by Kris Shaffer
twitter-sees-6-increase-in-like-activity-after-first-week-of-hearts/.
19Bianca Bosker, “The Binge Breaker,” The Atlantic, published November, 2016, www.the-
atlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-binge-breaker/501122/.
20Nellie Bowles, “Silicon Valley Nannies Are Phone Police for Kids,” The New York Times,
published October 26, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/silicon-valley-
nannies.html.
21Tom Rosenstiel, Jeff Sonderman, Kevin Loker, Jennifer Benz, David Sterrett, Dan Malato,
Trevor Tompson, Liz Kantor, and Emily Swanson, “‘Who shared it?’: How Americans decide
what news to trust on social media,” American Press Institute, published March 20, 2017,
www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/
trust-social-media/.
Data versus Democracy
43
critical thinking, we might be thinking critically about the wrong things. And
platforms aren’t much help here. Most social platforms take steps to highlight
the sharer (bold text, profile picture, placement in the upper left of the “card”)
and downplay the originating source (smaller, lighter text, placement in the
lower left of the card)—assuming the domain hosting the article is the primary
source of the narrative, anyway. 22 This only exacerbates the tendency to judge
a message by the messenger instead of the source.
Psychologists Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia study the spread of
rumors online, and they have identified four primary factors that contribute
to whether or not someone believes a new idea or claim of fact they
encounter:
• The claim agrees with that person’s existing attitudes
(confirmation bias).
• The claim comes from a credible source (which on social
media often means the person who shared it, not the
actual origin of the claim).
• The claim has been encountered repeatedly (which
contributes to perceptual fluency).
• The claim is not accompanied by a rebuttal.23
In many ways, social media is engineered to bolster these factors, even for
false narratives. We’ve already seen how engineering for engagement via
collaborative filtering exacerbates the problem of confirmation bias and how
on social media we often evaluate the wrong source. We’ve also discussed at
length how repetition, especially when unconscious, can erode our ability to
critically evaluate a false narrative. Both Twitter’s retweet feature and
Facebook’s resurfacing of a story in our feeds every time it receives a new
comment facilitate this. After all, we wouldn’t want to miss out on a lively
discussion among our friends! And we know that rebuttals spread far more
slowly than the viral lies they seek to correct.24 Social platforms as they exist today really are built to foster a sense of believability, regardless of what the
truth really is.
Taking all these facts together, the deck is stacked against us for critical
information consumption. Social platforms are designed in ways that make
22Mike Caulfield, “Facebook Broke Democracy, but the Fix Is Harder Than People Realize,”
Hapgood (blog), published November 10, 2016, https://hapgood.us/2016/11/10/
facebook-broke-democracy-but-the-fix-is-harder-than-people-realize/.
23Bordia, Prashant and Nicholas DiFonzo. 2017. Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational
Approaches. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
24Alexis Sobel Fitts, “We still don’t know how to stop misinformation online,” Colombia
Journalism Review, published October 9, 2014, https://archives.cjr.org/behind_
the_news/corrections_dont_go_viral.php.
44
Chapter 3 | Swimming Upstream
critical consumption hard and the sharing of unsubstantiated “truthy” claims
easy. At the same time, more of us are getting more of our news from our
social feeds, and we haven’t even talked about the role that social media plays
in how print, radio, and television journalists find their scoops and frame their
stories. Left unchecked, fake news, filter bubbles, and polarization will only
get worse. And given the importance of an informed electorate to a democratic
republic, the algorithmic news feed represents a real threat to democracy.
That said, platforms have made changes in both attitudes and algorithms over
the past two years. They still have a ways to go, and new “hacks” to the
system are emerging all the time, but it feels to those of us who research this
problem like we are finally headed in the right direction. It’s time to capitalize
on that and press forward as hard as we can, before new tactics and waning
public pressure usher in a new era of complacency.
Summary
So far, we’ve unpacked a lot of “theory” behind disinformation and online
propaganda. The limits of human cognition, along with the affordances of
social platforms and content recommendation algorithms, make it easy for
half-truths and outright lies to spread, for biases to amplify, and for ideologically
motivated groups to drift further away from each other—and further from
the possibility of meaningful dialog and compromise.
These problems aren’t simply organic. They don’t only happen by accident, as
flawed but well-meaning people interact on platforms designed by other
flawed but well-meaning people. Polarization, bias, and distrust-at-scale are
also fostered by bad actors, including state actors, who take advantage of
these flawed systems and our increasing reliance on them.
