Combatting election misinformation taught me a few things. None of them were surprising.
Prior to Election Day, my Social Journalism cohort assisted First Draft News and ProPublica’s Electionland project in uncovering voting misinformation and disinformation online. False and widely-spread information contributes to less people showing up to vote — which could’ve been disastrous in this election. Before we got to dig around Twitter and Facebook, we took a masterclass with First Draft in identifying what we were looking for.
Disinformation is false information that is intended to mislead you.
Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is spread regardless of its intent to mislead.
There are several categories of mis- and disinformation we learned about that all mislead people in different ways. A Twitter post that provides false context about a situation, for example, is very different than one created with hatred that intends to deceive the reader.
I have a little bit of background in election integrity work. I was the executive assistant to the Editor-in-Chief at WhoWhatWhy while the organization was doing some of its most important work around voter suppression in Georgia during the 2018 primaries. That experience taught me that voter suppression tactics are rampant and disproportionately target people of color — which made me angry in a way I had never been. I was excited to work with Electionland to get down into the dirt of identifying misinformation and instances of suppression or intimidation.
My cohort and I tackled specific tasks on social media every day — mostly in battleground states like Georgia, Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin. I elected to work on Georgia because of what I experienced with WhoWhatWhy.
On Twitter, I used Boolean search queries to look for instances of voter suppression and people trying to spread harmful, incorrect information. Here’s what some of my searches looked like:
(“voter suppression” OR “can’t vote” OR “rigged” OR “voter intimidation” OR “lost ballots” OR “scare tactics” OR “election results” OR “rigged election” OR “suppressed” OR “problems voting” OR “long lines” OR “mail-in ballots” OR “voter discrimination”) AND (GA OR Georgia OR Atlanta OR Georgians) AND (I OR me OR mine OR us OR our OR we)
(“missing ballots” OR “ballots missing” OR “lost ballots” OR “uncounted ballots” OR “rigged” OR “not counted” OR lost OR elections OR “problems voting” OR “issues voting”) AND (Michigan or MI or Ann Arbor or midwest)
Boolean search queries allow you to find specific information by connecting words and phrases in different patterns. I was looking specifically for personal accounts (“I” or “my”) of voter intimidation (“voter intimidation”) in Georgia (“GA” or “Georgia”), and I cast a wide net of words the Tweets could include. I found examples unrelated to the states I queried. After finding examples of mis- or disinfo, I submitted my tips to Junkipedia and categorized them for reporters to discuss further.
Here’s one tip I found:
This thread misleads readers about potential voter suppression in New York (when there definitely is voter suppression in New York), which can lead people to not take the steps to vote early, assuming everything will be fine on Election Day. When I was on Long Island during New York’s early voting period, there were hours-long lines! Lines in New York City wrapped around blocks. If someone doesn’t think lines will be a problem and plans on getting to their polling place before work, only to encounter a very long line, that person may be dissuaded from voting.
The last person in this thread also claims that voter fraud is “more plausible than active voter suppression.” In fact, according to the Brennan Center of Justice at the New York University School of Law, voter fraud is rare. The Tweet is pushing a false idea that voter suppression doesn’t exist, and using that idea to frame this as an issue pushed by the left. Tweets like this that get a lot of traction perpetuate harmful and untrue ways of thinking about political parties, voting, and past elections.
While scrolling through TweetDeck for hours using several Boolean queries, I confirmed my own idea that social media is an echo chamber. People repeat and amplify opinions they already agree with (I do this too), and false of misleading information can take flight quickly if it winds up in the wrong hands. Which it often does.
If I’ve learned anything from the last four years it’s that misinformed ideas, prejudices, and entire ways of being run deep. They are engrained in who people are, and reporters or other citizens telling groups of people that their way of being is wrong is deeply unsettling. It’s an affront on someone’s entire way of thinking about their life, how they relate to the world, what they feel is right or wrong. And rather than dismissing a person or a group as stupid or ignorant because of their beliefs, reporters have to get to the root of those beliefs. Lewis Raven Wallace and Elizabeth Dias are two reporters that come to mind with that idea — and even Dias’s story has flaws. There are ways she could’ve portrayed her sources that don’t reinforce stereotypes. There is always work to do, when you are a reporter, to make sure you don’t play into a harmful hegemonic narrative.
All of this is to say…none of what I found during my Electionland work was surprising. When people feel a certain way they really feel it. And when biases are confirmed on social media, feelings grow stronger. Showing people evidence to the contrary won’t change anyone’s mind — but it’s also important to think about how you’re viewing the people whose minds you want to change. It is senseless and cruel to think of people with different opinions as you as “ignorant” or “idiotic.” Because there are reasons they feel what they feel and believe what they believe.
Millions of Americans still voted for Trump in this election. Digging around Twitter leading up to the election was eye opening, but not because I believed my tips would have a major impact on people who believe false or misleading claims about voting. Instead, it was illuminating to see how misinformation can flow unchecked — and just how much misinformation is out there. The step I’ll take next is working harder to understand why people believe what they believe. That’s at the root of being a good journalist.
