Stop the Madness
Combating disinformation, misinformation and conspiracy theories requires more than private and government action.
If there was any doubt that we’re living in a world in which reality is disputed, truth is relative and “alternative facts”, bigotry, conspiracy theories and lies travel at the speed of light, it died with 10 innocent people on May 14 in Buffalo, New York.
Disinformation, misinformation and hate speech are killing people, undermining trust in public and private institutions, polarizing society and encouraging insurrections and hate crimes.
Polluted and poisonous manifestos and rants have played an outsized role in shaping public and private responses to COVID-19, the genocide against the Rohingya in Myanmar, the insurrection on the United States Capitol, the war in Ukraine and now the murders in Buffalo.
The threat this pandemic poses to democracy is greater than that from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ISIS or China’s economic muscle. It requires coordinated action by businesses and government — but also an overhaul of the foundation of American democracy — the country’s educational system.
So far, however, efforts to vaccinate people against hate, conspiracy theories and lies have focused largely on what more social media companies and governments can do to counter what might be called societal climate change — rising seas of fear, anger, hate, violence and intolerance.
Attempts to moderate content face serious obstacles. America’s two major political parties don’t agree on the issue, with Democrats calling for more muscular moderation and Republicans arguing that content moderation is biased against conservatives and infringes on free speech.
Worse, some corporations, mainstream media outlets, political candidates and members of Congress are infected by the same virus and by a seemingly endless stream of new variants such as rigged voting machines and “Great Replacement” theory, a layman’s term for Racism-16 BS9, the latest outbreak of racial prejudice.
The Role of Social Media Companies
Social media companies are on the frontlines of moderating disinformation and misinformation. These giants wield considerable power, with many people regarding them as public fora governed by greedy corporate policies and enigmatic elites. Social media's ability to generate feedback loops, called “network effects”, can have benefits, yet today's emphasis has been negative.
Many Americans distrust the social media giants and their leaders. Memes and commentary abound, for example likening Mark Zuckerberg to anything from an alien to the harbinger of a tech apocalypse for his promotion of a metaverse.
Moreover, content moderation is a complex business. In conjunction with artificial intelligence, Casey Newton wrote in The Verge in 2019, Facebook employs thousands of contractors who scrape through disturbing content, leading to PTSD, lawsuits, and altered views from their exposure to conspiracy theories.
Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have been accused of inconsistent enforcement of their moderation policies. Some of their most significant users and public figures have been treated more leniently than average users.
Still, if all they do is maintain the status quo, the social media elite may face rising costs. Twitter and Facebook have limited moderation of misinformation because Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act protects them from liability for content posted by users.
Meanwhile, Congress continues to debate — or duels or dithers — about whether to limit Section 230 protection for companies or to remove it entirely.
Zoe Magley argued in the Brown Political Review this year that Congress's lack of understanding of social media is compounding the politics of moderation, as evidenced in painful hearings with big tech moguls.
Still, several possible solutions could improve companies' ability to moderate their content. Social media are still young, but an article in the Harvard Business Review last year argued that other industries such as TV, movies and video games provide evidence of the importance of proactive self-regulation.
The article suggested that a coalition of companies could update policies: Cooperation would limit the costs of self-regulation and limit the prospects of legal action and industry-wide government regulation.
At a minimum, companies should provide clear standards defining misinformation and disinformation while they continue to develop more advanced AI to identify it accurately and consistently. Human oversight will remain important as the technology improves and the public becomes more comfortable with machine-led moderation.
Finally, transparency is key to promoting public and political trust. Elon Musk's proposed publicization of Twitter's algorithm — if he does buy the company — could help pave the way.
The United States Government’s Role
Since the 2016 election, the U.S. government has taken some steps to counter the epidemic of online disinformation. In recent years, the government's response to disinformation has grown to include fighting domestic terrorism and misinformation about COVID-19.
While the government expands the number of agencies that address disinformation, it faces two principal obstacles. The first is partisan disagreement over what constitutes disinformation. The second, as Zack Cooper, co-chair of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, has said, is how this haphazard response hinders the development of a unified approach.
Last month, the Department of Homeland Security launched a disinformation advisory board to centralize DHS’s approach to disinformation by combining the election infrastructure expertise of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) with other branches of DHS concerned with human trafficking, border security, and extremism.
