How to Counter Online Disinformation: A Case Study

Photo Credit: NYTimes

It is tough to deal with disinformation.  It floods social media.  It is meant to misguide, disrupt, and undermine fact and truth.

It's tough to have a plan or a strategy to counteract lies, especially when the lies come from or are given weight by a prominent public figure, such as President Trump.

The following is an excellent, practical, short case study for capturing the high ground and limiting the effectiveness of disinformation, courtesy of Alan Steele Bowser, a civil activist, attorney, and president of the Montgomery County Civic Federation outside Washington DC in Maryland.  Alan's key points are (in his text below I have bolded key passages), 

"...use the sandwich method:

1) state the facts

2) push back on the lie without repeating it

3) return to fact-based, positive messaging"

What Alan writes echos what I wrote previously as I tracked down an online troll who had attempted to troll something I had written.  I wrote in response then,

"The internet amplifies lies, but it also calls them out.

When someone posts strident nonsense or hate messages, don’t leave their views unchallenged.  A troll may attempt to spread their hate message by piggybacking on your post, thereby gaining access to your audience.  However, if you provide a factual, responsible response, they can’t respond in turn without retweeting your message as well.  A sensible reader can distinguish sound, compelling arguments and sort out the nonsense if they have all the information, not just the troll's point of view.  Take this advice from another Twitter user, @yarkot, on how to respond to trolls,

1.     Start with the truth (if you lead with the lie, you privilege it)

2.     Note attempt to divert the truth (note, rather than amplify, the lie)

3.     Return to the truth the lie is designed to hide (don’t allow the distraction/diversion to work)"

Here's what I call Alan's case study on countering disinformation:

CASE STUDY

 Stategy for Countering Disinformation

No matter where the disinformation Comes from.

[Quote follows]

THIS IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION FROM EXPERTS REGARDING THE DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN BEING COORDINATED BY TRUMP:

It’s now abundantly clear that Donald Trump is leading a coordinated right-wing disinformation campaign to muster every legal, governmental, and communications tool in its arsenal to cast doubt on the validity of our elections and delegitimize Joe Biden’s presidency.  

The experts are advising us to:

Project confidence across social media channels - amplify messages that support objective reality and tap into the public’s strong desire to move the country forward. 

Continue a steady pressure campaign aimed at GOP lawmakers and government officials who are validating Trump’s lies - it’s working. 

GENERAL MESSAGING GUIDELINES:

The message is simple: Voters Decided. 

The best defense is a good offense - Take the higher ground and hold it. Amplify big, overarching themes. Base content on consistent, fact-based messaging. Elevate the everyday heroes: poll workers who kept locations running, voters who braved the pandemic to be heard, non-partisan election officials doing their jobs, and peaceful activists calling for our democratic process to be upheld.

Never amplify lies - Do not engage with or point to content, articles, or threads on social media that contain disinformation lies. Heightened engagement and traffic - regardless of who it's from and what it says - is rewarded by a platform's algorithms and will result in spreading the lie further. Be prepared to respond in private settings. Always be sure you’re citing trusted, verified sources. 

If necessary to push back do it in an indirect way - If and when a clear tipping point has been reached and it becomes necessary to respond, use the sandwich method: 1) state the facts 2) push back on the lie without repeating it (e.g. “our opponents lost the election in Pennsylvania, so contesting the results by making false claims is all they have left...”) 3) return to fact-based, positive messaging. Aim to pivot the debate away from the negative lie, towards pro-democracy messaging.

Recommended hashtags: 

#VotersDecided #TransitionNow

Message Recommendations:  

The people have spoken - voters overwhelmingly chose Biden to move the country forward. #VotersDecided

Our new leaders are acting quickly to lead a government for the people to move the country forward and fix the crises created by the last Administration.  #TransitionNow

Our legally mandated election process is moving forward as our founders intended. Voters have decided, and now all states will report official election results to Congress by December 8. #TransitionNow

SAMPLE TWEETS: 

@JoeBiden and @SenKamalaHarris will be sworn in on Jan 20, 2021 - and they’re already rolling up their sleeves naming a COVID-19 advisory board and calling for Americans to protect themselves and each other by wearing masks! #VotersDecided

This weekend we celebrated #VotersDecided in the streets! Now our democracy moves forward - we’re going to swear in new leaders that stand for and protect the will of the people! 

Our democracy stands strong - no matter what they tell you. We’ve had peaceful transitions of power through previous pandemics, the Great Depression, and World War II - this year is no different #VotersDecided

The Trump admin is legally required to begin the transition process now that @JoeBiden is the winner. @GSAEmily and other federal officials need to begin the legally mandated transition process now! It's irresponsible to stall as the pandemic rages on! #VotersDecided

All that is Wrong With Defending Russia

http://euromaidanpress.com/2020/09/18/all-that-is-wrong-with-defending-russia/

Dimitri Trenin of the Carnegie Institute Moscow is as polished as ever in his most recent article on Russia’s failing relationship with the West, specifically Germany (Russo-German Relations: Back to the Future).  But he doesn’t get to the point about what brought us to this moment.

