Collision Course: The destruction of democracy at the intersection of social media and political propaganda

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We are all familiar with the images from Egypt that depict crowds of people carrying signs for "Facebook," the word painted on walls, and even stories describing parents who name their children after the social network. The praise is not unwarranted. Many in Egypt see social media as their savior, a tool that enabled them to mobilize against an unjust government (This link contains a fascinating roundtable discussion of the impact of social media, particularly in this uprising).

Although the use of social media in the political movement in Egypt is utterly inspiring, its scope and power are simultaneously terrifying. I recently visited the new "Nazi Propaganda" exhibit at the Holocaust Museum, so the effectiveness of this campaign came to mind. Even in an era during which no mass networking or social media existed, the Nazi party sparked a movement through its use of propaganda. 

Now there exists a forum for these types of ideas to spread more quickly. I began to think about the kind of turmoil that would ensue if social media, such as Facebook, Google, News Channels, and Twitter were utilized to effectively mobilize terrorist groups. These news sources could rapidly disseminate hateful propaganda, targeted at innocent people, and possibly even create an extremist revolution.

After doing a little bit of research, I found that this is not a hypothetical situation. Extremist groups are currently using social media to rally people around their causes. And how is the United States responding to these threats? Our defense tactic is nearly as frightening as the extremist efforts we are targeting.

The United States Army, under General David Petraeus has created software that will allow it to effectively manipulate social media sites. The program allows users to create fake online profiles on blog forums and in chat rooms in order to counter the uprisings of extremist groups. More specifically, the purpose of the program is to disseminate pro-American propaganda. While it is good to know that the United States is formulating defense tactics, it is frightening to imagine the implications of such software, if it were in the wrong hands. What if these fake personas, or "sock puppets" were used in political campaigns? This type of propaganda would certainly be in violation of federal law, but if the users were not caught or identified, it could result in a complete usurpation of the democracy. In fact, this program is even being compared to China's efforts to stifle free speech over the internet.

In a separate article, I found that the Pentagon recently released information on a new intitiative called the Social Media in Strategic Communication program, which they describe as "an effort to get better at both detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns on social media.  Both this example and the "sock puppet program demonstrate that the United States government is becoming incresingly aware of the ideas being spread in the social media sphere, and inventing new ways to secretly manipulate these ideas.

I believe this kind of software is so dangerous because it would attack the core of America, which, as we discussed in class on Tuesday, is now wireless. We came to a consensus that many Americans essentially live through the internet, using online personas to get information, share ideas, and engage in political discussion. 

Aaron Smith's Pew Studies provided us with the statistics to back up this assumption. His research shows that 1/3 of online adults use digital tools rather than websites to get information about government agencies or officials. This means that they are gaining their knowledge from videos, e-mails, blogs, "following" on Twitter, or "fanning" on Facebook. A whopping 26% of Americans used their mobile devices to participate in the 2010 midterm elections and Aaron Smith explained how social media can now reach a wider audience, particularly minorities. If people were using manipulative software which was difficult to track to create "fake personas" to spread false political information as if it were truth, internet discussion would be wrought with nothing less than corruption.

I interviewed a Policy Director for a United States Senator while I was at my internship this week about this topic (I must omit her name for privacy). I asked her if she was equally as overwhelmed by this issue as I was, and her response was:

"I have been doing this job for a long time. I grew up in a time that people questioned the political information they read. They got it mostly from the newspaper. They were looking for real sources. If they read something, they didn't accept it off the bat. Now we live, and you guys have grown up in, a time where you have information at your fingertips. When you get an e-mail, read a blog, go to a website, watch TV, you think it's true because you just trust. I talk to people about policy every day--constituents, lobbyists, even other policymakers. They will throw out a belief, a "fact," anything to back up their viewpoint and I will say "where did you hear that?" They tell me, "I just got it in an e-mail."

She went on to tell me that this belief is shared by many other people on Capitol Hill who see the growth of social and mass media as a detriment to democracy, and not only through such complex tactics as "sock puppets." Many on Capitol Hill feel that social media and instant connection simply provides forums for misinformation and the spread of political ignorance. In an article in The New Republic, Evgeny Morozov explains how this is true about Google, whose motto "Don't Be Evil," may just be propaganda in itself. The article had a particularily interesting section about Google Autocomplete, a feature that provides possible search items after typing a word, or even a few letters into the query box. She describes how autocomplete works by providing completions based on the most frequently sought after topics. Thus, when users type "Barack Obama" autocomplete may yield results that say "Barack Obama is the Antichrist."

In a political campaign, this feature could enable a party to "search" items that would degrade the image of the opposing candidate, regardless of their truth. Google serves about 34,000 searches per second, and 3 Billion searches per day. And, according to Aaron Smith's Pew Studies, 48% of people search a public policy issue online. Therefore, one can only imagine the kind of impact that this searching could have on a political campaign. In fact, "marketers are already hiring people to conduct searches with the intention of tricking Google's Autocomplete into producing favorable suggestions" (Morozov). Political theorist Jurgen Habmeras summed up this type of effect, stating that this type of "technocratic consciousness reflect not the sundering of an ethical situation but the repression of 'ethics' as such a category of life."

I suggest searching politicians names, and seeing what you find (and then imagine that this could happen with your name if someone wanted to destroy your public reputation). This is not only a flagrant breach of privacy but, again, undermines democracy.

At the absolute least, corruption and the use of propaganda in news media spread ignorance and misinformation. I found a fascinating clip online of Minnesota Senator Al Franken showing a group of students, step by step, why statistics on Fox News were simply incorrect. He sums up the video by explaining the exact message I want to communicate to my generation through this entry: "You've got to be able to watch the news, and read the paper, and say 'that doesn't make sense to me'. The age of social media, fake online personas, information which claims to be credible demands that we get smarter about politics, and question the sources feeding us our ideas. Because in the words of Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google himself, "the Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand."