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Social Media Manipulation Rising Globally, New Oxford Report Warns (phys.org)
A new report from Oxford University found that manipulation of public opinion over social media platforms is growing at a large scale, despite efforts to combat it. "Around the world, government agencies and political parties are exploiting social media platforms to spread junk news and disinformation, exercise censorship and control, and undermine trust in media, public institutions and science," reports Phys.Org. From the report: "The number of countries where formally organized social media manipulation occurs has greatly increased, from 28 to 48 countries globally," says Samantha Bradshaw, co-author of the report. "The majority of growth comes from political parties who spread disinformation and junk news around election periods. There are more political parties learning from the strategies deployed during Brexit and the U.S. 2016 Presidential election: more campaigns are using bots, junk news, and disinformation to polarize and manipulate voters."
This is despite efforts by governments in many democracies introducing new legislation designed to combat fake news on the internet. "The problem with this is that these 'task forces' to combat fake news are being used as a new tool to legitimize censorship in authoritarian regimes," says Professor Phil Howard, co-author and lead researcher on the OII's Computational Propaganda project. "At best, these types of task forces are creating counter-narratives and building tools for citizen awareness and fact-checking." Another challenge is the evolution of the mediums individuals use to share news and information. "There is evidence that disinformation campaigns are moving on to chat applications and alternative platforms," says Bradshaw. "This is becoming increasingly common in the Global South, where large public groups on chat applications are more popular."
This is despite efforts by governments in many democracies introducing new legislation designed to combat fake news on the internet. "The problem with this is that these 'task forces' to combat fake news are being used as a new tool to legitimize censorship in authoritarian regimes," says Professor Phil Howard, co-author and lead researcher on the OII's Computational Propaganda project. "At best, these types of task forces are creating counter-narratives and building tools for citizen awareness and fact-checking." Another challenge is the evolution of the mediums individuals use to share news and information. "There is evidence that disinformation campaigns are moving on to chat applications and alternative platforms," says Bradshaw. "This is becoming increasingly common in the Global South, where large public groups on chat applications are more popular."
Social media allows the pushed narrative to be challenged. It's pretty easy to see how that would upset people who had worked very hard to gain control of it. If you depend on preferential treatment from the government to move your product the last thing you would want is people wondering why they were paying to make you rich.
Or just something a little more obvious, you live in a state that hasn't built a water project in half a century, now has to ration water, but instead of using funds to improve the water system has decided to spend on the order of a hundred billion to build a high speed train system that there is no demand for.
Just saying, if my land was slated to be part of that train system, or I had a large contract to build it, the last thing I would want is voters getting together and talking about how badly they were taking it up the poop shoot.
New Oxford Report must be part of the old media.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
... I'm 72 years old and started doing computers back when Jesus was a carpenter.
Social media is real-time entertainment; not to be taken seriously.
News sites are alive and doing well outside the social media bubble.
I'm disappointed that people who were born after the Internet was well-established don't know this by now.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.