How to Navigate a Polluted Information Environment

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One of my favorite arguments against political opinion research in autocracies has been that surveys measure little more than the degree to which state-driven propaganda has penetrated. When voters hear no opposing views in the media and political opponents are marginalized to the point of irrelevance, public opinion almost always favors the autocrat. How could it not?

Wait—wasn’t the internet supposed to have levelled the field? Weren’t social media and messaging platforms supposed to have given oppositional movements the tools to circumvent state-driven communications and reach voters directly?

That argument hasn’t been viable for at least a decade, if it ever was. Even the dumbest autocrats have proven better able exploit the opportunities presented by social media than their less well-organized and -funded opponents. As tools have become more sophisticated, they’ve evolved.

The Savvy Autocrat Uses Disinformation

The predictability of the autocratic media space has vanished. By economically strangling independent media and cultivating dependent media outlets, autocrats have more tools to influence public opinion at their disposal than they did when they dictated content to newspapers, radio and TV stations directly. The autocrat who can combine a nominally “free” but compliant media and hire savvy social media operators who understand the perverse incentives of audience engagement gets a head start.

                                                   It’s complicated

The modern autocrat now has extraordinary capacity to shape public opinion, often beneath the radar. Politically-aligned and compliant mass media outlets launder and amplify social media-driven fringe themes, targeted to receptive audiences. When they turn their attention to democratic processes and allies, the results can be devastating. Perhaps you’ve heard of “Stop the Steal.” If not, google it. It’s been in the news. It will serve as a textbook example of how to use disinformation to build public support for solutions to problems that don’t exist.

Unlike in the “old days,” the information environment in autocracies is extremely fluid. Within a country, domestic and foreign players can team up to spread mutually beneficial disinformation. Those players may have aligning, but temporary, political and economic interests; alliances can be transactional. Different messages on different topics can be micro-targeted at diverse audiences with no accountability.

Sometimes just a “firehose of BS” is all that’s needed to confuse citizens and encourage them to check out. True, false or contradictory, disinformation exhausts the audience to the point it concludes “everyone is lying, you can’t believe anything these days.”  That’s good enough for those for whom muddied waters count as a victory.

Sink or Swim in Polluted Waters

But let’s say you want to advance a policy, or shore up public support for democratic processes. In a polluted environment, understanding how the public view the issues is important, but it’s only part of the picture. You need also to understand the forces that are shaping their views. This is especially true in backsliding democracies where autocrats benefit from the confused and checked-out population they created.

Here are some key questions to answer and track. What and whose strategic objective is disinformation designed to achieve? What messages are getting traction? Where are they coming from and who are the targets? How are platforms’ punitive actions reshaping the information environment? Governments, businesses and advocacy organizations need to understand this.

“But my topic isn’t terribly controversial or political. Why should I care?” If you are operating in a politicized environment, and your agenda or company has the potential to challenge powerful economic interests, you need to fully understand not only public opinion, but also the potential forces arrayed against you. Knowing this, you can launch your advocacy campaign, voter education program or build your brand knowing in advance where the risks lie and the best way to respond.

Thinking Beyond Traditional Qual and Quant

Strategic disinformation is making the places QGS works in and the topics we work on increasingly complicated. Because we care about actionable data, we’ve been thinking a lot about how to expand the definition of “measuring public opinion” to meet these new realities. Our work on disinformation projects in Ukraine, a testing ground for techniques that are now common everywhere, has taught us a lot about which tool is best suited to answer which question. Because disinformation dynamics are different in every country, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. It’s hard to figure out!

When it comes to measuring the impact of disinformation, traditional qualitative and quantitative are not the only, or the best, tools. It’s a multifaceted problem that requires a multifaceted solution: social media mining, media monitoring, usage studies all help illuminate the sources of disinformation and determine which messages are cutting through and which can be ignored. We can combine these tools to give the fullest picture of your messy information environment.

Contact us and we can help you understand the challenge you’re facing

 

 

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An Outsider’s Guide to the US Presidential Election

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People all over the world are offering social media takes on the US Presidential election that range from gullibly wrong to dangerously misinformed. Because the stakes are so high, spreading misinformation, even accidentally, could have a serious impact on public perceptions of the legitimacy of the process. Understanding basic facts about the US system and the dynamics shaping the race will help you avoid contributing to an information stream already filled with burning garbage.

