Weve heard in the previous sessions today about Fact Checking political news, a Law Enforcement is preparing for potential post election violence. Weve also discussed the impact of disinformation about covid19 and communities of color. Our next panel will focus on covid19 political mobilization and digital platforms. Weve seen the power of information and disinformation in the era of coronavirus but how can people cut through the sea of claims and counter claims on the internet and social media and make sense of the sheer volume of information out there . And what is the responsibility of those who oversee social media platforms to make sure that information out there is actually correct and accurate . So today we have a distinguished group joining us. Im going to start with you, first, david. Dr. David is an associate professor in the school of engineering and applied sciences at the George Washington university. Hes the associate director of institute for data, democracy, and politics. Hes perhaps best known for his work when he showed that the statesponsored trolls who are responsible for distortions of Public Opinion about vaccines on social media. Hi, david hi thank you so much for having me. Can you start by telling us what you think about the quality of Health Information out there and about your work and what it says about the presence of misinformation campaigns on social media . Yeah. Thank you very much for that. One of the things to keep in mind about what were seeing on social media is just there are a wide range of hidden agendas. Different reasons why people may be posting what seems like Health Information. We cant assume that just because we see something online about covid19 or any health topic or vaccines or whatever the case may be is necessarily intended to inform. Sometimes it may be there so you click on a link and buy a product or, in some cases, expose yourself to identity theft. One of the things that our own work has shown is that people use information about Public Health to essentially try to promote discord, which has geopolitical overtones, as weve seen earlier today. And one of the more recent findings that we have been tracking is that people are using information about various Public Health issues, including and especially covid19, in order to form political movements and to engage in political mobilization so that people can express certain ideals, such as freedom of choice and Civil Liberties and simply use covid and, in particular, the desire to ultimately refuse a Covid Vaccine when it comes available as a sign of political identity. Great, thank you. Dr. Nicholas velasquez, im turning to you. Nicholas work focuses on developing tools it identify signals of coordinated social coordination and online interactions. Nicholas, given your work, can you tell us what you know about the presence of coordinated campaigns and how they work and whether there are more of them these days given all the discussions around coronavirus. Thank you. This, of course so generates fear and surrounded by so many what my Research Team does is it focuses on across different social networks. Networks meaning racist supremacists, fascist groups that coordinate to broadcast their message and broadcast disinformation. So were saddened but not surprised to identify how this network but also the unpopular Public Health enacted by the government to fight against the pandemic. Right. And theyve been doing it by spreading disinformation that identifies the order people of color. Minorities, asianamericans as the responsible for the covid pandemic or behind those unpopular policies. Thank you. And then our third panelist is fiona ozuma. Her Health Information initiatives including on pinterest have been lauded by the world health organization, washington post, New York Times for leading the way in creating policies that try to limit this kind of misinformation and coordinated campaigns. Can i turn it to you and can you tell me what you think of the existing policies on social media platforms or Digital Media platforms and whether theyre doing any good in limiting these kinds of hateful, coordinated campaigns and using social media for political purposes. So, ill say a few things. First, thanks for having me on the panel. Platforms have a responsibility here in the same way they have a responsibility to address misinformation around political content, misinformation, that targets specific groups and so when we address information and specifically covid misinformation and the political context, its important to address it across all issues. There are the ways that misand disinformation harm people online are often specific to the platform and specific to the communities that are being targeted. For the efforts that platforms have made, i think in many ways, platforms didnt have a choice when the pandemic blew up in the United States, at least, they can no longer pretend that it was an issue elsewhere. Ebola misinformation and disinformation has existed on at platforms for years. That was a huge crisis in the areas where it spread. Theres a lot of disinformation on youtube, facebook, instagram, or wrr. Because the pandemic hit the United States in the way it did, there was not going to be this sort of leeway from political leaders on both sides of the aisle for not addressing it and so many of the efforts that platforms have made have been what i would consider pr moves in order to not get in trouble for ignoring this the same way. They continued to ignore other Health Misinformation issues. Many platforms have rampant misinformation on reproductive issues. Rampant miss and disinformation on the flu, which were in a period of the year where were dealing with a double issue with both flu and covid diagnose cease which are going to rise. I think, yes, we should laud some of the work that has been attempted. We should laud that attention to the issue but we shouldnt trick ourselves into thinking that this has been addressed in any real way or lasting way by the pl platforms. Unlike with conspiracy theories with Health Information what were left with is a void in Public Health