In the remainder of this book, we will walk through several case studies that
lay out a number of specific disinformation campaigns, or influence operations,
that starkly depict the dangers we face when we rely uncritically on a small
number of algorithmically driven platforms for our information consumption
and political exchanges. But embedded in some of these case studies—and
the way the public, governments, and/or platforms have responded to them—
is hope as well. There are personal habits, platform modifications, and
governmental tactics that work, which help digital media, even social media,
become (again?) a force for good in the world.
That’s what we’ll explore together in the second half of this book…
P A R T
II
Case Studies
C H A P T E R
4
Domestic
Disturbance
Ferguson, GamerGate, and the Rise of the
American Alt-Right
For two whole days after the shooting of Michael Brown, major protests and
rallies were taking place in Ferguson, Missouri, with hardly a mention in the
mainstream news media, or even on Facebook. Yet a major portion of the
country knew about the protests, the major influencers, and the emerging
movement known as Black Lives Matter. Through Twitter, protesters were
able to coordinate their activities, avoid tear gas and LRADs (long-range
acoustic devices), even get phone charging battery packs to movement leaders.
That activity on Twitter (and Vine) brought the events directly to the public
eye and eventually to American mainstream news media. This watershed
movement made many awa
re of the limitations of mass news media and the
power of participatory media to shape conversations and effect social change.
But those haven’t been the only effects.
Almost simultaneously with the Ferguson unrest, a group of online “trolls”
(harassers, abusers, and other kinds of bad actors, typically operating in the
open) emerged to fight a culture war against “social justice warriors” they saw
as threats to their world of online gaming communities. A number of game
designers and critics—three women in particular—found themselves the
victims of disinformation, coordinated online harassment, and credible threats
© Kris Shaffer 2019
K. Shaf fer, Data versus Democracy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4540-8_4
48
Chapter 4 | Domestic Disturbance
on their safety and that of their friends and family. Social platforms and law
enforcement were slow and ineffective in their responses, and many lives
were drastically changed by these attacks. For many, GamerGate was the
pivotal event that made the dark powers of social media—including Twitter
“bots” (automated accounts) and “sockpuppets” (fake accounts, managed by
anonymous humans in real time)—apparent to a larger population. But those
dark powers weren’t finished…
In this chapter, we’ll explore how some of the same affordances of social
media can be used to grow movements on all sides of the political spectrum—
movements meant to build up and movements meant to tear down. Movements
that would change the American political landscape drastically, and likely for
the long haul.
Crowd Control: How the Tweets of Ferguson
Steered Mainstream Media and
Public Awareness
When announcing that there would be no indictment of Darren Wilson after
the shooting of Michael Brown, St. Louis prosecutor Bob McCulloch stated:
The most significant challenge encountered in this investigation has
been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something,
for anything to talk about. Following closely behind with the non-
stop rumors on social media.1
Protest leader DeRay McKesson responded on Twitter:
McCulloch takes another dig at social media. But were it not for
Twitter, he would’ve convinced the world that we didn’t exist.
#Ferguson2
Social and independent media have become cornerstones of (anti-)social
activist movements in the twenty-first century. Arab Spring, Ferguson,
#GamerGate, #BlackLivesMatter, #BlueLivesMatter, #MeToo—all have relied
on social media to accomplish their purposes. This was seen clearly in
Ferguson, where emergent activist leaders DeRay McKesson (@deray),
Johnetta Elzie (@Nettaaaaaaaa), and Tef Poe (@tefpoe) used Twitter to
1Dylan Byers, “Ferguson Prosecutor Blames the Media,” Politico, published November 25,
2014, www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/11/ferguson-prosecutor-blames-
the-media-199249.html.
2DeRay McKesson, Twitter Post, November 24, 2014, 9:20 p.m., https://twitter.com/
deray/status/537068182909882368.
Data versus Democracy
49
organize protests around St. Louis and to warn activists of police presence
and activity. At the same time, protesters used Twitter, Instagram, and Vine
to document alleged police brutality and to “cover” events outside the police-
imposed press pen. And many of the journalists victimized by the police3 or
brave enough to embed themselves with the protesters (outside said press
pen) used Twitter, Vine, and live-streamed video to get news out in real time.
The decentralized nature of these social media platforms empowers groups
and individuals to get messages out fast, bypassing mainstream media outlets.
They also allow for, perhaps even require, a different kind of activist leadership.
In Ferguson, this led to criticism from figures like Oprah Winfrey calling for
more leadership from the movement4—in other words, a centralized voice.
But as activist responses made clear (on Twitter, of course), the movement
does have leadership—only leadership of a different kind.
