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False narratives failed to take hold ahead
of U.S. midterms
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(Shutterstock)
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The foretold “red tsunami” on Election
Day turned out to be merely a dribble. Barring Florida and New York, the
Nov. 8 midterms largely proved a moment of rejoice for Democrats across the
United States. While misinformation ahead of, and on, Election Day was
present, several outlets reported false narratives failed to take hold.
Here’s a recap of what happened:
Ahead of Tuesday, election experts
were more
worried about the unwitting spread of misinformation than the
deliberate spread of disinformation, according to The Washington
Post.
Washington Post tech reporter
Cristiano Lima wrote, “misunderstandings or disputes about what degree of
access (poll) observers have at polling sites could spark conspiracy
theories that individuals were blocked from performing oversight in a bid
to cover up supposed fraud.”
“Expect the steal,” read a headline at
one pro-Trump website.
While researchers found
there was public consensus that “false election information on social media
poses a problem,” only about 1 in 4 respondents were concerned about being
tricked themselves.
New York Times reporter Tiffany Hsu
reported that Twitter was seeing an outsized amount of misinformation since
tech billionaire Elon Musk acquired the platform. And multiple publications
speculated
on the possibility of Musk’s acquisition affecting midterm results.
“More than 40,000 tweets about malfunctioning
voting machines in (Arizona’s) Maricopa County were posted in the span
of two hours in the morning, according to the Election
Integrity Partnership, a coalition of online information researchers,”
wrote Hsu.
Thousands of tweets suggested fraud
occurred in Maricopa County.
Bloomberg technology reporter Davey
Alba tweeted four days before Election Day that Twitter
communication teams have gone silent, since Musk’s almost-immediate firing
of thousands of Twitter employees.
"Comms has gone dark. I don't know how many people who were doing that
work still even have a job. To say I'm worried for next week's election
doesn't even begin to cover it," Alba wrote.
But in a post-Election Day article,
The New York Times observed
that disinformation researchers said most efforts to cast doubt on the
election results failed to take hold.
“In a briefing on Wednesday, leaders
of Common Cause, the nonpartisan government accountability group, said the
election had gone more smoothly than many had feared despite ‘small
administrative issues’ in some polling stations that were being framed
online as evidence of conspiracies,” wrote Times reporters Sheera Frenkel
and Steven Lee Myers.
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Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, speaks to a crowd
at the Save Our Democracy rally Jan. 6, 2022. (Shutterstock)
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“A video was published two days ago,
containing horrible and very painful content, showing a nurse
physically abusing an elderly woman in a retirement home in the city of
Peja in Kosovo,” writes Shkelzen Osmani of Hibrid.info. “In the
articles of some media in the Serbian language, it is claimed that the
abused elderly woman belongs to the Serbian community. So, it is
falsely claimed that an elderly woman from the Serbian community in the
city of Peja in Kosovo was physically abused by an Albanian nurse. In
fact, the elderly woman is a Kosovo Albanian, not a Serb.”
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“The quote attributed to Jamie Raskin
by Alt-Info and the Kremlin media is, in fact, Tucker Carlson’s
assessment of a pro-Ukrainian statement made by Raskin. In the
statement, the congressman criticized Russia but did not say it should
be destroyed at any cost because of its Orthodox values.”
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(Shutterstock)
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The Grift Empire “This five-part investigation into
entrepreneur Max Polyakov represents 18 months of open-source reporting
and is a follow-up to a February 2020 investigation. ... Simply put,
Polyakov sits atop a massive, internationally significant digital
empire that incentivizes overtly deceptive advertising, and that allows
him and his associates to profit in multiple ways from the scams pushed
by that deception. By uncovering the mechanics of this ecosystem in
forensic detail, Snopes hopes to highlight the technical, financial,
and legal schemes required both to profit from internet scams and —
perhaps — to stop their proliferation.” (Snopes, Alex Kasprak)
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Purposes, Principles, and Difficulties of Fact-checking
in Ibero-America: Journalists’ Perceptions “Fact-checking
journalism has become a common practice to counteract misinformation.
This research analyzes the perceptions of fact-checkers in
Ibero-America on the purposes, principles, and challenges of
fact-checking. Specifically, we studied if there are differences in
perception based on adherence to the International Fact-Checking
Network’s (IFCN) Code of Principles, how frequently fact-checkers
perform fact-checks, as well as their experience and age.” (Journalism
Practice, Carlos Rodríguez-Pérez)
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“Disinformation” Law in Turkey Sparks a Record VPN
Demand “Following the announcement of Turkey’s new media law, the
term VPN saw a 12-month record in online searches in the country. The
same goes for the query internet censorship circumvention, which showed
a spike of 250% compared to the last 12 months.” (VPN Central, Deyan
Georgiev)
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Elon Musk keeps Birdwatch alive — under a new name
“At its launch in the start of 2021, Twitter called Birdwatch ‘a pilot
of a new community-driven approach to help address misleading
information on Twitter.’ That pilot ended and, in early October,
Twitter made the tool public for users in the U.S. Ever since,
contextual notes have been popping up under tweets from political
figures, institutions, comedians and billionaires.” (Alex Mahadevan
& Seth Smalley, Poynter)
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A Turkish fact-checking organization,
Teyit, created a tool kit to battle misinformation. “Teyit presents the
Emergency Confirmation Kit to its users based on its knowledge and
experience so far. With the kit, which includes the basic methods and
approaches by which users can confirm suspicious information on the
Internet, Teyit ensures that users have tools against false information
at any time. This kit, which aims to empower users against
misinformation, is available here.”
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The International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter
Institute has awarded $450,000 in grant support to organizations
working to lessen the impact of false and misleading information on
WhatsApp. In partnership with Meta, the Spread the Facts Grant Program gives verified
fact-checking organizations resources to identify, flag and reduce the
spread of misinformation that threatens more than 100 billion messages
each day. The grant supports eleven projects from eight countries: India,
Spain, Nigeria, Georgia, Bolivia, Italy, Indonesia and Jordan. Read
more about the announcement here.
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Stay tuned for more information on legal grant recipients in future
additions of Factually.
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