Exploring targeted misinformation against minority political candidates
This work was created during the 2019–2020 Assembly Student Fellowship at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. One of three tracks in the Assembly Program, the Assembly Student Fellowship convenes Harvard students from across a variety of schools and disciplines to tackle the spread and consumption of disinformation. Assembly Student Fellows conducted their work independently with light advisory guidance from program advisors and staff.
By Christine Keung (HBS ’20), Cierra Robson (GSAS ’24), Flora Wang (HLS ’20), and Tyler Yoo (SEAS ’21).
Harassment and disinformation are often treated as separate categories by content platforms. Yet, individuals of diverse backgrounds often face some intersection of these two phenomenons. Minority politicians and political candidates in particular often deal with misinformation that is racially charged, relies on gendered language, or specifically centers on a candidate’s national origin. Disinformation campaigns against the Obama administration, for example, attempted to undercut his success by suggesting that he was not born in the United States. Similarly, Senators Kamala Harris and Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib, and many more at the local, state, and national levels have had to navigate disinformation campaigns online that specifically center around a legally protected identity characteristic.
Understanding that controlling political disinformation is of the utmost importance to maintaining a healthy democracy, this project explored the experiences of underrepresented minority political candidates to understand this intersection of harassment and disinformation in more detail, and to advocate for more protections for these candidates. We are using a two-pronged approach to understand the problem in-depth: first, understanding campaigns and how they use social media and experience disinformation; second, analyzing platform policies on disinformation and how they impact minority political candidates.
Understanding how campaigns use social media and experience disinformation
We researched how campaigns use social media and experience disinformation, including understanding experiences at the intersection of harassment and disinformation online of candidates and campaign managers from various backgrounds. We learned about candidate experiences at the local, state, and national levels. Our research yielded several themes, despite differences in candidates’ political orientation and ethno-racial background.
First, underrepresented minority candidates typically rely on social media to grow their campaigns. They use various platforms to advertise their candidacy, speak directly with voters, and even fundraise. This sentiment corresponds with the general increase in social media use by political campaigns since the dotcom boom of the early 2000s and especially after President Obama’s successful use of social media in the 2008 election. Such social media use is particularly important to candidates for local elections. Local candidates typically run grassroots campaigns which are unable to hire experienced campaign staff or afford a dedicated communications director. Candidates and staffers emphasize the value of time when running a campaign on a limited budget — any time spent dealing with disinformation or online harassment is time away from talking to voters.
Second, the 2020 coronavirus pandemic made the need for a robust social media presence especially important. The presence of COVID-19 means that the candidates we spoke with are unable to perform traditional door-to-door canvassing and campaigning, thus forcing them to rely on social media even more than before. The impact of Coronavirus on the traditional campaign tactics is well-documented even at the federal level (NYTimes). Despite the importance of social media to their campaigns, few candidates have enough financial resources to pay for a full-time communications director or social media lead. Instead, they often post content on their own, or rely on part-time interns to help manage several social media sites.
Third, candidates express how difficult it is to learn how best to use social media for campaign purposes. Campaign social media pages should be run differently than personal pages, and an effective presence online mandates a different approach to each platform. There is little social media training available through established campaign support organizations, like Emily’s List. Whereas larger, better-funded campaigns rely on consultants to manage their communications, our conversations with grassroots candidates indicate that dealing with online harassment and disinformation seems to typically be trial by fire, particularly because of unclear guidelines and opaque reporting processes on social media sites.
Fourth, candidates struggle with the process of becoming recognized as a verified candidate online. As late as 2019, CNN reported that candidates had to win their elections before becoming verified on many social media platforms. While many platform policies have changed since then, candidates still face issues with the lengthy process of becoming verified, as well as with the lengthy process for becoming a political advertiser on social media platforms.
Finally, when targeted, candidates may not be able to successfully report disinformation about their campaigns to platforms. The mechanisms to report disinformation are still not robust enough. For example, Facebook has stated that it won’t police the truthfulness of political ads; so political ads can contain misinformation and candidates can’t easily flag them. In addition, it’s not always clear how to use the mechanisms that do exist. Instead, candidates often resort to reporting content as harassment. Yet, often, misinformation and disinformation, which might include harmful speech, is nuanced and does not meet the standard of harassment as outlined by the platforms. When reporting to platforms fails, out of frustration, candidates sometimes resort to mobilizing their own networks to respond or contacting journalists. But, not every candidate has large online networks to mobilize or friends in high places. In the worst case scenario, candidates might simply ignore content despite knowing how harmful it is to their campaign because dealing with it is a waste of energy that might meaningfully be spent elsewhere in an already jam-packed campaign schedule.
Analyzing how platform policies impact minority political candidates
In addition, we are analyzing platform policies to understand if they sufficiently protect candidates, and if they address the needs unique to grassroots campaigns. To do this, we are performing a comprehensive harassment and misinformation policy audit of six major platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium and YouTube. We chose these platforms because these are the online tools used most often by candidates. Our initial results show inconsistent definitions of and policies on misinformation. Some platforms take an active role in removing disinformation on their platform while others ignore the content, citing their commitment to the first amendment right to free speech as reason to ignore it.
Next steps and future work
We aim to finalize our platform policy audit and create a scorecard for platform policies which ranks their effectiveness on how they treat disinformation related to minority political candidates. We would love to hear from others working on this topic.
Having outlined the problems that exist at the intersection of harassment and misinformation, our team proposes several future directions. First, campaign support organizations should develop more social media training for candidates. These trainings should include an understanding of how to most effectively use each platform, coupled with the best mechanisms of reporting harmful content, when those reporting structures exist. Second, new tools should be developed to help campaigns filter this information easily. (Some such tools, such as SquadBox and BlockParty, already exist or are in development. These two apps mobilize communities to sift through information before it reaches the candidate.)
We hope our work can help address the unique needs of grassroots campaigns and minority candidates, and address other students, policymakers, and technologists to take up these concerns as well.
Learn more about Assembly: Disinformation at www.bkmla.org.
