Tag: propaganda

Articles

Don’t Spread Disinformation on Twitter or the AEC Will Roast You (gizmodo.com.au)

Federal Election 2022: How the AEC Is Preparing to Combat Misinformation (gizmodo.com.au)

From the horse’s mouth

Australian Electoral Commission

AEC launches disinformation register ahead of 2022 poll (Press Release)

Previous coverage on HomeNetworking01.info

Being cautious about fake news and misinformation in Australia

My Comments

This next 18 months is to be very significant as far as general elections in Australia go. It is due to a Federal election and state elections in the most populous states taking place during that time period i.e. this year has the Federal election having to take place by May and the Victorian state election taking place by November, then the New South Wales state election taking place by March 2023.

Two chances over the next 18 months to benefit from the democracy sausage as you cast your vote
Kerry Raymond, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Oh yeah, more chances to eat those democracy sausages available at that school’s sausage sizzle after you cast that vote. But the campaign machine has started up early this year at the Federal level with United Australia Party ads appearing on commercial TV since the Winter Olympics, yard signs from various political parties appearing in my local neigbbourhood and an independent candidate for the Kooyong electorate running ads online through Google AdSense with some of those ads appearing on HomeNetworking01.info. This is even before the Governor General had served the necessary writs to dissolve the Federal Parliament and commence the election cycle.

The campaigns are underway even before the election is called

This season will be coloured with the COVID coronavirus plague and the associated vaccination campaigns, lockdowns and other public-health measures used to mitigate this virus. This will exacerbate Trump-style disinformation campaigns affecting the Australian electoral process, especially from anti-vaccination / anti-public-health-measure groups.

COVID will also exacerbate issues regarding access to the vote in a safe manner. This includes dealing with people who are isolated or quarantined due to them or their household members being struck down by the disease or allowing people on the testing and vaccination front lines to cast their vote. Or it may be about running the polling booths in a manner that is COVID-safe and assures the proper secret ballot.

There is also the recent flooding that is taking place in Queensland and NSW with it bringing about questions regarding access to the vote for affected communities’ and volunteers helping those communities. All these situations would depend on people knowing where and how to cast “convenience votes” like early or postal votes, or knowing where the nearest polling booth is especially with the flooding situation rendering the usual booths in affected areas out of action.

The Australian Electoral Commission who oversees elections at a federal level have established a register to record fake-news and disinformation campaigns that appear online to target Australians. They will also appear at least on Twitter to debunk disinformation that is swirling around on that platform and using common hashtags associated with Australian politics and elections.

Add to this a stronger wider “Stop And Consider” campaign to encourage us to be mindful about what we see, hear or read regarding the election. This is based on their original campaign ran during the 2019 Federal election to encourage us to be careful about what we share online. Here, that was driven by that Federal election being the first of its kind since we became aware of online fake-news and disinformation campaigns and their power to manipulate the vote.

There will be a stronger liasion with the AEC and the online services in relation to sharing intelligence about disinformation campaigns.

But the elephant in the room regarding election safety is IT security and cyber safety for a significant number of IT systems that would see a significant amount of election-related data being created or modified through this season.

Even the QR-code contact-tracing platforms used by state governments as part of their COVID management efforts have to be considered as far as IT security for an election is concerned – like this one at a school that is likely to be a polling place

This doesn’t just relate to the electoral oversight bodies but any government, media or civil-society setup in place during the election.

That would encompass things ranging from State governments wanting to head towards fully-electronic voter registration and electoral-roll mark-off processes, through the politicians and political parties’ IT that they use for their business process, the state-government QR-code contact tracing platforms regularly used by participants during this COVID-driven era, to the IT operated by the media and journalists themselves to report the election. Here, it’s about the safety of the participants in the election process, the integrity of the election process and the ability for voters to make a proper and conscious choice when they cast their vote.

Such systems have a significant number of risks associated with their data such as cyber attacks intended to interfere with or exfiltrate data or slow down the performance of these systems. It is more so where the perpetrators of this activity extends to adverse nation states or organised crime anywhere in the world. As well, interference with these IT systems is used as a way to create and disseminate fake news, disinformation and propaganda.

