Are social media algorithms making us vulnerable to information warfare?
While the public has more access to information than ever before, the potential for foreign actors to manipulate the hearts and minds of the Australian public has never been greater. Digital platforms like Facebook and Google have been weaponised, with foreign actors gaming the algorithms that serve us our information in order to spread lies and sow discord for political, ideological or commercial gain.
73% of Australians are concerned about a foreign power interfering in our elections¹, and only 42% of Australians have a great deal of confidence in the Australian Electoral Commission’s ability to conduct an election². And with our strategic geopolitical position, and the recent evidence of the Chinese Communist Party manipulating the information environment in Hong Kong³ and Taiwan — we can’t be caught sleepwalking into any foreign power’s influence.
How and where this is happening
So how do we know that this is a real problem? Below we have collected just a few examples of where foreign interference in Australian democracy has occurred and how the digital platforms are allowing it to happen.
Bots that are designed to amplify a particular agenda
A QUT study which examined more than one million tweets before, during and after the 2019 Australian Federal Election revealed that 13% of accounts were ‘very likely’ to be bots, with the majority originating from New York. This is estimated to be more than double the rate of bot accounts in the US presidential election in 2016.
Outrage farms that are profiting from creating divisive content
A network of Facebook pages run out of the Balkans profited from the manipulation of Australian public sentiment. Posts were designed to provoke outrage on hot button issues such as Islam, refugees and political correctness, driving clicks to stolen articles in order to earn revenue from Facebook’s ad network.
Online trolls manipulating public sentiment
A number of the same accounts Twitter identified as suspected of operating out of the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) targeted Australian politics in response to the downing of flight MH17, attempting to cultivate an audience through memes, hashtag games and Aussie cultural references.
20% of elections show evidence of cyber-enabled foreign interference
Of the 97 national elections in free or partly free countries reviewed for this report during the period from 8 November 2016 to 30 April 2019, a fifth (20 countries) showed clear examples of foreign interference, and several countries had multiple examples, with Australia being one of these.
Source: “Hacking democracies: Cataloguing cyber-enabled attacks on elections” by Fergus Hanson, Sarah O’Connor, Mali Walker and Luke Courtois, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (May, 2019)
Newsfeeds are being flooded to disorient the public
Three prominent WeChat accounts targeted to Chinese diaspora in Australia were shown to dedicate only 0.26% to Chinese politics, compared to 2.85% by SBS in the same time period. An absence of political coverage that focuses user attention on gossip and entertainment is known as porous censorship through a “flooding” of the news feed.
Black PR firms offer propaganda operations to those pushing a political agenda
There is a growing industry of PR firms worldwide who are professionalising the manipulation of public opinion, deploying fake accounts and false narratives to influence political discourse. Since 2011, 27 online operations have been partially or wholly attributed to PR or marketing firms, with 19 of these in 2019 alone.
State-sponsored propaganda is used to sow discord
Digital platforms enabled the Chinese government to run an aggressive propaganda campaign against Hong Kong. The state media endorsed Chinese youth to flood social media pages with patriotic and abusive memes and has supported duelling rallies from Sydney to London. Twitter suspended 936 accounts for “deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord” and 200,000 spam accounts linked to the mainland’s propaganda campaign.
References
¹ “Social Media and Regulation Attitudes Survey” by Roy Morgan, Responsible Technology Australia (Dec, 2019)
² “Hacking democracies: Cataloguing cyber-enabled attacks on elections” by Fergus Hanson, Sarah O’Connor, Mali Walker and Luke Courtois, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (May, 2019)
³ “Old messages, new memes: Beijing’s propaganda playbook on the Hong Kong protests” by Sue-Lin Wong, Christian Shepherd, Qianer Liu, The Financial Times (Sep 4, 2019)
Responsible Technology Australia is advocating for the ethical progression of technology for a safer, fairer, and more democratic Australia. If you’re keen to hear more, get in touch via hello@responsibletechnology.org.au