Shaun King’s response to Oprah was telling:
I love @Oprah. Was an Oprah Scholar @Morehouse. Her quote
suggests 1 thing... All she learned about Ferguson came from the
nightly news. 5
The accusation was not that Oprah was wrong but that Oprah had the
wrong information. That she doesn’t understand the media being used by
the movement and the difference in how the movement organizes around
those media.
Oprah was not alone. Though Ferguson was primarily an in-person protest,
its reach, longevity, and impact were in large part facilitated by social media, in
particular Twitter and Vine. Understanding how Ferguson played out, and the
impact it had on the rising #BlackLivesMatter movement, requires
understanding the social media landscape and how it was used by activists to
coordinate action, spread their message, and steer the narrative.
August 9, 2014: What Happened in Ferguson
I heard it first on Twitter. In 2014, that statement could refer to just about
anything. It was far and away my most active year on Twitter. I used it in my
research, my teaching (I even made my students tweet in class, and we
3Jon Swaine, “Michael Brown protests in Ferguson met with rubber bullets and teargas,”
The Guardian, published August 14, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/14/
ferguson-police-teargas-rubber-bullets-michael-brown.
4Sarah Muller, “Protesters slam Oprah for suggesting movement lacks leadership,” MSNBC,
updated January 5, 2015, www.msnbc.com/msnbc/protesters-slam-oprah-suggesting-
movement-lacks-leadership.
5Shaun King, Twitter Post, https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/551109555040829440,
deleted but cited in ibid.
50
Chapter 4 | Domestic Disturbance
interviewed visiting scholars via public Twitter chat), and for collaborating
with other researchers around the globe. I had two computer monitors in my
office, and one was often entirely devoted to TweetDeck, my Twitter client
of choice. One of my academic colleagues said my setup looked like I was
trading stocks, as several columns of constantly updating tweets flew down
my screen.
But in this case, I’m referring to Ferguson. The shooting of Michael Brown on
August 9, the several hours the police left his lifeless body on the street, the
memorials and the vigils in the days that followed.
I heard it first on Twitter when a friend of mine from college who lived in St.
Louis at the time was at one of those vigils and was greeted afterward by
police in riot gear as the mourners left the church. I heard it first on Twitter
when police established a press pen, forbidding journalists from exercising
their first amendment rights to observe and report on the protests and the
police response.6 I heard it first on Twitter that journalists Wesley Lowery and
Ryan Reilly were arrested in a McDonalds while they recharged their phone
batteries.7 I heard it first on Twitter when police fired tear gas at the crowd,
which included
infants and young children. I heard it first on Twitter when
police used long-range acoustic devices (LRADs), psychological weapons that
disorient crowds and can cause permanent hearing damage. I heard it first on
Twitter that Amnesty International had sent observers to Ferguson, to observe
and document potential human rights violations perpetrated by the police.8
For several days, I heard it all first on Twitter. In fact, for at least three days, I only
heard it on Twitter. (And the Vice News livestream—which I heard about on
Twitter.) I remember seeing some particularly unsettling events take place and
asking my wife—who has never had a Twitter account— can you believe what’s
going on in Ferguson?! She replied something along the lines of: What’s Ferguson?
At the time, I had Twitter, she had Facebook, and we didn’t have a television
in the house. We consumed news on social media or on mainstream news
web sites. And while my Twitter feed was dominated by Ferguson, her
Facebook feed (like many Americans’) was dominated by the Ice Bucket
Challenge and cute pictures of friends’ kids. And for at least two days, it
seemed the mainstream media had yet to hear about Ferguson, too.
6Noam Cohen, “U.S. Inquiry Sought in Police Treatment of Press at Ferguson Protests,”
The New York Times, published October 26, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/
business/media/-us-inquiry-sought-in-police-treatment-of-press-at-fergu-
son-protests-.html.
7“Michael Brown protests in Ferguson met with rubber bullets and teargas.”
8Tierney Sneed, “Amnesty International Blasts Handling of Mike Brown Shooting, Ferguson
Protests,” U.S. News & World Report, published October 24, 2014, www.usnews.com/
news/articles/2014/10/24/amnesty-international-blasts-handling-of-
mike-brown-shooting-ferguson-protests.
Data versus Democracy
51
In addition to bringing into sharp relief the vices of police brutality, police
militarization, and racial injustice, Ferguson also brought into sharp relief the
differences between mainstream media and social media and between
algorithmically driven social platforms (like Facebook) and the still-reverse-
chronological-order Twitter timeline. While all three—mainstream media,