In fact, his introductory caption illusttrates precisely what is wrong with the article.  It provides a highly Moscow-centric version of why relations with the West have fallen off the cliff, and that version is wrong because it is a highly distorted reality.

Trenin writes that

“Berlin is ending the era launched by Gorbachev of a trusting and friendly relationship with Moscow.”

The sentence implies that the break in relations is a German initiative, rather than a response to a pattern of aggression and corrupt actions by Russia that forced Germany’s Chancellor Merkel to make an unprecedented official statement that Russian opposition figure Aleksei Navalny, who is being treated in a hospital in Germany, had been poisoned and by implication the Russian government was responsible. Subsequently, the poison was identified as Novichok, which strongly suggests a Russian state-sponsored killing, as with numerous murders in Russia and abroad before it.

The same tone continues throughout the article.  The first paragraph again places the responsibility on Germany for the poor relations with Russia.  Trenin writes,

“Berlin will not try to understand the other side’s motivation or strive for mutual understanding and at least basic cooperation”, without mention of Russia’s behavior.  Trenin also writes in the first paragraph about Navalny’s poisoning that “details of the incident are still largely unclear”, disingenuously failing to mention what makes the poisoning relevant, that the use of Novichok implicates the Russian government.

In Trenin’s writing, it is quite mysterious how Germany came to its “unflinching opposition…to Kremlin foreign and domestic policy” and its “harsh criticism of specific steps taken by Moscow.”  Nowhere in the article is there parallel language about Russia’s conduct or attitude to what is said about Germany.

It is extraordinary that Trenin imagines that Putin viewed Merkel’s statement as a “stab in the back,” even though yet another high profile killing where Moscow is the obvious primary suspect might be reasonably considered by Merkel as yet another stab in the back.  It is intellectually offensive that when Trenin argues “despite scandals and obstacles” the interests of both Europe and Russia require cooperation and coordination, he can only mention supposed scandals in Europe and nothing in Russia.

Instead, the article is riddled with absurdities, such as that all politicians in the West who were sympathetic to Russia were eliminated in a strategic “purge of enemy influence”, rather than Russia having lost its support in the West through its own misconduct.

When Trenin arrives finally at what Russia must do to improve relations, specifically regarding the Navalny poisoning, his admonition is not that Russia establishes the truth but that it gets its story straight in order to be more persuasive, unlike with the Litvinenko and Skripal poisonings or the shooting down of MH17 where Russia was all over the place with its stories.

Trenin simply glides over what brought us to this point is not German russophobia but that Putin’s Russia is a revisionist and criminal state lead by a predatory elite that is a threat to its people and to a stable international system. Germany is merely conceding—at last--the obvious that there is no basis for normal relations based on mutual respect until Moscow’s behavior changes.

It is not only that Trenin avoids the obvious for why Russia’s relations with the West are so bad. His article is riddled with the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.  He omits essential facts about Russia’s conduct that provide context; he misrepresents the attitude of Germany that has bent over backward to overlook Russia’s behavior in order to maintain the illusion of mutually respectful relations; and, he suggests solutions that require Germany and the West to accept Russia’s current state as the basis for understanding, thereby placing the onus on Germany and the West to adjust. This is not the approach of an objective commentator. It is the approach of an apologist for Russian misconduct.

The reason this is wrong is that, with Russia, Germany and the West are not dealing with normal statecraft within the bounds of internationally acceptable behavior: Moscow’s murder of opponents is beyond the pale; invading other counties and occupying their territories is beyond the pale, as are gross violations of humanitarian principles; disrupting the democratic process in other countries is beyond the pale; sowing division in other countries for the sole sake of promoting conflict is beyond the pale; and the corruption of Western elites through influence operations (for example, thru illegal political donations) is beyond the pale—that Western elites too often have proven corruptible is a failing of the West but is beside the point.

Trenin’s writing is a tour de force of misrepresentation, distortion, and evasion. It presents the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank, of which the Carnegie Moscow Center is an affiliate (Trenin is its Director), with a dilemma.

To be credible, Carnegie needs genuine Russia experts who can write with authority about Russia’s perspective in the world, but some experts are products of the environment that Carnegie wants to cover.

It is not Carnegie alone that has this dilemma. For example,  Edward Lozansky, of the US-Russia.org and founder of American University in Moscow, frequently writes opinion pieces in the Washington Times that display the same misrepresentation, distortion, and evasion while excusing Putin’s crimes [the original article contained a factual error. Instead of referring correctly to articles in the Washington Times written by Edward Lozansky, it incorrectly referred to Dimitri Simes of the National Interest as the author]

If Washington think tanks want to be credible, they have to distinguish between genuine differences in perspective and outright falsehoods. As we have come to learn in the US, lies are not alternative facts. They are lies.