primary