  • Polling American Elections is Hard and Most Pollsters Try to Get it Right: It’s lazy to fall back on “but the 2016 polls were wrong!” When every adult in a country is both eligible and likely to vote, random selection for election surveys is easy. Everyone qualifies for the survey. In the US, about 70% of the electorate is registered to vote and only 55%-65% of those cast a vote. Pollsters have to apply art and science to predicting the profile of likely voters. Sometimes their assumptions are wrong.

    Actually Not That Funny

    Most pollsters operate in good faith though and are transparent about their selection methodology. Find out which pollsters are hacks and learn how to interpret the good ones’ methods. Amplifying garbage polls undermines public confidence in the science as well as the outcome of the election.

 

  • It’s Not 2016, or 1968. Many of us can’t forget 2016. We should. It is not instructive for 2020. The most important difference is that Trump is a very weak incumbent. Incumbent presidents enjoy such huge advantages they are typically very hard to beat (Obama, GWB, B. Clinton). At his current numbers, however, Trump’s re-election would be ahistorical. In defiance of common sense, he is “playing the law and order card.” It’s NOTHING like when Nixon tried it in 1968. Nixon was running for an open seat against an opponent (Hubert Humphrey) who was perceived as weak on law and order! Trump IS the incumbent and also, significantly, a career criminal. Law and order is HIS responsibility and voters think he’s not been doing a great job at it. As a challenger, former VP Biden is reasonably well-liked and very well-known, differentiating him from Democratic challengers in past years (John Kerry in 2004, for example, was less well-known and more easily defined). Finally, two very unpopular, well-known candidates competed for open seat in 2016. That’s a completely different campaign dynamic. Stop saying “but 2016!”

 

  • Many Data Files Are Publicly Available for Use (and Abuse): No, really, ANYONE can go to Ohio’s secretary of state website and download the entire state’s voter file, even Russians! Michigan’s requires a simple FOIA request. Russians figured that out, so you can too. Nearly every state’s voter registration records are accessible for free or a small cost. No one needs to “hack” anything to get them. Contribution records at the Federal Election Commission are also publicly available. Most states also provide up-to-date counts of how many mail ballots have been sent out and received and so much more. Every campaign runs on these data. The flip side is that legally-obtained public data can be also used for evil purposes. Get to know the Secretaries’ of State websites and learn to tell the difference.

 

  • Look for Vote Suppression Rather Than Fraud: In the US, states and counties administer elections. There is neither a central voter database nor administrative structure. With more than 3000 counties, coordinated, large scale interference in vote counting is extremely hard to do. Voter fraud is extremely rare. Most American election administrators at the state and county levels are non-partisan and professional. However, political power is a hell of a drug. Partisan counties and states have other tools at their disposal, such as voter file purges, closure of polling places in particular neighborhoods, using security forces for intimidation or tactical COVID lockdowns that could contribute to vote suppression. Voting and election fraud is rare, hard to do at scale and easy to detect. Vote suppression is well-documented, much easier to do and harder to detect. Look for it.

 

  • There is No “Election Day” Anymore: Nearly 25% of votes were cast by mail in 2016 and it will be higher in 2020. Many Americans, like me, will receive ballots by mail in mid-September and will send them back immediately. Elections in Oregon and Washington have been entirely vote by mail (VBM) for years. Voters

    Your Ballot May Vary

    and administrators are comfortable with the process. Other states, like California, have a hybrid system (65% vote by mail). Still other states make it very hard to vote by mail. COVID has forced those states allow forms of VBM to diminish the risk of spreading the virus. Because of COVID chaos, it’s hard to know which voters will choose to VBM if they have the option. Despite the fact that VBM fraud is extremely rare, that it advantages neither party when done at scale and voters who have it love it, some forces have chosen to politicize it (while at the same time encouraging their supporters to…vote by mail). Here’s a solid guide to what’s important to understand about VBM. Don’t buy into BS.

 

  • We Won’t Know the Results on “Election Night:” We all love watching the networks “call” races as votes are counted and “precincts report” on election night. That’s not going to happen in 2020. Get over it and go to bed early. States start counting ballots on election day after polls close, but how they process mail ballots differs. It may take days or even weeks (hello, California!) to know the results. Because in-person votes may be demographically different than mail votes, we shouldn’t make any calls until mail votes are counted. Anyone, especially the President, who draws conclusions about the results before mail ballots are counted is willfully undermining the process. Don’t help him. Count the votes first, then announce results. We can wait.

 

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