it was surprising to know I had early or twice, early
today what I was saying, you know we have the ability to erase everything
I got into thinking ever since I have a laptop with a smaller harddrive and I still
don't have much on everything let's do that. Yeah.
What do you think?
Yes, I think I'm gonna start with louder as well. I'll do that. And then you Yeah, well actually, this is Mouser suggesting because he wants to go up to the podium so he's gonna still
have to go to units to see it. Why woodland visitations
I went to school and they hate
you to whatever you have. I mean, I would I would put an upper limit on it. So you know one of them. Yeah. So let's try to keep it to five seven.
I'm not sure if we're gonna do it. Okay.
Oh, yeah, that's a good that's a good point. I don't think we have to force people. They won't be able to see them. Yeah. You want me to know how to say something?
I think I think when he just started Yes.
I'll say something and you know, even to the front tables. You recognize that guy you're not gonna be able to see him
then what time is it now? We can start. I'm gonna I'm gonna do that
so it's not even my work. It's basically bad. Yeah, exactly what
an objection is when you go and sign up with slides, your shadows on the screen. I think
you might block some of those people from seeing it though.
See, this is better, because we're the last
one, this one
I'm going to do my opening standard
we supposed to put that one but I don't know how to change it. Then I prefer not to touch
but your presentation is up. Yeah.
I suppose at the beginning to put that one.
All righty, I guess we might as well get started
Okay, hello, everyone. My name is Patrick Butler. And I'm blinded by the light. So I thought this was gonna be a good idea, but maybe not. Here. This is better. So I am a Senior Vice President at the International Center for journalists, which is an organization that has been working for about 40 years, helping journalists all over the country. And all over the country and the world. In many ways. We build investigative reporting networks, we help journalists use new technology to improve the way they do their work. And we we build a network really of global journalists who can work together. We'll talk a little bit about some some of what we're doing in the disinformation sphere in just a minute. But the topic of this discussion is specifically disinformation in elections and how we as journalists, media outlets, and others working to support journalists and media can combat that disinformation. We have a wonderful panel who I will introduce in just a moment. And I think it's fair to say that that most people agree that disinformation in the 2024 elections is going to be worse than anything we've ever seen. And there are many reasons for that. Of course, one of them is that the platforms where so much disinformation spreads, have basically thrown up their hands and said, We're not going to deal with it anymore. Obviously, we don't need to talk about x. But even Mehta and YouTube, there was a story some of you may have seen in The Washington Post yesterday where they talked to dozens of people working at meta and YouTube, who said that they basically abandoned all efforts, maybe not all but just about all efforts to tag false information to take it down. So that's one reason that we're we're facing a really difficult election in 2020. For another, of course, is that organized disinformation campaigns by Russia, China, other actors, we already know they're there, they're in full swing and they will get even heavier. And then, of course, I have to admit I'm suffering a little bit of AI fatigue this week. But we know without a doubt that AI is going to make this much worse. We will talk about ways that perhaps AI can be helpful to us, but that will be a Sisyphean task, pushing a boulder up a hill and having it roll back down. So AI is going to be changing everything. We know that and in making the spread of disinformation so much worse. And this is not just a problem here in the United States, where of course we have a huge election next year. It's a problem all over the world. And many, many countries have big elections. Next year from or late this year, from Argentina to Mexico to South Africa to India. All of them have elections that are already seeing the same kind of spread of disinformation, sometimes with deadly consequences that we're seeing in our elections. So we'll talk not just about the US elections, but also about specifically Argentina and India because two of our panelists here. I do want to mention a little bit about what ICFJ is doing about this problem. We have a big program that we are calling disarming disinformation. And it is funded by the Scripps Howard