Digital Threats to Democratic Elections: How Foreign Actors Use Digital Techniques to Undermine Democracy

Tenove, Chris; Buffie, Jordan; McKay, Spencer; Moscrop, David

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3235819

Cited by 16 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 101 publications

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“…While the Canadian government primarily focused on potential disinformation campaigns by foreign actors, domestic actors also play a significant role in the propagation of false and deceptive information online (Tenove et al 2018). Canadian researchers and journalists identified hate groups, terrorist networks, and hyper-partisan organizations as likely domestic or transnational sources of disinformation (Communications Security Establishment 2017; Boutilier 2018).…”

Section: The Threat Of Disinformation For #Elxn43mentioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting Disinformation: Journalists and the Conflict over Truth in #Elxn43

Tenove

MacLellan

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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(Note: This is a pre-print, not copy-edited, of a chapter for publication in: Cyber-Threats to Canadian Democracy, ed. by Holly Ann Garnett and Michael Pal. McGill-Queen’s University Press.) In the run-up to the 2019 federal election in Canada, experts and policymakers raised the possibility that foreign or domestic actors might use disinformation tactics during the campaign. This prompted Canadian journalists to give unprecedented attention to threats that online disinformation might pose to the information ecosystem and thus to electoral integrity. This chapter analyzes how Canadian journalists understood and responded to disinformation in the 2019 federal election campaign.Drawing on interviews with over 30 journalists, we find that while they held competing conceptions of disinformation, most associated it with digitally enabled techniques of media manipulation (e.g. the use of automated social media accounts known as “bots”) pursued by both traditional and newly prominent actors (including foreign states, partisan organizations and loose networks of domestic trolls). To address online disinformation, some journalism organizations developed new reporting approaches and teams, while many journalists and senior editors reflected on how longstanding reporting practices may or may not address this new challenge. We then investigate key challenges that journalists face in countering disinformation by examining three illustrative cases from the 2019 campaign: the alleged role of bots and foreign accounts in online discourse; the salacious rumours about incumbent prime minister Justin Trudeau pushed by foreign and domestic actors, including the U.S.-based website The Buffalo Chronicle; and the potential for leaks of illegally acquired material acquired through hacking operations.Reflecting on disinformation in #elxn43, journalists described three general challenges. Two are relatively new: how to identify novel and sophisticated online disinformation tactics, and how to address disinformation without amplifying its spread on social media. The third is a dilemma that journalists have long faced in election reporting: how to report on misleading claims in a context of intense partisan competition, when journalists themselves are being scrutinized as actors in the political fray.

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Section: The Threat Of Disinformation For #Elxn43mentioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting Disinformation: Journalists and the Conflict over Truth in #Elxn43

Tenove

MacLellan

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…In order to conduct an effective analysis of fake news, we need to adopt the tools of corpus linguistics and establish a robust database (or corpus) of previous fake news campaigns. The examples cited in Tenove et al (2018) and the two reports from the United Kingdom Information Commissioner's Office. (2018a,b) provide a helpful starting point.…”

Section: Linguistics: Analysis Of Propaganda Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interdisciplinary Lessons Learned While Researching Fake News

et al. 2020

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The misleading and propagandistic tendencies in American news reporting have been a part of public discussion from its earliest days as a republic (Innis, 2007; Sheppard, 2007). “Fake news” is hardly new (McKernon, 1925), and the term has been applied to a variety of distinct phenomenon ranging from satire to news, which one may find disagreeable (Jankowski, 2018; Tandoc et al., 2018). However, this problem has become increasingly acute in recent years with the Macquarie Dictionary declaring “fake news” the word of the year in 2016 (Lavoipierre, 2017). The international recognition of fake news as a problem (Pomerantsev and Weiss, 2014; Applebaum and Lucas, 2016) has led to a number of initiatives to mitigate perceived causes, with varying levels of success (Flanagin and Metzger, 2014; Horne and Adali, 2017; Sample et al., 2018). The inability to create a holistic solution continues to stymie researchers and vested parties. A significant contributor to the problem is the interdisciplinary nature of digital deception. While technology enables the rapid and wide dissemination of digitally deceptive data, the design and consumption of data rely on a mixture of psychology, sociology, political science, economics, linguistics, marketing, and fine arts. The authors for this effort discuss deception’s history, both old and new, from an interdisciplinary viewpoint and then proceed to discuss how various disciplines contribute to aiding in the detection and countering of fake news narratives. A discussion of various fake news types (printed, staged events, altered photographs, and deep fakes) ensues with the various technologies being used to identify these; the shortcomings of those technologies and finally the insights offered by the other disciplines can be incorporated to improve outcomes. A three-point evaluation model that focuses on contextual data evaluation, pattern spread, and archival analysis of both the author and publication archives is introduced. While the model put forth cannot determine fact from fiction, the ability to measure distance from fact across various domains provides a starting point for evaluating the veracity of a new story.

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“…Questionable content in this context can be crystallised as content that is politically or ideologically motivated online disinformation, fake news, hate speech, online misinformation and foreign encroachment in the domestic affairs of the State, misreporting and misconstrued satire (Shin et al 2018;Tenove et al 2018). Such content has the potential to impact individuals and the population collectively by changing the attitude of consumers, creating scepticism towards the electoral process, blocking educated political decision-making, causing political unrest, communal riots, and violence, sabotaging free and fair electoral processes, altering the political landscape, marginalising certain classes or communities and damaging the economy (Brown 2018).…”

Section: Questionable Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

We Are All Victims: Questionable Content and Collective Victimisation in the Digital Age

Chang

Mukherjee²,

Coppel³

2020

Asian J Criminol

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Traditionally, the idea of being a victim is associated with a crime, accident, trickery or being duped. With the advent of globalisation and rapid growth in the information technology sector, the world has opened itself to numerous vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities range from individual-centric privacy issues to collective interests in the form of a nation's political and economic interests. While we have victims who can identify themselves as victims, there are also victims who can barely identify themselves as victims, and there are those who do not realise that they have become victims. Misinformation, disinformation, fake news and other methods of spreading questionable content can be regarded as a new and increasingly widespread type of collective victimisation. This paper, drawing on recent examples from India, examines and analyses the rationale and modus operandi-both methods and typesthat lead us to regard questionable content as a new form of collective victimisation.

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Digital Threats to Democratic Elections: How Foreign Actors Use Digital Techniques to Undermine Democracy

Cited by 16 publications

References 101 publications

Confronting Disinformation: Journalists and the Conflict over Truth in #Elxn43

Confronting Disinformation: Journalists and the Conflict over Truth in #Elxn43

Interdisciplinary Lessons Learned While Researching Fake News

We Are All Victims: Questionable Content and Collective Victimisation in the Digital Age

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