But the key issue regarding Australia’s elections being safe from disinformation and election interference is for us to be media-savvy. That includes being aware of material that plays on your emotions; being aware of bias in media and other campaigns; knowing where sources of good-quality and trustworthy news are; and placing importance on honesty, accuracy and ethics in the media.

Here, it may be a good chance to look at the “Behind The News” media-literacy TV series the ABC produced during 2020 regarding the issue of fake news and disinformation.  Sometimes you may also find that established media, especially the ABC and SBS or the good-quality newspapers may be the way to go for reliable election information. Even looking at official media releases “from the horse’s mouth” at government or political-party Websites may work as a means to identify exaggeration that may be taking place.

Having the various stakeholders encourage media literacy and disinformation awareness, along with government and other entities taking a strong stance with cyber security can be a way to protect this election season.

Article

Astroturfing more difficult to track down with social media – academic | RNZ News

My Comments

An issue that is raised in the context of fake news and disinformation is a campaign tactic known as “astroturfing”. This is something that our online life has facilitated thanks to easy-to-produce Websites on affordable Web-hosting deals along with the Social Web.

I am writing about this on HomeNetworking01.info due to astroturfing as another form of disinformation that we are needing to be careful of in this online era.

What is astroturfing?

Astroturfing is organised propaganda activity intended to create a belief of popular grassroots support for a viewpoint in relationship to a cause or policy. This activity is organised by one or more large organisations with it typically appearing as the output of concerned individuals or smaller community organisations such as a peak body for small businesses of a kind.

But there is no transparency about who is actually behind the message or the benign-sounding organisations advancing that message. Nor is there any transparency about the money flow associated with the campaign.

The Merrian-Webster Dictionary which is the dictionary of respect for the American dialect of the English language defines it as:

organized activity that is intended to create a false impression of a widespread, spontaneously arising, grassroots movement in support of or in opposition to something (such as a political policy) but that is in reality initiated and controlled by a concealed group or organization (such as a corporation).

The etymology for this word comes about as a play on words in relation to the “grassroots” expression. It alludes to the Astroturf synthetic turf implemented initially in the Astrodome stadium in Houston in the USA., with the “Astroturf” trademark becoming a generic trademark for synthetic sportsground turf sold in North America.

This was mainly practised by Big Tobacco to oppose significant taxation and regulation measures against tobacco smoking, but continues to be practised by entities whose interests are against the public good.

How does astroturfing manifest?

It typically manifests as one or more benign-sounding community organisations that appear to demonstrate popular support for or against a particular policy. It typically affects policies for the social or environmental good where there is significant corporate or other “big-money” opposition to these policies.

The Internet era has made this more feasible thanks to the ability to create and host Websites for cheap. As online forums and social media came on board, it became feasible to set up multiple personas and organisational identities on forums and social-media platforms to make it appear as though many people or organisations are demonstrating popular support for the argument. It is also feasible to interlink Websites and online forums or Social-Web presences by posting a link from a Website or blog in a forum or Social-Web post or having articles on a Social Web account appear on one’s Website.

The multiple online personas created by one entity for this purpose of demonstrating the appearance of popular support are described as “sockpuppet” accounts. This is in reference to children’s puppet shows where two or three puppet actors use glove puppets made out of odd socks and can manipulate twice the number of characters as each actor. This can happen synchronously with a particular event that is in play, be it the effective date of an industry reform or set of restrictions; a court case or inquiry taking place; or a legislature working on an important law.

An example of this that occurred during the long COVID-19 lockdown that affected Victoria last year where the “DanLiedPeopleDied” and “DictatorDan” hashtags were manipulated on Twitter to create a sentiment of popular distrust against Dan Andrews.  Here it was identified that a significant number of the Twitter accounts that drove these hashtags surfaced or changed their behaviour synchronously to the lockdown’s effective period.

But astroturfing can manifest in to offline / in-real-life activities like rallies and demonstrations; appearances on talkback radio; letters to newspaper editors, pamphlet drops and traditional advertising techniques.

Let’s not forget that old-fashioned word-of-mouth advertising for an astroturfing campaign can take place here like over the neighbour’s fence, at the supermarket checkout or around the office’s water cooler.