foundation. It's a three year program with really three pillars of attack against disinformation. And in 20. We just completed our first year of the program. And in the second year, we're going to be focusing on election disinformation around the world. So the first pillar is investigative journalism. We want to help journalists uncover the sources of funding behind disinformation campaigns. We did this in the first year with journalists from the United States and Latin America, bringing them together to look at cross border disinformation campaigns because we all know that disinformation doesn't stay inside one country. So our efforts to stop it also have to be cross border. And we have results from those that that part of the program, we gave grants to journalists who propose really innovative stories to help investigate the sources of disinformation and those have run everywhere from the Washington Post to AP to LPs to local newsrooms as well. The second pillar of the program is we call it capacity building, but really what we're trying to do is help journalists around the world use the same tools that the bad guys are using to spread disinformation, but use those tools to try to spread factual information that can counter the lies. So things like viral video chat bots, you know, graphics, even even cartoons, things that will really catch people's attention, and can be used by by media that are trying to spread truthful information. We've given grants in that program as well. We had 1000s of participants in online trainings, and those grants are now being carried out. So we're looking forward to seeing the results of those and the third pillar is research. It's very important that we research how disinformation is spreading and what newsrooms are doing about it. So we have we are embedding in different different newsrooms around the world in five key countries. The first one was done in Georgia, the country of Georgia to to spread to look at the spread of disinformation that is, is fomented by Russia, in its former satellites, where where the disinformation is really aimed at destabilizing democracy or West leaning media so those are and then the other part of that one is our ij. Net international journalists Network website, which I hope you all know, if you don't really encourage you to check it out at IJ net.org. It is really the best place in the world to get information on the trends that are happening in our profession, but also toolkits we're going to be talking about an elections toolkit that Laura and her team have have worked on and produced, and we'll we'll share that with you so you can take that with you as you go. But also opportunities for journalists to get training to get into fellowship programs all that kind of stuff that's in eight languages. So i j net.org. Do check it out. Now, that's a little bit about what we're doing in this area. But now I'm going to turn it over to our panelists and first I'm going to introduce them to my left is Laura Sohmer, who is the founder of cecchinato in Argentina and co founder of FAAC Ceccato in the United States with the amazing demo account Sylvia who is here with us. Check it out, though, if you don't know it is I think the most innovative fact checking organization in the world and they were way ahead of the curve on really finding engaging ways to get their fat checks out to the most vulnerable audiences not just to the people who are regularly drawn to fact checking, but to people who are not. And then thought cecchinato here in the United States is aimed at combating disinformation in Spanish language communities. And I won't say more about it because Lauer is going to tell you that. Next to her is Jonathan Lai, who is about to join politico as its first dedicated data and politics editor. But for the past 11 years, he has worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer here in Philly, most recently as data and democracy reporter and editor of data driven storytelling. And of course, we all know that Pennsylvania was in all of our past recent elections and will be in 2020 for a crucial swing state where a lot of this disinformation is going to be spreading. And then to the far left is Nasser al Hadi who is the founder and executive director of proto a Media Development Studio in India, helping more than 1000 media professionals and 250 media outlets, build skills projects and networks. Both Laura and Nasir are ICFJ night fellows, so they've been working with us for quite some time in our program funded by the Knight Foundation. Nasr is also a candidate for Oakland A's board of directors. So please take note if you haven't voted, and I'll offer my most fervent endorsement of Nasir. So I'm going to turn it over to Laura to get us started.
