Background: Fighting back against disinformation and digital voter suppression
References for the August 30 webinar with Shireen Mitchell, hosted by Indivisible Plus Washington and the Washington Indivisible Network.
UPDATE: Here’s the video and highlights from the August 30 “Fighting Back”! And we did several more followups with Shireen; here’s the Deep Dive, and here’s training on How To Respond to Disinformation and Digital Voter Suppression.
Disinformation and digital voter suppression are major threats to democracy. As grassroots activists, we need to get a deeper understanding of the techniques and learn how to fight back. Who better to learn from than longtime disinfo fighter Shireen Mitchell?
Here’s the description:
The first part of this webinar will discuss digital voter suppression’s role in the 2016 campaign and the multiple disinfo campaigns currently in progress for 2020 — with a focus on how Black identity is targeted. We’ll then cover key techniques for responding such as establishing a counter-narrative, getting facts out without reinforcing the disinfo, and preparing now for the flood of fake voting information as deadlines near. Finally, we’ll close with a discussion of what we can do individually and collectively — and end with some concrete next steps, for example making sure you are not amplifying disinformation.
A bit more about why it’s such a valuable opportunity to learn:
Shireen Mitchell, aka digitalsista, has been fighting disinformation for over a decade. Her groundbreaking 2018 work analyzing Facebook ads highlighted the racially-targeted aspects of digital voter suppression in the 2016 campaign; Jessie Daniels (author of Race in Cyberspace) describes it as “an urgently needed reminder that we ignore the way racism is woven into technology at our own peril.” Shireen has discussed disinformation and digital voter suppression in a wide variety of venues including MSNBC, The Root, Netroots Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, and the Washington Post. She is also the founder of Digital Sisters/Sistas, the first organization dedicated to bringing women and girls of color online, and Stop Online Violence Against Women (SOVAW).
The rest of this post has some background on disinformation and digital voter suppression in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns — and the role of grassroots organizing in fighting back.
Disinformation and digital voter suppression
“We have to face the fact that disinformation and suppression is now a permanent part of a single continuum of actions that becomes digital voter suppression.”
— Shireen Mitchell, Report On Ongoing Threat To 2020 Election: Digital Voter Suppression, Stop Online Violence Against Women, January 2020
Voter suppression techniques include laws that limit who can vote, voter caging, ID requirements, closing polling places, providing misleading information about when and where to vote, and the one that Barbara Arnwine of the Voting Rights Alliance describes as the most powerful: discouraging people from voting by making them feel their vote doesn’t matter. As more and more politics takes place online, we’ve also seen more and more energy being invested in digital voter suppression.
As Shireen highlights, there’s a continuum here: digital voter suppression complements traditional physical voter suppression techniques. Disinformation has always played a role in physical voter suppression, for example flyers posted in Black-majority neighborhoods with incorrect information about polling places. Disinformation’s also key to most digital voter suppression techniques, whether it’s faked email from a college administrator telling students, faculty, and staff that the election had been postponed — or fake accounts working to get Black voters not to vote for any Presidential candidate.
In the US, voter suppression has always been heavily targeted at people who are marginalized in our society: Black Americans, Native Americans, disabled Americans, currently and formerly incarcerated Americans, unhoused Americans, teenagers … the list goes on and on. Those groups continue to be the primary targets, both offline and on. And while voter suppression isn’t inherently partisan, those groups largely vote for Democrats. As senior Trump advisor Justin Clark says, “traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes.”
2008 and 2016
But what about the votes that don’t count? What about the systematic attempts to erect barriers between voters and the ballot box? What about voter suppression? In order to educate, document and mobilize action, I’m excited to introduce the Voter Suppression Wiki.
— Jack Turner (Baratunde Thurston), on Jack and Jill Politics, September 2008
In 2008, the Obama campaign did a great job of fighting for voting rights — including fighting disinfo, which we. Grassroots organizing like the Voter Suppression Wiki, Twitter Vote Report, and the One Million Strong for Barack Facebook group also played a role, especially online, complementing everything else that was going on. There’s a lot to learn from that huge success, which boosted downballot candidates as well — the successful efforts to reduce voter suppression also proved the difference in at least one Senatorial race. From a grassroots activism perspective, one key takeaway is that we can make a difference.
Things didn’t go as well in 2016.
“We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior [Trump campaign] official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans.
— Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg, Inside the Trump Bunker, With Days to Go, Bloomberg, October 2016
Shireen’s How The Facebook Ads that Targeted Voters Centered on Black American Culture highlights how Russia’s IRA used disinformation to first build a connection with users — and then pivoted to digital voter suppression. New Knowledge’s The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency go into more detail. The Trump campaign invested far more in this than the Russians in this and their other campaigns … and along with all the other kinds of voter suppression, it made the difference in key states.