Sometimes the online activity is used to rally for support for one or more offline activities or to increase the amount of word-of-mouth conversation on the topic. Or the pamphlets and outdoor advertising will carry references to the campaign’s online resources so people can find out more “from the horse’s mouth”. This kind of material used for offline promotion can be easily and cheaply produced using “download-to-print” resources, print and copy shops that use cost-effective digital press technology, firms who screen-print T-shirts on demand from digital originals amongst other online-facilitated technologies.

An example of this highlighted by Spectrum News 1 San Antonio in the USA was the protest activity against COVID-19 stay-at-home orders in that country. This was alluding to Donald Trump and others steering public opinion away from a COVID-safe USA.

This method of deceit capitalises on popular trust in the platform and the apparently-benign group behind the message or appearance of popular support for that group or its message. As well, astroturfing is used to weaken any true grassroots support for or against the opinion.

How does astroturfing affect media coverage of an issue?

The easily-plausible arguments tendered by a benign-sounding organisation can encourage journalists to “go with the flow” regarding the organisation’s ideas. It can include treating the organisation’s arguments at face value for a supporting or opposing view on the topic at hand especially where they want to create a balanced piece of material.

This risk is significantly increased in media environments where there isn’t a culture of critical thinking with obvious examples being partisan or tabloid media. Examples of this could be breakfast/morning TV talk shows on private free-to-air TV networks or talkback radio on private radio stations.

But there is a greater risk of this occurring while there is increasingly-reduced investment in public-service and private news media. Here, the fear of newsrooms being reduced or shut down or journalists not being paid much for their output can reduce the standard of journalism and the ability to perform proper due diligence on news sources.

There is also the risk of an astroturfing campaign affecting academic reportage of the issue. This is more so where the student doesn’t have good critical-thinking and research skills and can be easily swayed by spin. It is more so with secondary education or some tertiary education situations like vocational courses or people at an early stage in the undergraduate studies.

How does astroturfing affect healthy democracies

All pillars of government can and do fall victim to astroturfing. This can happen at all levels of government ranging from local councils through state or regional governments to the national governments.

During an election, an astroturfing campaign can be used to steer opinion for or against a political party or candidate who is standing for election. In the case of a referendum, it can steer popular opinion towards or against the questions that are the subject of the referendum. This is done in a manner to convey the veneer of popular grassroots support for or against the candidate, party or issue.

The legislature is often a hotbed of political lobbying by interest groups and astroturfing can be used to create a veneer of popular support for or against legislation or regulation of concern to the interest group. As well, astroturfing can be used a a tool to place pressure on legislature members to advance or stall a proposed law and, in some cases, force a government out of power where there is a stalemate over that law.

The public-service agencies of the executive government who have the power to permit or veto activity are also victims of astroturfing. This comes in the form of whether a project can go ahead or not; or whether a product is licensed for sale within the jurisdiction. It can also affect the popular trust in any measures that officials in the executive government execute.

As well, the judiciary can be tasked with handling legal actions launched by pressure groups who use astroturfing to  create a sense of popular support to revise legislation or regulation. It also includes how jurors are influenced in any jury trial or which judges are empanelled in a court of law, especially a powerful appellate court or the jurisdiction’s court of last resort.

Politicians, significant officials and key members of the judiciary can fall victim to character assassination campaigns that are part of one or more astroturfing campaigns. This can affect continual popular trust in these individuals and can even affect the ability for them to live or conduct their public business in safety.

Here, politicians and other significant government officials are increasingly becoming accessible to the populace. It is being facilitated by themselves maintaining Social-Web presence using a public-facing persona on the popular social-media platforms, with the same account-name or “handle” being used on the multiple platforms. In the same context, the various offices and departments maintain their social-Web presence on the popular platforms using office-wide accounts. This is in addition to other online presences like the ministerial Web pages or public-facing email addresses they or the government maintain.

These officials can be approached by interest groups who post to the official’s Social-Web presence. Or a reference can be created to the various officials and government entities through the use of hashtags or mentions of platform-native account names operated by these entities when someone creates a Social Web post about the official or issue at hand. In a lot of cases, there is reference to sympathetic journalists and media organisations in order to create media interest.