Then Hello, everyone. And thank you for hanging been here Saturday afternoon. Then I gonna first start with some thing that as a fact checker. I've been listening for a while. That is fact checking doesn't work. And then what I have to share with you is that fatiguing works. And it's not that I'm saying this because I've been working in the field for 12 years is that we already have independent research from researchers from Georgetown University Maryland University Columbia University, University I kilometer cantina that prove it and tested in the US with Latino communities in Argentina, in South Africa, in Nigeria, in UK and the results are here in terms of it is working, not necessarily for people to change the ideas, but for change their behaviors. And then, obviously, fat checking doesn't work to solve democracy problems. And that's the point. We are lots of cases. Listen people that says fried chicken is not working. We have leaders that are lying all the time in different countries and in Argentina, we just have a primary election with the candidate that is a climate change denier and and we are obviously looking that with attention. But the point is factchecking is not going to be solving the problems that humanity has, but it's working for allowing citizens to be better informed. And I always compare with people asked me about the small impact of checking the comparison with investigative journalist no one asked investigative journalist we to finish with corruption around the world is we are asking investigative journalists to contribute to inform a bar then I think it's essential to be clear about the purpose and the goals that we are looking when we are doing our job. Peter already introduced these images initiative that will out a year ago, April 2022. That is called factor Kiato. is lead by to Gallo and Malita that is a non for profit based in Spain. And basically we wanted to address this information Spanish in the US because from outside what we saw is that there were some lessons learned that we learn not necessarily because we did it great from the first time or the first day is because we fail one time after the other and we realize that they are thinking or there's things that they are not working and others that they work better. And some of them lesser learn. We are testing them in the US we did a pilot for near the policies that we had. Were confirm and in terms of we can't just translate in English to Spanish. Wait for people to read that. If if we don't listen to what their concerns what their gaps of information are. Or if we are we aren't in the places where they get information. We are not going to have any relevant impact. Then what we are doing is basically three things collaboration, and we already have more than 50 allies in the country. But obviously this is a huge country. We need much more then my call to action to all of you is if you can help us with any media that is sublingual media or Spanish speaking or serving Spanish speaking community. Let us know we need them at least to know that we are there offering high quality journalists for free to reach more people and to be in the community with them to let them know that we need them to send us whatever they see before it is too late. And the second is we need to listen and to be in the community and this is not going to happen from one day to the other or from one month to the other is going to take years. These people don't necessarily believe on media or journalists and then that it's a relation that we need to build and we we are building Tod with our allies that already have their own communities. And they are already trusted messengers in their own cities, but also with a chatbot one to one, asking people to send us their questions. And the third one is formats. As Patrick said, we know what is not working we need to experiment one time after the other one. To know what is working better for these different communities. We can talk about one Latino community in this country and you know about this already. And then the challenges and what I going to present you is based on it together start running in 2010 Then we have some experience in elections. And we know already that journalists are not enough and these concerns. Okay, we all know that. Okay, we need to do partnerships with other actors that are trusted messengers that help us to reach more people and to give them better tools to navigate the disinformation disorder. This information is not going to stop, you're just going to be there forever. And then we need to to be better prepared. Then we are looking for singers, artists, doctors, all the people that can help us reach that communities. The lesson learned is that we have a small team in general Spanish speaking media in the US have small teams and then we need more research if your research and you have the chance we love that you can have an agenda investigating the things we need to know better our the audience to know where they are getting this information, slash information. We know WhatsApp is crucial, but we don't necessarily know if we need to invest more in Facebook, Instagram or Tiktok. Our idea is that tick tock don't necessarily need as much because younger generation already read English, but the older not necessary. But we need more evidence to decide that where we can allocate it better our sources. The other one is we did research last year with some videos to test it was an experiment a running by achy slough not us to know if our videos work to or help people to change their minds or ideas after seeing this information, and the our take out from that is we are in the 2024 elections. We are just going to use short videos for true or false claims in the rest of the qualifications or the the middle. We're going to use explainers because if if we start to make things complex, people perhaps start to get messy. And then the other thing that we don't know and we learn from last election is we need at least one partner in each of the 50 states and we are not necessarily finding them. Then we don't even know if there at least one media serving Latino communities after the pandemic in all the states. And I want oh it's yeah, sorry for that.
And then I gonna share the presentation complete to you. Sorry for that. And then I want to be quickly now, we already identified in all the elections we study at elections during the three years. And we identify 10 types of electoral disinformation that appears always and then we test it in the US in the 2018 election in 2020, and then the 2022 and we confirm that the 10 types of disinformation appear also here. And then the strategy for that is if we already know that that narrative is going to be in the next election, let's prepare prepare in advance the content prepare not just the article but also pieces this wall patient visual this wall pieces or etc. And also teach our audience about you are going to see these narratives during the next electoral period. These you have the links there is also in English is work research that we did with UNESCO and you can reach me if you have any question about that. And And then Patrick told you about the great work that Ashley net and David mass is in Jamaica are leading that team. We did a toolkit based on our own experience on what if we start to cover an election and we need to address electoral disinformation, what type of things we need to know as a journalist and they are they are in some cases simple, critical advice or tips for journalists to avoid or to do and they are if I'm not wrong, 12 videos in English and web in Spanish with that type of of content. And you have here that material in English or Spanish
this up for a bit so you can get a shot of it if you'd like.