communicators dont then add got content. And that content cant be in the form of journal reviews or onepagers. It has to be tailored to the ways in which people consume the content on the different platforms. If its on youtube, it needs to be an engaging video. If its on tik tok, the same. Twitter short form. And so Public Health communicators need to step in so that Something Else doesnt then fill the void left by disinformation. Thank you. So, really, you think what has been done so far is really kind of more in the bane of a pr effort rather than effective. Is there any part that is effective that you mentioned for qanon. Anything for coronavirus . Like Health Information . Well, what has been effective and its very well need to look at it Going Forward because it has been just in the last week that there has been a huge sweeping effort to remove qanon groups. What has been effective there in removing the actual groups. Removing the accounts that are spreading the misinformation. If the same doesnt happen with covid content, and specifically as we move closer to a vaccine being own the market, if we dont address groups where the information is proliferating, then its not really effective, in my mind, particularly on a platform like facebook. So there has to be more of an effort to not just address the content itself and its individual pieces but the actual p purveyors of the misinformation. Great. Thank you. That brings up a initiative of coordinated campaigns. Nicklaus, you have done a lot of work in this area. You looked to see how theyre coordinating and using misinformation as a weapon. What can you tell us about that work and what it might say for how we could do better in the future at limiting this kind of content . [ inaudible ] oh, youre muted. We cant hear you. Sorry sorry with facebook or twitter that have a wide audience that are not properly or not from the platform to release. The Business Model is is not especially many of the platforms do not reside in the United States. And were you going to jump in there to Say Something about umm information about across networks. Yeah. I was going to add a little nuance using an example. Spam networks. When spam proliferated, platforms did Work Together. Platforms didnt exist in the way where they exist now where at least in this conversation speaking mostly about social media platforms but Online CompaniesWork Together. I guess theres a model where companies can Work Together. That happened without government regulation. We may be at a point where theres no longer a desire to cooperate because maybe theres a sense that theres a Competitive Edge here. I dont personally see it having worked at three different platforms but i do think that we should remind the platforms and also remind policy makers and anyone else as part of this conversation that this is not the first time that we have an opportunity for platforms to Work Together on an issue that fundamentally harms consumers. So we need to see it as a consumer harm issue, as well. Thank you. And turning to david. Youve also studied hate speech and misinformation. What do you know from your research about how misinformation spreads from the dark corners to more main stream corners and then even to offline behaviors, if you have anything to say to that . Absolutely. One of the first things to keep in mind is that all those social media platforms, in particular, are very much assessable to researchers. Terroristst theres another sense theyre not. In order to be consistent with standards of research ethics, one cant really look into private venues, for example. Private groups on facebook or other private chats on another platforms where theres an expectations that people are not simply putting their information up there. So i think its really important for us to realize what were observing is really just a tip of the iceberg. Right. If we see Something Like explicit hate speech, for example, a Facebook Group or even, you know, even a twitter thread or a telegram chat. Right. In those situations, in many cases, those public groups equates to private groups. The private groups point to off platform vechb venues of some kind. A lot of malicious actors gain a lot of their power through a process of artificial amplification. Its a small number. A relatively concentrated number of entities that are making it appear as if there is a wide con sen us is. Thats something weve seen in some of our own prior works. For example, the use of bots on twitter. Theres one technique people use in order to artificially amplify their perspective making it seem as if a small number of what is actually generated by a small number of users is actually coming from a large number of accounts. Now, of course, bots have been in the news a lot recently but thats only one technique that several of these ma lishlicious actors might use. When you consider some of the actors have a backing of a nation state behind them, not only did they have simply a few social media accounts but state sponsored propaganda sources. They also have techniques in which they can actually spread rumors through the traditional media or through persontoperson rumor. So we have to realize that digital platforms and social media platforms is an even smaller subset of those is not an eco system themselves. Theyre a tip of a larger discussion that is going on. So to address your final question, what extent does this reflect real world behavior . I think the question to ask is not does social media change peoples behaviors. Rather than its the opposite question. What extend does social media reflect real world behaviors. If were looking at it from the perspective of just social media impacting on what people do, were missing the broader point here. That social media is only one of the multitude of influences that are out there and malicious actors are explicitly involved in using all sorts of approaches and techniques in order to get their agenda across and to be clear about this, its not only statesponsored actors. In some cases, they are private individuals. Theres a lot of resources. In some cases, there are political movements. Theres