As domestic and foreign actors continue to spread incorrect information and incorrect information ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, federal agencies and nonprofits are running to provide enhanced resources and diverse communities targeted by erroneous and misleading content.
Federal officials and security researchers have warned for months about the risks posed by election-related disinformation and disinformation campaigns, noting that even undeniable allegations of election interference can lead to physical threats of violence against election directors and erode acceptance of the truth in elections. process. A report released last month through cybersecurity company Recorded Future found that disinformation campaigns across actors from geographic regions, adding China, Russia and Iran, have “likely intensified” since the 2020 presidential election, even as domestic actors continue to magnify unsubstantiated claims about the process. Accuracy of voting machines and vote counting.
But more federal collaboration is needed to fight this kind of targeted misinformation and misinformation, said Joseph Bryant Jr. , executive director of Rainbow PUSH Silicon Valley/Bay Area, adding that he believes officials are now starting to realize “that you want to be more consistent regulation around the use of those resources.
“You want there to be a more collaborative technique for this, where things can be done ethically, legally and consistently,” he said. “It will take a little more time and effort. But the federal government will have to take on duty and assume a greater role.
In an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said the upcoming midterm reviews provide a “very complex risk environment,” but noted that there were no “specific or credible” risks to disrupting the election. He added that the firm is working, in part, to provide resources on “how to build resilience in the face of misinformation. “
“We have a rumor site versus the truth that is necessarily voter literacy,” Easterly said. “But more importantly, we magnify the voices of local and state election officials. These are the trusted voices that perceive how elections work. If someone has questions about voting or how it all works, they tell their local election officials.
But even as CISA worked to build public confidence in the integrity of the election procedure by airing joint public service announcements with the FBI to counter considerations about the risk posed by malicious cyber actors, as well as to raise awareness of foreign efforts to spread disinformation and disinformation ahead of the midterm elections: false and misleading content targets diverse non-English speaking communities throughout the United States.
Kim Wyman, CISA’s senior election security adviser, told Nextgov that “election officials identified and signaled to CISA a desire to help non-English-speaking communities deal with the dangers of misinformation. “
“We know that disinformation can require a lot of red tape and languages, so we provide translations of several of our products about the threat of misinformation and disinformation,” Wyman said. “We also know that one of the most effective tactics to mitigate the spread of disdata is to empower local election officials, who are trusted voices in their communities, in all languages. We will continue to magnify local election officials as the primary source of accurate data on how elections are conducted.
CISA launched a series of Disinformation Tactics on October 18 “to provide state, local, tribal, and territorial government officials and personal sector partners with a review of 8 non-unusual tactics used by disinformation actors to spread false narratives, as well as proactive measures that can help mitigate the effectiveness of the tactic,” according to the agency. Over the past year, CISA has also republished several of its resources on disinformation and disinformation in Spanish, adding a consultant to identify inauthentic content and an infographic to combat disinformation, while maintaining the creation of a multilingual resource library of teams to combat disinformation.
But even though CISA has asked the public to rely on their own resources, as well as data provided through national and local election officials, to help combat the spread of erroneous election-related data, some nonprofits have stepped in to provide tools, resources, and education for communities that have been hyper-objective through false and misleading content.
One of them is the Poynter Institute’s MediaWise virtual media literacy project, which has spent more than a year working with organizations representing diverse communities to fight misinformation and disinformation efforts.
“There is no one-size-fits-all technique for all of this,” said Alex Mahadevan, director of Poynter’s MediaWise initiative. of what can succeed in someone else. So if the wrong information succeeds in other people in other tactics, you need to treat it with other tactics that take that into account.
The MediaWise initiative, which began in 2018, first aimed to help teens and academics separate fact from fiction, but expanded into media literacy education for older Americans in 2020. Mahadevan said that earlier this year, Poynter began running to succeed among Spanish speakers. and communities attacked through incorrect information and incorrect information.
These paintings meet with organizations and discuss the types of incorrect information and specific misinformation they see, the platforms they see them on, and how it affects their communities. MediaWise then creates custom-designed painting workshops to provide members and leaders of those teams to deliver to their communities, focusing on fact-checking training, opposing symbol research, and other media literacy skills. The initiative has partnered with Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, League of United Latin American Citizens and other teams to provide courses and resources to fight targeted influencer campaigns.
Mahadevan said incorrect voter information and immigrant communities of misinformation, in particular, can be effective, as it is based on many of their lived experiences.
“Disinformers are smart about setting up pieces of disinformation that they paint for express communities,” Mahadevan said. “I think those allegations of voter fraud in the United States are absolutely false. But I think other people who emigrated from Latin America, for example, might have in the back of their head, “Oh, this happened in my country, so I can see how this can be true. “
Given the politicized nature of countering election-related disinformation, it can be tricky for nonprofits doing this type of work to get more federal assistance. Mahadevan said that “there is a lot of investment going into media literacy” around the world, but he would still like to see more collaboration with the federal government to bring these paintings to light.
“We need to marry government organizations on this, but we just haven’t noticed as many opportunities,” Mahadevan said. “I think in terms of directing resources to demystify things or creating a disinformation task force, I think it gets a little tricky. “because it’s so antagonistic. “
Earlier this year, Biden’s management had to oppose the creation of a Disinformation Governing Council within the Department of Homeland Security after conservatives broadly rejected it. And a recent ProPublica investigation published Nov. 1 found that DHS later withdrew from its broader efforts. To counter incorrect election information after the junta is dissolved.
For organizations on the ground, however, those types of nonprofit-led training assistance fill the gap left by broader federal involvement.
Bryant said “it’s vital now to take a look at voter education. “He said MediaWise’s trainings, in particular, have shown how nefarious actors “can temporarily use deception and other unfair practices to spread misinformation,” and have helped voters, especially those in diverse communities, “discern and make decisions with the right kind of information. “
According to Bryant, the role of the federal government deserves to be fighting the spread of incorrect information and incorrect information on social media platforms frequented by younger users, as many Gen Z and Gen Y Americans “live in spaces where other people have to pass through and manipulate information. “
“This has to be addressed very, very intentionally,” he added.
While the existing focus on countering influence operations has largely focused on the proliferation of destructive election-related content, misinformation and disinformation campaigns in recent years have spread unfounded rumors about the FBI, IRS, and the origins of COVID-19. More recently, Russian actors have also used Spanish-language social media to spread incorrect information about the war in Ukraine.
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