Yeah
sorry, fine. But I'm almost done. Everyone is ready or
we could also put it up at the end.
Yeah. And then here you have an example of that just two or sorry.
Use the left side the other
side.
Evening, voter ID information security policy proposals.
Okay, thank you.
All right. Thanks.
We'll dive a little more into that in the q&a. So Jonathan, I'll turn it over to you. You can either stay here go up whatever you prefer.
I'll stand up all right, exist. The goals. Everyone, Can y'all hear me okay. All right. Hey,
I'm Jonathan until three weeks ago, I was a data and democracy reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer. I hope you all are having a good time here in Philly and in Pennsylvania, a battleground state, a key swing state and very much one of America's Ground Zeroes for electoral misinformation disinformation, all of that. This is a state where and it's in the city, where in 2020, former President then President Donald Trump got on stage at a debate and said bad things happen in Philadelphia. Little charter This is a place where a Trump campaign staffer was thrown out of city hall for trying to take video while people were voting. It is a state where two men from Virginia got into a Hummer with Q anon stickers packed with guns and drove up here in November 2020 trying to sort out the electoral count. It is a sign of a lot of myths and disinformation, some of it violent. I'm here to tell you some of the things that we've tried to do at the Enquirer. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer. If we are looking for the answer or a couple of good answers that will solve it all. I don't have it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to disappoint. You. But I'll tell you a little bit about what we have done and what we tried to do. And one of the most important things that I can tell you is I was a data and democracy reporter. I started I started covering election administration in 2017. That is a long time before 2020 I had covered more than six elections by that time of the 2020 election. I still did not feel ready for the 2020 election when it came. It is so important to have people who know what they are talking about. When it comes to how elections work. It is not enough to have your political reporters dive in and parachute in and try to respond to things as complicated as how voting machines work and how votes are counted, and how absentee and mail in ballots are cast and counted. How do people vote from overseas? That is not the kind of thing that a political reporter who is busy covering campaigns and going to rallies and going to City Hall can just be expected to swoop in and cover these are really complicated things. Not everyone is as well resources, the inquire to be able to devote somebody full time to be able to do that. But right now it is August almost September. We have the ability now to start preparing people for the 2024 election. If you know who you have in the room, talk to your team. Start preparing them. What are the things that you need to know Do you know who runs elections? Do you know how poll workers are selected? Do you know how polling places are set up and how they are run? How did the voting machines work? How are the votes cast? Literally How are the votes counted? It is these little details that become the seed of the missing disinformation that we see during election time. Because people don't understand it. And because people don't understand it, bad actors or misinformed actors have the ability to go in and exploit that lack of understanding. So you need to understand it better than them and then you need to be able to convey it. So what does this mean for us? This meant that as a beat reporter, I had the luxury of just writing a lot of stories over and over and over. But it also meant that we knew that we couldn't just write the same stories as we always did. And we cannot just do the same things as we always do for audiences that currently exist. Why we are a legacy newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer while we are doing better and trying our best, who reads us rich white people in the suburbs, black and brown audiences in Philadelphia and around the Philadelphia region don't read us. And a whole lot of white working class people across the rest of the state who are very key to the rest of the state don't read us. So if I'm just writing my normal stories for the normal audience, that doesn't help the people who actually need it. So what do we do? One of the things we did was we said, It is super important to just put out a firehose of good information, as much good information as we can put out there. So normally, as a journalist, My instinct is like I wrote the story. I'm not writing it again. That's not what we did. We write the same story over and over and over, repackaged over and over and over. So in January 2020, I read a story that says it is going to take days to call the election in Pennsylvania. And the next day I write a story that says, and while that that time is happening, the vote is going to shift from red to blue. I wrote that story in January 2020. I wrote it at least 10 Other versions of that story, the rest of that year. Why? Because people needed it. We wrote it over and over in as clear language as possible, right? So the first couple of times might be a story in the traditional sense, where we're just like, hey, here's an interesting thing. Here's what you need to know about it. After that. We were just writing direct stories. Some of them are just a few paragraphs, and we're just like, here's why the vote count is going to take a long time period. That's what you need to know. It's the same content. At some points. I was like, Am I doing journalism by writing the same thing and not doing reporting? It is? It is getting your journalism in front of the audiences that need it. What else did we do? So in addition to trying to just drown people in good information, we also have to try to get it in front of them in the right places. So that means it can't just put it in the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper and we can't just put it on inquire.com which is our website. A lot of people don't get that. So what do we do? We try to use social media. We made video about how to vote we chopped up all sorts of explanatory video we tried to put it out there. When I saw misinformation on Reddit, I was in there responding to people. I tweet back at people I sort of scrap with people on Twitter, whatever, whatever you need to do to try to get there. A lot of times keep in mind I'm not trying to change the mind of the person who originally posted the information. Because guess what, it's the internet. Nobody ever wins that fight. But I know that there are a lot of other people who might see my response to that person and I want them to have the right information. So whenever I saw misinformation, disinformation, I was out there responding to it. It's on Twitter, it's on Facebook, it's on Reddit. All of these places I tried to respond to it gets a little bit more tricky when we talk about closed channels and things like telegram and stuff like that we can try to talk about some of the stuff that like what's happened and all that kind of thing. But especially when it's public. That's because I'm trying to respond for people who would see it publicly. Right. What are some of the things that we did in stories themselves? In addition to doing fact checks, thank you for printing, pioneering that. We tried as much as possible to be very clear and direct with language. Right? So we're not going to be people who are like, Donald Trump's false claims about elections. We're just gonna be like Trump lied. We said that we said that early on, while everybody else is like wringing their hands about like, and is it a lie? What if he believes it? All right, he lied, we say that. We're going to say that we're going to say this is not true. We're going to say this conspiracy theory is not true. We're going to say this is true. This is not true. We're going to put boxes so we developed some like, aesthetically nice boxes, but also you can just put ugly ones. It doesn't matter if your CMS is bad, all CMS or bad. Just put a box in and call something out. So for example, do you remember like when Arizona was doing an audit of the 2020 election, Pennsylvania tried to do something similar? And we were looking at it and we're like, this is not an audit. This is just like, bullshit political theater. So what did we do? We did not call it an audit. We very specifically made the decision not to call it an audit, and then we put a box in every story about the audit. And literally the title of the box is why we're not calling it an audit. And we explained very clearly, here are the reasons why we're not calling it not it doesn't meet this standards. We don't know this. It doesn't explain this. We don't know how this it's very straightforward. It's very simple. And Margaret Sullivan wrote a whole column about it. So it is the kind of thing that like it's a low hanging fruit, but it's there and you do it and it can make a difference. What other kinds of boxes have we done? We do things like whenever I write about a really complicated topic, like what are called undated mail ballots in Pennsylvania, you don't need to know. I'll put a box in that'll say literally what is an undated mail ballot? Right? There's a lot of jargon and elections and sometimes it's hard to get around it and sometimes you have to use it. And sometimes in the boxes, I'm repeating what's already in the story and that's okay. Because not everybody's sorry, reads from the lead all the way to the kicker and so it is okay if I have a box that somebody's eye draws immediately to, and they read that and they're like, now I get it. Now I understand what I need to know. We also put out a lot of service journalism, we put out a lot of tools, we put out a lot of guides. So for example, when you write a story whenever we wrote a story that said polling places have changed we didn't want to just say here's a link to a spreadsheet, good luck trying to find it. We would build a map we would say here, type in your address. Here's where you can find your polling place. Similarly, the headline the framing, we wouldn't just say polling places have changed in Philly we would say Philly has drastically reduced its number of polling places find yours here. We always want to give people that information as much as we can. And then again, in addition to the fire hose that we're doing, we're trying to partner with other people when we can we're trying to put out the information. So in 2020, we do a lot of we did a lot of partnerships. We tried to translate materials, we tried to just get that out there.
And then the other thing I have is be really thoughtful about what you write. Because sometimes the problem is even when you're being accurate and fair and journalistically good, it can really easily be weaponized. By a bad actor. And that means that unfortunately, you have to play defense as you're writing the story in the first place. So what I mean is there there were a couple of lawsuits, for example, where somebody won the lawsuit, but I knew it was going to get appealed. And I knew it was going to get overturned on appeal. And that wouldn't win but we start to write about the fact that this ruling had come down. So what do we do in the headline? We don't just say, you know, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania mill voting law overturned. We say something like Pennsylvania mail voting law temporarily overturned but appealed and we try to make very clear this is temporary This is not the end. And we try to say from the very beginning, the headline, the framing of the story, everything we can do, because what I have seen and this is something we evolved over time is, especially as a beat reporter, you know what you're doing and you're just writing and writing and writing. And then all of a sudden you start to see screenshots of what you've written, getting used by bad actors, and they're like, even the Philadelphia Inquirer says, ballots were thrown out, and you're like, yes, ballots are thrown out, because the law was bad, you know, and they're like, I can't win this fight. So think about that as you're writing and it's really hard to do, but you sort of have to start thinking like a troll or thinking like a bad actor, and think how can I intentionally misinterpret what you are writing? And if you can do that, and it is hard skill to develop. But also if you grew up on the internet, it's kind of easy. It will help a lot because it will help shield some of the work and it also means that people who aren't bad actors who come and read what you're doing are absolutely 100% Always headed toward the direction you're trying to send them. The message you're trying to send them needs to be super clear. Other than that, if I can just repeat again, because that is a little bit of a theme, cut out good information, put out a lot of it, repackage it, do it over and over and over it is okay. People do not read every story that you write. So if you write 10 of them, more people will read it. It is not the same one person reading it 10 times I promise you do it over and over and over and put out that firehose of good information and do it every single election because every single election matters. If you only do it in the presidentials people know that they only need to care about the presidentials and that is not true. All right. Thank you. Thank you, John.
I like I almost would use it as a motto and put it up on my desk think like a troll. I think that's it. That's a good one. All right, turning it over to Nasir to tell us a little bit about what's going on in another place riven by disinformation.
My takeaway from Jonathan lies piece was exactly what Patrick said, think like a troll and down people and information and we'll come back to that thought in a bit. But bear with me here. Both of my colleagues, they were able to talk to you about approaches that they followed, to what degree they worked. very transparently talking also about, you know, there's a lot more to do here. I'm the pessimist on the battle. So bear with me when I just you know, walk you through a couple of browser tabs, no slides.
This is my colleague, Monica loggin. Somebody based in America. So the algorithm knows she's American. She's looking for the disinfo lab, the European Union's disinfo lab, a fairly credible organization that investigates you know, false messengers, info, and she's looking for stories from India. The first result that pops up in the media is this website called disinfo lab. dot o RG. That's a different URL from the EU disinfo lab that you see at the bottom which is disinfo.eu Right. And so we open up here it goes this page, we open up this website, and we start to look through what they said right? They've got donate support us everything that you traditionally see a while with fact checking organizations and then you start to see slightly weird stuff. You see a Christian atrocities in India and you want heard that now? Hindus for higher funding to democracy Republican Muslim Brotherhood, this is an organized propaganda site masquerading as a fact checking unit. And it's got a lot of fraction we will tell you, you should look them up. What can we see next? This is something called PIB fact check PIB means press Information Bureau. The government of India has essentially set up a fact checking unit the the headline there is the current government of India has essentially set up a fact checking unit you open up their website let's see where that goes. Whatever point it does open weakness there you know that's that's that I had open anyway. Perfect. So this is what comes up from the twitter whatever thing pretty useless. I did manage to get something else. There's nothing much on this page beyond what you're seeing here. But they do have a list of fact checks done. When you click on that it they let you download a PDF. My point here is and before we come to this last step. It's important apart from focusing on what we do as fact checkers in newsrooms or journalism organizations doing fact checks. To acknowledge what Laura referred to earlier right. There is a limited scope to which fact checking helps with the problem. What other actors do we need to be collaborating with? What actions do we need to be taking to be able to understand the problem in particular, how do we ensure that distribution of the good information that we don't drown people in could work better? I'll talk a bit more about that. What infrastructure does the other side actually have deployed? Right now to be able to counter everything that you have out there? We just saw two of those things. One, a majoritarian government that set up a government accredited fact checking unit that essentially just counters good information that you put out there, and another, a full fledged organization masquerading as a fact checking unit, right alongside your flag fly for your true or false flags. Imagine the kind of impact that that's able to have with an audience and I come from a place where you can you don't yet have a solution for people that are consuming misinformation and they're not literate so they're not actually reading stuff. They're finding audio and video clips that are essentially propaganda and what you're doing essentially is sending them fact checks that are, here's everything that is wrong. Here's an explainer. Right. There's a lot of distance that we have to cover in terms of improving things like vital markers around our fat checks, which is essentially a packaging question to ensure that we're speaking to the same part of the audience that the bad information is speaking to underline that bad information has emotional appeal. It speaks to the emotional part of the target audience. Good information has logical appeal it speaks to a totally different part of the brain. They're not combating on the same front they're not fighting on the same front and did you notice we haven't mentioned AI yet. Essentially, if you look at the most obvious use cases of AI bad information is using it for stuff like deep fakes right? was already operating at a very different scale. But now you have AI, essentially helping them package it better, so that the viral markers operate better and are more effective. The good information side is essentially using it to improve databases of fact checks and structure that information better try and you know, essentially make it more discoverable. Again, those two are operating on very different fronts. Essentially everything that is helping the bad information side operated a much bigger scale or to operate at a very different degree of effective effectiveness. The efforts that we do are not necessarily necessarily meeting them on that front, for instance. Fat checks, there's enough studies about like Laura mentioned earlier, right about how fat checks do work. We acknowledge that right? But when you go a little further, there's also enough information that talks about how fat checks doesn't necessarily help somebody change their mind a lot. I referred to that earlier, right? It's working but it's working in a bubble that is either already attuned to receiving your information, or is kind of neutral. But if you have a huge audience, susceptible audience on the other side, it isn't necessarily helping make them helping you know, pull them over to the we're now consuming good information and believing what actually works. Here's the last step that I want to talk about.
This too,
is Oregon propaganda. Organization matches, we have the basket eating as a factoring hippies. I'd appreciate it very much if you took some time to read only the first three or four bullets. I'm hoping this is readable. I want you to pay attention to the language that they're using. Both Jonathan and Laura talked about how we use the to be using better language in our factors cut directly to Trump lies clearly use true or false flags. The propaganda side is, you know, thinking along the same lines, except that the language that they use is there's an info war against the current government. Fifth generation warfare, essentially, they're using vocabulary that makes them sound very, very credible to the average person. I'm speaking to a room of journalists, you're not the target audience. The average citizen reads this, and pulls it out in a family Whatsapp group and says here's the most credible piece that I've read on whatever's happening out there. I'm going to throw it back to Patrick to let you know, so that we have questions and it's not just a series of talks, but I just wanted to underline the fact that the infrastructure deployed out there by bad actors is operating at a very different order of magnitude. We have fact checking yes but as tourism organizations, we need to start plotting all the various interventions that are possible on the supply chain of bad information. fact checking is one part of it. What can we do to improve distribution? What can we do to improve identification? What's happening? Laura and I were on a panel last year with Fergus from Team falamos sitting right way back there. I refer to a project that we collaborated on during the last Indian general election, which is essentially a tip line to study image misinformation. One of the pieces that we talked about was it's not going to be possible for you to identify everything bad that is out there. And focus emphasize that it's important to pick the couple of big narratives of the day that are causing the most damage, right, which is fine, except that there's so many different communities, especially what I come from, that the top two narratives of the day will vary according to the language in India, according to the geographic region, according to the community. We just don't have enough infrastructure, especially with big tech cutting off funding to not just the election teams, but also the fact checking organizations. Again, not some great answers, but just underlining that, you know, there's a lot more that we need to be doing beyond just factoring in teams in our respective organizations. I'll switch back to the QR codes.