really a very wide range. Thank you. Can i ask, david, what do you think, then, you know, given the idea of social Media Companies coming together and having coordinated policies that address some of these things. Would this address some of these, for example, state sponsored initiatives and using thoughts to amplify a message . Yeah. Is it just hopeless . Yeah. Its certainly not hopeless. One of the first things to keep in mind and speaking as an engineer, you know, i do think that technology has a lot to do with the changes in what weve seen today versus 20 years ago. One of the key things to keep in mind about social media amplification is not so much that the social media allows for the amplification. Thats neutral. You can amplify good or bad things. But rather that people expect social media to be democratic. Right. Social media has had a story. Theres a narrative around our use of social media has been sold for the last almost 20 years now. Weve been basically saying anybody can generate content and, therefore, its going to somehow allow the best information to bubble up to the top. The solution to bad speech or more speech is a phrase weve heard a lot. In fact, that is only true when everybody has equal access to speech. What were seeing its as if youre standing in a crowd and there are millions of upon millions of people and theyre talking at the same time but five people have loud voices response they drown out everyone else. So i think the key thing to keep in mind here is that, yes, the technology does make a difference. Were in a new technological environment. Those who had access to the tv air waves, the three big networks were able to, in many ways, control the narrative and the discourse. Those who are now able to use the technology to their advantage are much more able to control the discourse. If we want to realize the democratic potential of social media, that means, in large part, ensuring equal access. Not necessarily shutting down things or getting rid of the platforms entirely or trying to sort of move back into the past. We have to learn how to adjust to these technologies. It goes straight to your point about what happens when we get rid of all the conspiracy theorists from social media platforms. Well, at that point, if our Public Health officials are not trained and sufficiently well informed in using these new ways the platforms allow us to communicate, in such a way they can take full advantage of their potential, then somebody else will. Theyll do it in a more sophisticated way because theyve have seen their own predecessors. Thank you. So lets build on that point. You have mentioned there is somehow a void when you take away these some of these conspiracy points of view and youre left with Public Health not really using the platforms properly. I wonder if you both can or if all of you talk and tell me what are the differences that in Communication Styles that are out there thinking about science antics like antivaxers versus science trusting or science groups that are what are some of the differences and strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches for communication . Do you want to take it first . Sure. The thing that i think about often is the ways in which and nicholas and david have done the Actual Research on this weve seen it more from being at the platforms but the ways in which Public Health experts communicate with the public versus the ways that conspiracy theorists and then the folks who are making money. Who i would consider fraudsters are communicating with their adherence or possible adherence. And their difference is in using a peertopeer style of communication. That does not exist as much. Theres some Public Health communicators that do an excellent job of that. Thats an issue because social media it has been sold to everyone as a democratic way of communicating a way that folks are put on a level Playing Field but if the communication from Public Health organizations is still very much top down. We have the information were giving it to you. There will be no back and forth. Were sharing information on this topic. Theres not the opportunity to talk about other things that are top of mind for you. There will always be a gap in effectiveness. When you go to groups that are pushing parents not to vaccinate their kids for measles and some of the groups to start spreading lies about the Covid Vaccine. When parents raise issues, theyre not just raising issues about covid or measles. Theyre talking about their kids in general. All of the issues that they have and if we forget that people dont experience anything in a v vacuum, then the communications will be lacking from Public Health. That said, Public Health communicators dont have all day to spend on social media. They dont have all day to be answering questions and so i think there has to be some sort of sorting of prioritizing certain platforms and setting aside some time, at least, to answer peoples questions to meet them where they are. Thank you. Nicholas, im going turn it to you. Any observations from your work . Yes. When she says its real, theres good news in, like, the in terms of the and research. We have contact with Public Health. Stakeholders in the past. The International Organization that made sure are aware of these needs to develop the communication that reaches in the communities in a more expressing the sound Public Health and sound signs of advice in terms of that people can relate from their own perspective. I would say from mothers to mothers and which social organization. Which social is being targeted by antivaxers and pro vaxers. This gives you a map. Its clear. Are the prime targets of the antivaxers. Its not big organizations theyre targeting. In a big american city. Thats the level of targeting that they have. Thats also the antivaxers have. Yeah. Thank you. Thats interesting. We can stay on top of kind of what antivaxers the groups theyre targeting. Mothers and pet owners as Public Health owners and officials we should be targeting the same groups, which probably were not doing now. David, turning to you, im wondering what you can tell