Misinformation: a series part 1.9
A summary of the the 2016 Presidential Election
This series is intended to cover the recent history of "misinformation". The 2016 presidential election is what I consider to be the modern beginning of that history. I cite the 2016 U.S presidential election because it introduced "misinformation" to the public and established it as a threat since its source was traced back to a foreign adversary: Russia. The controversial election campaign would give rise to several events post-2016 that would keep "misinformation" recognized as a legitimate threat and validate the "fight" against it.
The first three parts of this series:
(a) 1.0
(b) 1.5 and
(c) 1.75
cover the 2016 US presidential election as it pertains to misinformation; however, I figured it would be useful to summarize the events of the campaign here.
Using the five ‘Ws’: Who? What? Where? Why? When and How?, I believe would be the best way to condense the campaign, starting with the obvious ‘When’ and ‘Where’ questions.
WHEN? The 2016 US presidential election that took place from essentially mid-2015 to November 2016.
WHERE? The United States.
However, the answers to the ‘what, ‘how’ and ‘who’ questions are a little less obvious and require a more thorough analysis, starting with the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the election. The first part of this series 1.0 focuses on these questions.
WHAT? The Russian influence campaign itself that was run during the 2016 presidential election.
HOW? This is a little more detailed. The intelligence report cited in Part 1 - "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections"1 details how the Russians spread "misinformation" in 2016. Essentially, the report describes three main arms of ‘attack’: one covert and the other two overt.
The covert portion of the 2016 Russian misinformation campaign was the hacking of the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and subsequent leaking of thousands of emails through Wikileaks to the public. These emails exposed the inner workings of the Democratic Party, and showed how the party was biased against the Sanders campaign, intentionally trying to undermine it while at the same time bolstering Hillary's. Obviously, this violated party ethics because the Democrats are supposed to hold a strictly neutral position during the primaries.
The two overt methods Russia implemented were the use of state-sponsored media; specifically, the news channel RT (formally known as ‘Russia Today’), along with the second overt method: the spreading of legitimate and/or conspiratorial media that supported Russian interests on social networking sites using trolls. Overall, according to the intelligence paper, the mission of the influence campaign was to:
"... undermine public faith in the US democratic process and denigrate secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency."
Russia Today's (RT) editor-in-chief at the time, Margarita Simonyan, was quoted as saying in a 2018 CBS interview:
"I wanted to win somebody who would be nicer to Russia."2 , and that somebody was obviously not Hillary Clinton.
WHO? There are a few ‘Who’s’ in all of this, part 1.5 focuses more on this question and the mechanics of how the influence campaign played out during the election. The most obvious ‘who’ is the one who benefited from the Russian influence campaign, and that ‘Who’ was Donald J. Trump. As already stated, one of the main objectives of the Russians was to harm Hillary's electability, so even if they weren't directly pumping up Trump, denigrating Clinton consequently helped him. The second ‘Who’ besides the Russians, was the media. The foreign campaign did two things: (a) It exposed the already left-leaning bias of the mainstream press; and (b) it demonstrated the volatility of social media because the Russians were able to ‘weaponize’ it during the election... Bringing us to the ‘why’...
WHY? The motivation of the Russians is fairly conspicuous - destabilizing an adversary without ever engaging in direct conflict is a very appealing proposition. By 2016, Russia had already run similar influence campaigns to support their interests in other countries such as Ukraine where professional trolls sourced from the IRA (Internet Research Agency) based out of St. Petersburg were previously commissioned. The ‘why’ I'm choosing to focus on is: Why does the Russian influence campaign during the 2016 U.S presidential election matter in the context of ‘misinformation’?
It matters for a few reasons:
- it established misinformation as a legitimate threat; and
- it morphed the media in a few significant ways.
As covered in part 1.75, the Russian influence campaign, along with the polarizing nature of Donald Trump, lifted the veil of an already existing left-wing bias in the mainstream press. It also exposed the vulnerability of social media to ‘conspiratorial propaganda’. At the time, social media was beginning to overtake legacy media in popularity as a news source. Thus, because they (social media) were shown to be vulnerable to foreign influence, it provided fodder for mainstream outlets to discredit them as a reliable news source. This volatility of social media exposed by the Russians justified a number of future actions on social networking sites that will be covered as this series continues.
For now, the key points to take away from the 2016 election are:
1. It established misinformation as a legitimate threat especially since the "mission" of the Russian influence campaign was somewhat accomplished because Hillary was not elected president;
2. It exposed the already existing left-leaning bias of the mainstream media; and
3. It displayed the vulnerability of social media because the Russians were able to ‘weaponize’ it. This provided justification for future mitigation policies and strategies for content available on social networks. It also gave legacy media a scapegoat and a means to discredit content on social media sites.
These factors along with the election of Donald Trump to the White House set the stage for the next chapter in the modern history of misinformation: ‘Russiagate’.
Footnotes:
National Intelligence Council, "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections", January 6, 2017, https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
Lesley Stahl, "RT's editor-in-chief on election meddling, being labeled Russian propaganda", CBS, January 7, 2018, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rt-editor-in-chief-on-election-meddling-russian-propaganda-label