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 thi