us based on your work. I understand youve done a lot of work looking at different commune kagsz styles between pro vax nation and antivaccination groups. Thank you so much for that. Im going to say two things that are perhaps a little controversial. First, is that ive come to believe there is no such thing as a model antivaxer. Which is to say we cant take everybody who is skeptical or hesitant about vaccination and lump them into some single organized group as if theyre all playing from the same playbook. In fact, some of the work that nicholas is talking about has shown clearly the massive diversity among different types of antivaxers as well as our own work. One of the things we see is that people oppose vaccination. For a wide variety of reasons. Either because they believe in Natural Health and they are skeptical of western medicine or because they have mission informationed believes of vaccines causing harm or they dont trust the government to actually ensure the safety of vaccines and what weve seen more and more is that these different groups are starting to agree on a framing that doesnt require them to agree. What i mean to say is more and more weve seen a rise in a discourse around vaccine refusal. Thats framed as civil rights or individual choice or right to choose. And the thing about the particular framing is that if its your right to choose, then you can decide to refuse vaccines for whatever reason you want. If youre free to refuse vaccines, then you can do it because you believe Natural Health is better or you can do it because you believe that the government isnt trust worthy or you believe the science isnt trust worthy. All the Different Reasons become encompassed within the broader discussion about the values of the right to choose. And so thats something weve started to see adopted by a wide range of state level political movements. And, again, this actually dove tails with several other sorts of discourses that emphasize the feel of the individual or individualism, which is associated within the u. S. Of the libertarian philosophy and has been more and more cooperated by a specific Political Parties around the world. So were seeing this focus on a right to choose really around all of the antivaccers are agreeing, but rather that they are focusing, the elites among them, are focusing on a discourse that doesnt require that they agree so to me that provides a risk and an opportunity. So one of the things that is an opportunity is that if they dont necessarily have to agree then that means that theres not actually a unified argument. That means that divide and conquer may actually work and then this is where we get to the second controversial thing that im going to say which is that if you want to convince people who oppose vaccines, that they should take vaccines, then you have to be willing to at least entertain the possibility that you may be wrong. Not that youre wrong about the science. Right, because the science has a very strong solid factual base. But you have to be willing, when theres uncertainty, you have to be willing to have a conversation about that uncertainty. You have to be willing to acknowledge that people dont necessarily all share the same values and then there has to be an ongoing conversation. Its not just one and done. There has to be an ongoing conversation where, if somebody is going to take up a vaccine, they have to see why thats consistent with the values that they hold. So, for example, maybe somebody believes very strongly in the value of individualism, but they also believe that its their responsibility, rather than their right, to protect their family. To protect their loved ones. And if we focus on a discussion about how wrong they are to be focused on themselves, well that actually has the framing of making them into a villain of sorts which nobody wants to see themselves in that way. So i think that when it comes to communication, i absolutely agree that horizontal and vertical communication approaches both have their place. I would go one step beyond that, and i would say that we have to directly engage with peoples values. And we have to be willing to have a conversation thats not, i have the facts, im right, you dont have the facts and youre wrong, it has to be these are the facts. Now lets talk about what they mean. And what do they mean for you . And lets have a conversation that builds community because once we build community then we can Start Talking about things like why is this right thing for the community . Without a community theres no conversation to be had. Thank you, thank you for that. Brings up so many topics. I mean, it brings up the issue of what can, you know, given that this is really, you know, one solution is a horizontal conversation over time Building Community about values like these are long, indepth conversations which are resource intensive. Like what realistically, with Public Health agencies, with strapped budgets, can the Public Health community do . And also what can the social Media Companies do to also kind of weight it so that the Public Health voice is a little bit louder. Im going to turn it to you first, yoma. So it is a longterm conversation but it doesnt have to be effective just in the long term. Im going to use ebola as an example again. The ebola work that was done in the drc and other countries in central and western africa is Ground Breaking and has been lauded as such because the conversations happening on the ground and via Radio Communication and a little bit on social was very much around communities and their needs. So going to Community Leaders, working with Community Organizations. And having folks who are already respected as Authority Figures in each community then share the facts but then also talk about peoples values and why it was important for them to include the facts in their decisionmaking. And so that exact same sort of approach can be happening and is happening in some communities here in the United States. I live in santa fe, new mexico, in northwest new mexico, the largest outbreak we had in the state was in Navajo Nation, which spans across new mexico and