Although the board cannot dictate policy, its botched unveiling triggered an uproar in Congress. Republican lawmakers immediately condemned it as a dystopian effort by the Biden administration to limit free speech and introduced legislation to dissolve it.
While DHS's new advisory board aims to centralize the disinformation response, it isn’t the only agency with the same objective. The State Department, the Agency for International Development and the intelligence and law enforcement communities all have similar programs, for example the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's Foreign Malign Influence Center.
In all, there are more than 60 executive, legislative and judicial bodies, departments, agencies, offices, committees, subcommittees and other entities trying to address the problem, and adding DHS's new advisory board to the mix makes it difficult to discern who, if anyone, is in charge.
To help address the dual problems of decentralization and political polarization, President Biden could appoint a new special assistant to his White House team, a move that would not require congressional approval. His administration, like previous ones, has created similar positions to centralize federal approaches to issues such as racial equity, infrastructure, and drug abuse.
The Crucial Role of Education
Regardless of what more Silicon Valley and The Swamp do, if they do anything, no effort to combat the plague can make much headway without addressing the shortcomings of modern education. We’re equipping today’s students for the society of the future with the skills of the past. STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — is essential but insufficient.
“The goal of education is to prepare (mostly) young people for full participation as citizens in a democratic republic, with all the ‘virtues’ (as they would have termed them) of literacy, rationality, critical thinking, patriotism, etc. that were necessary,” Dr. Eric Gettig, an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, said last fall. “Call me an idealist, but this aspect seems more essential than ever in a republic (and a world) in crisis, rather than seeing education as mostly a means to prepare a deeper pool of programmers for tech barons to draw from, which (crudely) is how most conversations around education reform today are framed.”
Free public education and factory schools were part of the American response to the capitalist and civic needs of the Industrial Revolution, Jim Carl wrote in the International Handbook of Comparative Education, published in the Netherlands in 2008. It is past time for another overhaul.
The factory school model, which still influences the U.S. educational system, is no longer suitable or sustainable. A process similar to what school systems underwent 150 years ago to teach reading, writing and arithmetic to boys and girls is necessary for the digital age.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, educational reform also must eliminate the racial, linguistic, geographic and socioeconomic boundaries that benefit some students and penalize many others.
While technology is advancing rapidly, artificial intelligence has yet to master two of the eight dimensions of human intelligence defined by Howard Gardner of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education — interpersonal and intrapersonal relations, both of which have emotional aspects. A brief talk with some Silicon Valley moguls might bear that out.
In 2008, Tony Wagner, a Senior Research Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute, listed what he called the essential skills for the 21st Century: critical thinking and problem solving; collaboration across networks and leading by influence; agility and adaptability; initiative and entrepreneurship; effective oral and written communication; accessing and analyzing information; and curiosity and imagination.
Critical thinking remains the best tool to protect people from disinformation and demagoguery. However, many educational institutions don’t prioritize it, instead focusing on the rote memorization that makes for mechanized grading and the higher test scores that until recently many colleges and universities have relied on as a major element of their admissions processes.
Updating civics education as recommended by the Brookings Institution’s The Need for Civic Education in 21st Century Schools is critical and includes:
1. “Civic knowledge and skills: where youth gain an understanding of the processes of government, prevalent political ideologies, civic and constitutional rights, and the history and heritage of the above.
2. “Civic values and dispositions: where youth gain an appreciation for civil discourse, free speech, and engaging with those whose perspectives differ from their own.
3. “Civic behaviors: where students develop the civic agency and confidence to vote, volunteer, attend public meetings, and engage with their communities.”
Conclusion
Disinformation and misinformation are serious threats to society that require a multilayered response. Major stakeholders such as social media companies and the U.S. government must take cooperative and transparent action now, but reforms to primary and secondary education are necessary to vaccinate the next generation against hate, lies, xenophobia and imaginary conspiracies.
A two-pronged, short- and long-term response can help ensure that less harmful content is spread and that more people who are exposed to it are better prepared to determine and dismiss what is false and inflammatory.
If looking backward to prepare for the future seems odd, not doing so risks moving backward, not to slavery or the witchcraft of Salem Village, but perhaps to new efforts to cement White Power by reviving the Three-Fifths Compromise or devising a new electoral system in which a quadroon’s vote is worth 25 percent of a White person’s — assuming the Supreme Court does not also strip women of the right to vote.
If you don’t know what a quadroon, an octoroon or a mulatto is, you probably haven’t been poisoned by Critical Race Theory, whatever that is.
This piece is derived from a final project for a class on Media and International Relations in the Master of Science in Foreign Service program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Carlos E. Chacón is a Venezuelan-American lawyer and a Master of Science in Foreign Service candidate at Georgetown. He co-founded Kratos, an organization to supply new generations with 21st-century skills that now serves more than 650 students in four countries. Carlos also has been a high school teacher and a legal advisor to the Venezuelan Parliament. He received his law degree from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and has a Masters in Education Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania.
Nicola Marcucci is a graduate student in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. A former campaign and voter protection worker, Nicola works at the intersection of human rights and democracy and is interning with the United Nations.
Eric Tunkavige is a graduate student in the MSFS program at Georgetown. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Rutgers University and served in U.S. Army Psychological Operations with a focus on the Middle East, deploying to Syria in 2018. He intends to continue his service in the U.S. government.
For Further Reading:
Edinger, Julia, April 7, 2021. Could Regulating Social Media Companies Fix the Internet? Government Technology. https://www.govtech.com/policy/could-regulating-social-media-companies-fix-the-internet.html.
Kaiser Family Foundation, November 8, 2021. COVID-19 Misinformation is Ubiquitous: 78% of the Public Believes or is Unsure About At Least One False Statement, and Nearly a Third Believe At Least Four of Eight False Statements Tested. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/press-release/covid-19-misinformation-is-ubiquitous-78-of-the-public-believes-or-is-unsure-about-at-least-one-false-statement-and-nearly-at-third-believe-at-least-four-of-eight-false-statements-tested/
The White House, June 2021. National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf
Myers, Steven Lee & Kanno-Youngs, Zolan, May 3, 2022. Partisan Fight Breaks Out Over New Disinformation Board. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/02/technology/partisan-dhs-disinformation-board.html
Newton, Casey, Feb. 25, 2019. The Trauma Floor: The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona.
Siripurapu, Anshu & Merrow, Will, Feb. 9, 2021. Social Media and Online Speech: How Should Countries Regulate Tech Giants? Council on Foreign Relations. https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/social-media-and-online-speech-how-should-countries-regulate-tech-giants.
Cusumano, Michael A., Gawer, Annabelle, & Yoffie, David B. , Jan. 15, 2021. Social Media Companies Should Self-Regulate. Now. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2021/01/social-media-companies-should-self-regulate-now.
Magley, Zoe, March 14, 2022. We Need to Regulate Social Media Content Moderation, But We Can’t Just Eliminate Section 230(c). Brown Political Review. https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2022/03/social-media-and-section230c/.
Beitsch, Rebecca, May 3, 2022. GOP lawmakers introduce bills to terminate DHS disinformation board. The Hill. https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/3476254-gop-lawmakers-introduce-bills-to-terminate-dhs-disinformation-board/
Wise, Alana, Nov. 16, 2020. Trump Fires Election Security Director Who Corrected Voter Fraud Disinformation. National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/17/936003057/cisa-director-chris-krebs-fired-after-trying-to-correct-voter-fraud-disinformati
U.S. Agency for International Development, Jan. 25. 2022. Accounting for Risks: A Need for Safeguarding In Digital Ecosystems. U.S. Agency for International Development. https://www.usaid.gov/usaid-digital-strategy/02-accounting-for-risks
Carl, Jim, Industrialization and Public Education: Social Cohesion and Social Stratification. In International Handbook of Comparative Education, edited by Robert Cowen and Andreas M. Kazamias, pp. 503–518. Springer International Handbooks of Education, 2009. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4020-6403-6_32.
Wagner, Tony. The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--and What We Can Do About It. New York: Basic Books, 2008.
Winthrop, Rebecca, The Need for Civic Education in 21st-Century Schools. Brookings Institution (blog). June 4, 2020. https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/the-need-for-civic-education-in-21st-century-schools/
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