A look at the various media used to reach and inform voters during elections -- as well as the impact of new media and media ownership on elections.
Elections and Media
Hard Questions: Russian Ads Delivered to Congress
What was in the ads you shared with Congress? How many people saw them? Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights. A number of them appear to encourage people to follow Pages on these issues. Here are a few other facts about the ads:
- An estimated 10 million people in the US saw the ads. We were able to approximate the number of unique people (“reach”) who saw at least one of these ads, with our best modeling
- 44% of total ad impressions (number of times ads were displayed) were before the US election on November 8, 2016; 56% were after the election.
- Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That’s because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result.
- For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent.
Reps could make public some of the Russia-backed ads that appeared on Facebook before the 2016 election
Rep Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, wants Facebook to release at least some of the controversial political ads purchased by Kremlin-backed sources.
Facebook turned over those ads — roughly 3,000 of them in total, valued at more than $100,000 — to investigators on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees earlier Oct 2. Some of the posts specifically sought to stoke racial, religious or other social tensions by stirring conflict around issues like Black Lives Matter, gun control and gay rights. Rep Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House’s panel, said he planned to work with Facebook to release “a representative sampling” of the ads to the public — just in time for a hearing slated for October on the extent to which Russia spread misinformation through social networks. The goal, Schiff said, is to “inoculate the public against future Russian interference in our elections.”
Facebook’s Russia-Linked Ads Came in Many Disguises
The Russians who posed as Americans on Facebook in 2016 tried on quite an array of disguises. There was “Defend the 2nd,” a Facebook page for gun-rights supporters, festooned with firearms and tough rhetoric. There was a rainbow-hued page for gay rights activists, “LGBT United.” There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads.
Federal investigators and officials at Facebook now believe these groups and their pages were part of a highly coordinated disinformation campaign linked to the Internet Research Agency, a secretive company in St. Petersburg, Russia, known for spreading Kremlin-linked propaganda and fake news across the web. Under intensifying pressure from Congress and growing public outcry, Facebook on Oct 2 turned over more than 3,000 of the Russia-linked advertisements from its site over to the Senate and House intelligence committees. The material is part of an attempt to learn the depth of what investigators now believe was a sprawling foreign effort spanning years to interfere with the 2016 United States presidential election.
A New Pro-Trump Super PAC Takes Aim at the Republican Establishment
A group of pro-Trump media figures are launching a super PAC aimed at making an impact in the 2018 midterms. Jeff Giesea, Mike Cernovich, and Jack Posobiec, organizers of the “Deploraball” party to celebrate President Trump’s inauguration earlier in 2017, are behind the super PAC, which is being called #Rev18. All three are known quantities in the pro-Trump alternative media that emerged during the campaign and presidency, powered by Trump’s rise; they have since distanced itself from more extreme alt-right figures, often favoring the term “new right.” Cernovich has become known as an occasional breaker of news about the White House, while Posobiec rose to prominence after playing a key role in the #MacronLeaks story. The trio plans to back anti-establishment primary challengers in the midterms.
Catalonia’s Independence Vote Descends Into Chaos and Clashes
Catalonia’s defiant attempt to stage an independence referendum descended into chaos on Oct 1, with hundreds injured in clashes with police in one of the gravest tests of Spain’s democracy since the end of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s.
Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is?
Mark Zuckerberg had just returned from paternity leave, and he wanted to talk about Facebook, democracy, and elections and to define what he felt his creation owed the world in exchange for its hegemony. A few weeks earlier, in early September, the company’s chief security officer had admitted that Facebook had sold $100,000 worth of ads on its platform to Russian-government-linked trolls who intended to influence the American political process. Now, in a statement broadcast live on Facebook on September 21 and subsequently posted to his profile page, Zuckerberg pledged to increase the resources of Facebook’s security and election-integrity teams and to work “proactively to strengthen the democratic process.”
There are real consequences to our inability to understand what Facebook is. Not even President-Pope-Viceroy Zuckerberg himself seemed prepared for the role Facebook has played in global politics this past year. In which case, how can we be assured that Facebook is really safeguarding democracy for us and that it’s not us who need to be safeguarding democracy against Facebook?
Who Will Take Responsibility for Facebook?
Over the past two and a half years, Facebook’s integrity as a place that “helps you connect and share with the people in your life” has been all but laid to waste—as it has served as a clearinghouse for propaganda, disinformation, fake news, and fraud accounts. More serious still: Facebook may not just have been vulnerable to information warfare; it may have been complicit. Zuckerberg, however, has been unaccountably slow to make earnest amends.
Russia warns US not to take action against its media outlets
Russia is warning the US not to take action against its government-backed media outlets, such as RT and Sputnik, threatening retaliation. "When it comes down to a fight with no rules, when the law is twisted and turned into an instrument for the destruction of a TV company, every step against a Russian media outlet will be met with a corresponding response," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. "And whom this response will be aimed at, that is what Washington needs to figure out as well," she added. "The clock is ticking."
Zakharova did not how Russia would retaliate to protect its media outlets. The spokeswoman has previously threatened that Russia would take "reciprocal measures" against the US if it did not return Russian diplomatic facilities seized in 2016. The Justice Department sent a letter earlier in Sept demanding the company that runs state-funded television network RT — formerly Russia Today — to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), treating its content as propaganda.
Black lawmaker Rep Robin Kelly presses Facebook to stop racially charged Russian ads
Rep Robin Kelly (D-IL), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, is pushing Facebook to strengthen its advertising standards after Russian operatives used the company’s ad service to attack groups like Black Lives Matter during the 2016 elections. In a letter sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Rep Robin Kelly pressed the company to “ensure that discriminatory and tactically divisive ad-targeting is aggressively prevented.” The Illinois Democrat pointed to Russian-linked Facebook pages that promoted “incendiary anti-immigrant rallies, targeted the Black Lives Matter movement and focused attentions on critical election swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan.” “It is my belief that Facebook cannot be the Trojan horse through which America’s vulnerabilities are exploited,” Kelly continued.
Fake black activist accounts linked to Russian government
A social media campaign calling itself "Blacktivist" and linked to the Russian government used both Facebook and Twitter in an apparent attempt to amplify racial tensions during the US presidential election, apparently. The Twitter account has been handed over to Congress; the Facebook account is expected to be handed over in the coming days. Both Blacktivist accounts, each of which used the handle Blacktivists, regularly shared content intended to stoke outrage. "Black people should wake up as soon as possible," one post on the Twitter account read. "Black families are divided and destroyed by mass incarceration and death of black men," another read. The accounts also posted videos of police violence against African Americans. The Blacktivist accounts provide further evidence that Russian-linked social media accounts saw racial tensions as something to be exploited in order to achieve the broader Russian goal of dividing Americans and creating chaos in US politics during a campaign in which race repeatedly became an issue.