As well, one post with the right message and the right mix of hashtags and referenced account names can be viewed by the targeted decision makers and the populace at the same time. Then people who are sympathetic to that post’s message end up reposting that message, giving it more “heat”.

Here, the Social Web is seen as providing unregulated access to these powerful decision-makers. That is although the decision-makers work with personal assistants or similar staff to vet content that they see. As well, there isn’t any transparency about who is posting the content that references these officials i.e. you don’t know whether it is a local constituent or someone pressured by an interest group.

What can be done about it

The huge question here is what can be done about astroturfing as a means of disinformation.

A significant number of jurisdictions implement attribution requirements for any advertising or similar material as part of their fair-trading, election-oversight, broadcasting, unsolicited-advertising or similar laws. Similarly a significant number of jurisdictions implement lobbyist regulation in relationship to who has access to the jurisdiction’s politicians. As outlined in the RNZ article that I referred to, New Zealand is examining astroturfing in the context of whether they should regulate access to their politicians.

But most of these laws regulate what goes on within the offline space within the jurisdiction that they pertain to. It could become feasible for foreign actors to engage in astroturfing and similar campaigns from other territories across the globe using online means without any action being taken.

The issue of regulating lobbyist access to the jurisdiction’s politicians or significant officials can raise questions. Here it could be about whether the jurisdiction’s citizens have a continual right of access to their elected government or not. As well, there is the issue of assuring governmental transparency and a healthy dialogue with the citizens.

The 2016 fake-news crisis which highlighted the distortion of the 2016 US Presidential Election and UK Brexit referendum became a wake-up call regarding how the online space can be managed to work against disinformation.

Here, Silicon Valley took on the task of managing online search engines, social-media platforms and online advertising networks to regulate foreign influence and assure accountability when it comes to political messaging in the online space. This included identity verification of advertiser accounts or keeping detailed historical records of ads from political advertisers on ad networks or social media or clamping down on coordinated inauthentic behaviour on social media platforms.

In addition to this, an increasingly-large army of “fact-checkers” organised by credible newsrooms, universities and similar organisations appeared. These groups researched and verified claims which were being published through the media or on online platforms and would state whether they are true or false based on their research.

What we can do is research further and trust our instincts when it comes to questionable claims that come from apparently-benign organisations. Here we can do our due diligence and check for things like how long an online account has been in operation for, especially if it is synchronous to particular political, regulatory or similar events occurring or being on the horizon.

Here you have to look out for behaviours in the online or offline content like:

• Inflammatory or manipulative language that plays on your emotions
• Claims to debunk topic-related myths that aren’t really myths
• Questioning or pillorying those exposing the wrongdoings core to the argument rather the actual wrongdoings
• A chorus of the same material from many accounts

Conclusion

We need to be aware of astroturfing as another form of disinformation that is prevalent in the online age. Here it can take in people who are naive and accept information at face value without doing further research on what is being pushed.

Articles

Untrustworthy news sites could be flagged automatically in UK | The Guardian

From the horse’s mouth

NewsGuard

Home Page

My Comments

Google News – one of the way we are reading our news nowadays

Since 2016 with the Brexit referendum and the US Presidential Election that caused outcomes that were “off the beaten track”, a strong conversation has risen up about the quality of news sources, especially online sources.

This is because most of us are gaining our news through online resources like online-news aggregators like Google News, search engines like Google or Bing, or social networks like Facebook or Twitter. It is while traditional media like the newspapers, radio or TV are being seen by younger generations as irrelevant which is leading to these outlets reducing the staff numbers in their newsrooms or even shutting down newsrooms completely.

What has been found is that this reliance on online news and information has had us become more susceptible to fake news, disinformation and propaganda which has been found to distort election outcomes and draw in populist political outcomes.

Increasingly we are seeing the rise of fact-checking groups that are operated by newsrooms and universities who verify the kind of information that is being run as news. We are also seeing the electoral authorities like the Australian Electoral Commission engage in public-education campaigns regarding what we pass around on social media. This is while the Silicon-Valley platforms are taking steps to deal with fake news and propaganda by maintaining robust account management and system-security policies, sustaining strong end-user feedback loops, engaging with the abovementioned fact-check organisations and disallowing monetisation for sites and apps that spread misinformation.