One way that things have changed significantly since 2008 is that it highly-targetable ads make it easier for campaigns to test and deliver different messages for different audiences. Facebook worked with the Trump campaign to help them take full advantage of this in the 2016 election.
And since it worked so well in 2016, the focus on digital voter suppression has continued. Young Mi Kim’s Voter Suppression Has Gone Digital looks at the 2018 race. Native Americans and the Threat of Computational Propaganda (by Saiph Savage, Eber Betanzos and Amy Ruckes) highlights how similar techniques are being used to target other communities as well.
2020
Throughout 2019, Kamala Harris was a major target of disinformation. “Birtherism” directed at Harris is an attack not only on her campaign, but more broadly on Black identity. Errin Haines’ Manipulation Machines — How disinformation campaigns suppress the Black vote and Shireen’s discussion with Joy Reid have some great perspectives on this.
By early 2020, there were already multiple voter suppression campaigns targeting the Black community. Shireen’s Report On Ongoing Threat To 2020 Election: Digital Voter Suppression looked at multiple campaigns that were already in high gear at the beginning of the year. And since then it’s only gotten worse.
As Melissa Ryan of Control Alt-Right Delete highlights in Disinformation, Coronavirus, and the 2020 Presidential Election, the landscape in 2020 is a lot more complex. Sandi Doughton’s Seattle Times article COVID-19 meets Election 2020: the perfect storm for misinformation is also good reading here, and includes perspectives from UW Center for an Informed Public Principal Investigators Kate Starbird, Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom (authors of Calling Bullshit), and Ryan Calo. The excellent Netroots Nation panel on Disinformation in the 2020 Campaign: Who’s Behind It? (with Shireen, Melissa, Sharon Kann of Media Matters, Fadi Quran of Avaaz, and Thenmozhi Soundararajan of Equality Labs, and moderated by Adele M. Stan of Right Wing Watch) goes into more detail.
Fighting back
Non-profits led by Black and Indigenous people continue to be on the front fighting back against voter suppression. Groups like Black Voters Matter, 4 Directions Vote, Spread the Vote, and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights have all fought voter suppression for years. New entrants like Fair Fight are also having a big impact. Many of these groups are underfunded and operate on a shoestring, so please consider supporting them!
Hopefully the Biden/Harris campaign and the DNC will learn from the Obama 2008 campaign and make a significant investment in fighting voter suppression on the ground and online — and do it in a way that catalyzes and support grassroots efforts. DSCC and DCC are investing eight figures in court battles; hopefully even more is being invested on the ground and online. Similarly, there’s a big role for party organizations to play at the state level; Washington State Democrats’ swift mobilization in response to birtherism disinfo targeting Carolina Mejia in a Thurston County Commissioner race is a great example.
Shireen’s 2020 report includes a series of solid recommendations for political parties and campaigns. For example:
- have a team that focuses on monitoring, tracking, and countering misinformation.
- develop the cultural competency to create compelling counter-narratives, and the connections in the communities to listen to the targeted populations and understand internal debates.
- work with researchers focusing on disinformation (although working directly with campaigns may conflict with academics’ desire to be seen as “neutral”)
Grassroots organizing FTW
“Social media platforms are slow to respond, and progressive leaders cannot fight against bad actors alone. Activists and organizers like YOU are the key to countering disinformation and helping progressives collectively “win” online.”
— Indivisible’s Countering Disinfo: Guidelines for Responding, by Kelsey Suter, Jake Engle, and Tim Chambers.
As well as the 2008 organizing we talked about earlier, there are plenty of other examples of successful grassroots efforts fighting disinfo — for example, elves in the Czech Republic and Baltic countries, or the recent campaign here in Washington that got Washington State Realtors to disavow the racist disinfo targeting T’wina Nobles.
We’re only just starting to see disinformation-focused grassroots organizing in the 2020 campaign — Indivisible’s Truth Brigade just launched a couple of weeks ago. One obvious role for groups like Indivisible is harm reduction, teaching well-meaning progressives not to amplify disinfo as the attempt to debunk it. On the other hand, Shireen’s points about cultural competency and connections in the communities being targeted highlight a challenge for mostly-white groups like Indivisible. As always, the most successful efforts will follow the lead of the communities that are being targeted.
So this webinar comes at a perfect time to get a deeper insight, and get a state-level plan in place as well. As Kate Starbird, Ahmer Arif, and Tom Wilson of UW point out, disinformation is collaborative work … and so is fighting it! As the description says, we ended with a discussion of we can do individually and collectively — and end with some concrete next steps.
Here’s the video — or check out our followon-post for some of the highlights.
Originally posted August 24. Updated September 4 to include links to the video and remove the pre-webinar promotion.