arizona. Those same sorts of efforts were made in Navajo Nation and that is what has brought the outbreak under control in a way that were not seeing in other places where there isnt as much of a focus on community and Community Leaders working to convince people that accepting the facts and then learning what they need to address is part of Public Health. So you cant just tell someone, go wash your hands when they dont have access to water. We have to address the water issues as well. And so theres the opportunity to do that, resourcing is an issue, as you say, and thats where i think platforms can step in. Theyre practically printing money right now and i think they need to put their money where their mouths are. If this is an issue that is important to them, they need to be financially supporting both Community Organizations and Public Health organizations that are doing this work. Both online and offline. Great, thank you. So when you say platforms can step in and certainly they have resources that they could donate to needy communities. But are there things they could also do that go back to that issue of platform policies and Platform Design and platform architecture that would give smaller communities or give Public Health agencies a louder voice . If you dont mind, do you want to talk to that again too . Yeah, nicholas raised his oh, nicholas ill turn it to nicholas and then we can come back to you. Thank you. So the particular question, what called the platform zoom, and i am certain that it could provide resources but they can provide Technical Resources in two ways. First, this is more Political Science than data science answer. Again, the social networks can tell you whom are the key leaders, key special movements that you as a Public HealthOrganization Want to get aligned with. Whether your key partners, all across geography and also in those corners of the internet that are global. And pointing you to those leaders, pointing you to those communities, those influencers and those communities is a first step in establishing that social network of your own. So leverage other peoples social capital and build social capital between you as an expert and them as a local expert, organization at the local level. From a data science perspective, most social network have recommend to you based on your behavior. One thing they can do to social network is direct whom youre getting directed on the basis of sound scientific and Public Health policies. If youre looking into youre searching for bogus information about Covid Vaccines then get the search results of the Search Engine to point you to sound scientific sources or to support communities. To one degree or another all major north american and European Social media platforms are doing something of this sort but theyre doing it essentially for their Search Engines. Theyre not doing it for the content that gets promoted to you as you scroll down through their feeds. Right . Thats something that they could leverage. Thank you, thank you. David, do you want to add anything to this conversation about really what can Public Health groups do better to improve the quality, and what can social Media Companies offer as a resource in this shared mission . Yeah, absolutely. So i think its really important to realize that different platforms have very different designs and those designs have a strong impact on the ways in which people interact. So weve spoken about facebook and Facebook Groups and facebook pages. Facebook has as one of its stated missions, Building Community and the very structure of facebook actually allows for Building Community. Unfortunately were now in an environment where people have built a Community Around sets of beliefs that are quite dangerous for society and so there is an opportunity to take advantage of the structure of facebook, to be able to address that. For example, in facebook there are administrators, groups of administrators, pages and administrators, and as nicholas pointed out pages are much more policed by administrators than are groups. Facebook has policies what is allowed to be posted in groups. To a large extent some of those policies are not enforced but if administrators were held responsible for what is posted inside their groups that actually solves two problems for facebook. One is it solves a problem of accountability because now its very clear who is responsible for the content. Secondly, it solves a problem of scale because it means facebook doesnt have to stay on top of every single message. They simply have to delegate to some degree some of that authority to that administrator who stays on top of the messages in that page or group. Now that being said, of course that means that there has to be a little bit more of a process for selecting administrators, and that may be something that government could provide some help with. Thats one possibility. Now, of course that approach will not work for twitter because we dont have groups. When were looking at a platform like twitter where you have essentially broadcast communication its much more prone to things like thought driven artificial amplification because thats simply what a platform allows. People do use direct messages but theyre much more private. In that sort of middle layer of groups is not present except to the extent that you take account of hashtags and things like that. So youre going to need a different strategy for the twitter than you would for facebook. Youtube, of course, is different entirely. Tiktok is primarily a videobased platform and is different as well. So what is the role that Public Health officials can take in all of these . Well, first of all theres a question about Public Health policy. And at the level of policy we have to be what we call in Systems Engineering solution neutral. We cant say that a particular algorithm or a particular approach is going to cut across platforms. We have to specify highlevel, functional objectives. Those functional objectives may be, for example, that specific topics are not going to be allowed to go past a certain threshold. Right . For the sake of argument. And then each