Let’s not forget that libraries and the education sector are taking action to encourage media literacy amongst students and library patrons. With this site, I even wrote articles about being aware of fake news and misinformation during the run-up to the UK general election and the critical general elections in Australia i.e. the NSW and Victoria state elections and the Federal election which were running consecutively over six months.

NewsGuard highlighting the credibility of online news sources it knows about on Google News

But a group of journalists recently worked on an online resource to make it easy for end-users to verify the authenticity and trustworthiness of online news resources. NewsGuard, by which this resource is named, assesses the online news resources on factors like the frequency it runs with false content; responsible gathering and presentation of information; distinguishing between news and opinion / commentary; use of deceptive headlines and proper error handling. Even factors that affect transparency like ownership and financing of the resource including ideological or political leanings of those in effective control; who has effective control and any possible conflicts of interest; distinction between editorial and advertising / paid content; and the names of the content creators and their contact or biographical information.

The NewsGuard “pilot light” on Chrome’s address bar indicating the trustworthiness of a news site

End-users can use a plug-in or extension for the popular desktop browsers which will insert a “shield” behind a Weblink to a news resource indicating whether it is credible or not, including whether you are simply dealing with a platform or general-info site or a satire page. They can click on the shield icon to see more about the resource and this resource is even described in an analogous form to a nutrition label on packaged foodstuffs.

For the Google Chrome extension, there is also the shield which appears on the address bar and changes colour according to how the Web resource you are reading has been assessed by NewsGuard. It is effectively like a “pilot light” on a piece of equipment that indicates the equipment’s status such as when a sandwich toaster is on or has heated up fully.

Basic details being shown about the trrustworthiness of online news site if you click on NewsGuard “pilot light”

It is also part of the package for the iOS and Android versions of Microsoft Edge but it will take time for other mobile browsers to provide this as an option.

NewsGuard is a free service with it gaining a significant amount of funding from the Microsoft’s Defending Democracy program. This is a program that is about protecting democratic values like honest and fair elections.

It is also being pitched towards the online advertising industry as a tool to achieve a brand-safe environment for brands and advertisers who don’t want anything to do with fake news and disinformation. This will be positioned as a licensable data source and application-programming interface for this user group to benefit from. Libraries, educational facilities, students and parents are also being encouraged to benefit from the NewsGuard browser add-ons as part of their media-literacy program and curriculum resources.

Click further to see a detailed “nutrition label” report about the quality and trustworthiness of that online news resource

But I see it also of benefit towards small newsrooms like music radio stations who want to maintain some credibility in their national or international news coverage. Here, they can make sure that they use news from trusted media resources for their news output like the “top-of-the-hour” newscast. Students, researchers, bloggers and similar users may find this of use to make sure that any media coverage that they cite are from trustworthy sources.

The UK government are even considering this tool as a “must-have” for Internet service providers to provide so that British citizens are easily warned about fake news and propaganda. It is in the same approach to how users there can have their ISPs provide a family-friendly “clean feed” free of pornography or hate speech.

It is now being rolled out around the rest of Europe with France and Italy already on board with this service for their mastheads. Germany is yet to come on board but it could be a feasible way to have other countries speaking the same language climbing on board very quickly such as having Germany, Austria and Switzerland come on board very quickly once German presence is established.

As NewsGuard rolls out around the world, it could effectively become one of the main “go-to” points to perform due-diligence research on that news outlet or its content. It will also become very relevant as our news and information is delivered through podcasts and Internet-delivered radio and TV broadcasts or we use Internet-connected devices to receive our news and information.

Article

Are you sure you are casting your vote or able to cast your vote without undue influence?

Australian Electoral Commission boots online blitz to counter fake news | ITNews

Previous coverage

Being cautious about fake news and misinformation in Australia

From the horse’s mouth

Australian Electoral Commission

Awareness Page

Press Release

My Comments

I regularly cover the issue of fake news and misinformation especially when this happens around election cycles. This is because it can be used as a way to effectively distort what makes up a democratically-elected government.

When the Victorian state government went to the polls last year, I ran an article about the issue of fake news and how we can defend ourselves against it during election time. This was because of Australia hosting a run of elections that are ripe for a concerted fake-news campaign – state elections for the two most-populous states in the country and a federal election.

It is being seen as of importance due to fact that the IT systems maintained by the Australian Parliament House and the main Australian political parties fell victim to a cyber attack close to February 2019 with this hack being attributed to a nation-state. This can lead to the discovered information being weaponised against the candidates or their political parties similar to the email attack against the Democrat party in the USA during early 2016 which skewed the US election towards Donald Trump and America towards a highly-divided nation.

The issue of fake news, misinformation and propaganda has been on our lips over the last few years due to us switching away from traditional news-media sources to social media and online search and news-aggregation sites. Similarly, the size of well-respected newsrooms is becoming smaller due to reduced circulation and ratings for newspapers and TV/radio stations driven by our use of online resources. This leads to poorer-quality news reporting that is a similar standard to entertainment-focused media like music radio.

A simplified low-cost no-questions-asked path has been facilitated by personal computing and the Internet to create and present material, some of which can be questionable. It is now augmented by the ability to create deepfake image and audio-visual content that uses still images, audio or video clips to represent a very convincing falsehood thanks to artificial-intelligence. Then this content can be easily promoted through popular social-media platforms or paid positioning in search engines.

Such content takes advantage of the border-free nature of the Internet to allow for an actor in one jurisdiction to target others in another jurisdiction without oversight of the various election-oversight or other authorities in either jurisdiction.

I mentioned what Silicon Valley’s online platforms are doing in relation to this problem such as restricting access to online advertising networks; interlinking with fact-check organisations to identify fake news; maintaining a strong feedback loop with end-users; and operating robust user-account-management and system-security policies, procedures and protocols. Extant newsrooms are even offering fact-check services to end-users, online services and election-oversight authorities to build up a defence against misinformation.

But the Australian Electoral Commission is taking action through a public-education campaign regarding fake news and misinformation during the Federal election. They outlined that their legal remit doesn’t cover the truthfulness of news content but it outlines whether the information comes from a reliable or recognised source, how current it is and whether it could be a scam. Of course there is the issue of cross-border jurisdictional issues especially where material comes in from overseas sources.

They outlined that their remit covers the “authorisation” or provenance of the electoral communications that appear through advertising platforms. As well, they underscore the role of other Australian government agencies like the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission who oversee advertising issues and the Australian Communications And Media Authority who oversee broadcast media. They also have provided links to the feedback and terms-and-conditions pages of the main online services in relationship to this issue.

These Federal agencies are also working on the issue of electoral integrity in the context of advertising and other communication to the voters by candidates, political parties or other entities; along with the “elephant in the room” that is foreign interference; and security of these polls including cyber-security.

But what I have outlined in the previous coverage is to look for information that qualifies the kind of story being published especially if you use a search engine or aggregated news view; to trust your “gut reaction” to the information being shared especially if it is out-of-touch with reality or is sensationalist or lurid; checking the facts against established media that you trust or other trusted resources; or even checking for facts “from the horse’s mouth” such as official press releases.

Inspecting the URL in your Web browser’s address bar before the first “/” to see if there is more that what is expected for a news source’s Web site can also pay dividends. But this can be a difficult task if you are using your smartphone or a similarly-difficult user interface.

I also even encourage making more use of established trusted news sources including their online presence as a primary news source during these critical times. Even the simple act of picking up and reading that newspaper or turning on the radio or telly can be a step towards authoritative news sources.

As well, I also encourage the use of the reporting functionality or feedback loop offered by social media platforms, search engines or other online services to draw attention to contravening content This was an action I took as a publisher regarding an ad that appeared on this site which had the kind of sensationalist headline that is associated with fake news.

The issue of online misinformation especially during general elections is still a valid concern. This is more so where the online space is not subject to the kinds of regulation associated with traditional media in one’s home country and it becomes easy for foreign operators to launch campaigns to target other countries. What needs to happen is a strong information-sharing protocol in order to place public and private stakeholders on alert about potential election manipulation.