platform has to figure out for itself how does it achieve that objective, given the technology that that platform implements . And thats something that i feel like we havent really seen very often is this this specification of the way in which the technology and the policy interact. I think we need to do a lot more we need to have a lot more conversation about that. The individual Public Health communicator, of course, has to be trained to use that platform, the techniques that you use on twitter will not be the same and will not be effective if you use them on facebook or tiktok. And so we have to have people who are trained. This, of course, requires training and requires resources. Those same people have to be trained not only in using the platforms and the technology, but in figuring out how to communicate the bottom line message that the person on the other end, on the recipient end should be concluding. So we actually need a new cadre of people that are trained on one hand in the use of a specific platform, and on the other hand in being able to distill very complex Public Health messages into something that people can easily understand on that platform. This is not a technological problem alone. Its not a policy problem alone. Its something that requires knowledge of both. And i think were going to start to see the rise of essentially a new profession. That if its sufficiently resourced, will have to take on this role. Yeah, thank you. So thats interesting. And i know were coming to the close of our time so i just want to come back to you, yoma, anything you would like to add to this topic of what social Media Companies can do, as well as how we could train our next generation of Public Health practitioners with social media. Yeah, i think a good first step would be sharing more of what theyre seeing. Twitter is easily studied by researchers in this area because most of everything on twitter, other than messages public. I dont know that we have enough data on the actual the actual causation relationship between what people are seeing and the in different forms of misinformation, and their actual behaviors to then build whole programs around misor disinformation. Im not saying that theyre not harmful. Misinformation and disinformation about health is harmful. But i think platforms as a very first step need to share more of the data of what theyre seeing, both the content and the reach of the information that theyre seeing and the reach of the groups that are the most prolific with researchers so that then more work can be done around that to determine where resources should be directed first. Great, thank you. And on that note of sharing data, i would say that one other area where there seems to be a lot of where we really are missing knowledge because of lack of sharing data is around how the different policies that theyre implementing, which yoma you mentioned earlier in some ways are pr efforts but in some ways may be genuine initiatives. How well are they actually working . Are they limiting disinformation . Are they limiting misinformation . Are they changing the actual ecosystem of social media . And i think we just dont know enough because we dont have the full data. So on that note im going to close. And thank you, ifyoma, david and nicholas and your wisdom on your perspectives today. Im Lauren Abrams at George Washington university. Before we wrap up im going to turn it over to the institute for data democracy and politics director, rebecca tromble. We close todays conference just two weeks before one of the most consequential elections in our nations history. In the midst of a pandemic, with coronavirus cases rising rapidly around the country we are experiencing this historic moment largely online. Our political words and actions are filtered through webcams, zoom rooms, text messages, and of course social media platforms such as youtube, twitter and facebook. From Fact Checking online campaigns to assessing the potential for postelection violence todays discussions have provided greater insight into what it means to be digital citizens in 2020. Im incredibly grateful to all of our panelists for sharing their thoughts and expertise. To my fellow moderators for facilitating these conversations, to members of our audience for taking time out of their busy day to contemplate these important topics. And im especially grateful to all the behind the scenes staff who have been working nearly nonstop for the last two months to bring this event together. I sincerely hope that next year i will be able to greet all of you at the institute for data, democracy and politics in person. Welcoming you to George Washington universitys campus, with a handshake, or a hug. Until then, please be safe, be well. American history tv, on cspan3, exploring the people and events that tell the american story, every weekend. Coming up this weekend, saturday at 6 00 p. M. On the civil war, a look at how historical interpretation has changed over the years at National Historical park. And at 10 00 p. M. On reel america, well feature four films. San francisco 1945, the nice and world disputes, seeds of destiny. And army in action, the cobra strikes. On sunday at 11 00 a. M. Eastern the first president ial debate between president george h. W. Bush, bill clinton and texas businessman ross perot. And then at 2 00 p. M. The first president ial debate between president bill clinton and senator bob dole. And at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on american artifacts, a discussion about the Jim Crow Museum of racist memorabilia. And why the offensive artifacts are being used as teaching tools to promote conversation and understanding. Exploring the american story, watch American History tv, this weekend, on cspan3. The contenders, about the men who ran for the presidency and lost but changed political history. Tonight billionaire businessman and philanthropist, ross perot. The contenders tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3. Next, former National Security advisers robert mcfar lan and john bolton and retired general james jones talk about the most serious foreign