Okay, thank you very much, Nasir. And all right. Now let's get I'm gonna come to you right now we're Let's get a discussion going. About if anybody wants to react to what others have said, and I think Laura does so I'll give it to you first.
Yes, it's not necessarily acting is in putting also in context in Latin America. There are so governments with fat check pages in the same case that India Mexico is one example. And but there are others like blue. And the other thing that is also for me interesting to you to know is sources are not the same Nasser's speak about that, but bad actors have much more sources and money than credible media organization for anti disinformation. And we need to figure it out how not, not necessarily change it tomorrow, but work on that. And the third thing is, NASA said we should use or or use AI in the waist can help us with motion, etc. And we've been using AI and we have a tool that helps us to be quickly without us. Losing quality since 2018. But we also need to figure it out, as NASA said, how we can change the incentives that we have there? Cause the the bigger concern that I have is that these informants don't necessarily have ethics. And then obviously, they're using tools and sources that we are not we are going to decide not to use then that obviously is a challenge
in journals. Yes. When we were preparing for this, you said something that I thought was really important, which is that you as you're preparing to cover elections in 2024. You have to know where your sources are going to be getting their information, not where they got it in the last election that you've covered. Can you explain that a little more and especially, you know, in the US we don't use whatsapp that much, but it could be the same with SMS or Facebook Messenger. But that little bit to about how you can combat disinformation on a closed circuit like that.
Yeah. One of the things that we we did not necessarily excellent in the past is that in general journalist follow the trends from the election before and then if if the Brazilian election in 2018 was the watsapp disinformation problem then the Argentinian election, the year after? We figured it out going to be that and, and what we saw or we've been seeing is that this informers are always ahead in terms of they are moving all the time. And then it's not enough to have your newsroom working in the places or the channels that the election before were the most relevant. That was why I said one of our challenges is to know timely for the 2020 for where the Latina community is going to be getting information. And then it's not that we can be sure today is that we need to invest to know next year where they are getting that information. And our report diseases WhatsApp is one of them. And I know most of the Americans don't necessarily use it and I always repeat the same is WhatsApp uses for Latino communities are super rational decision is free. It allowed people to communicate with friends and family in the countries of origin with circles and then they are going to be there forever. In countries where Argentina have six from 10 children for and then for sure they're going to be in WhatsApp and then WhatsApp, if you are covering anything related to Spanish speaking or Latino communities in the state you got you should think about this information there and figure out ways to to address that. If not your impact gonna be not necessarily what you expect.
Jonathan, you talked about so much about the disinformation that is is circulating about our systems, our election systems, you know how the votes are counted. What is the process? You know, how poll workers are selected, you know, thinking back to the harassment of the poll workers in Georgia. And I think that's designed not just to you know, sometimes it's designed to say you know, put out information like, here's how you vote and it's false information just to suppress the vote in certain communities, but it's also intended to undermine our confidence in democracy. Can you talk a little bit about that, like the insidiousness of that kind of disinformation and what effect you're seeing? Yeah.
Though, I would first say that, if I can push back slightly on some of that, okay. I think we've noticed it more in some recent elections, but I would note that like, black and brown voter turnout has been going down in Philadelphia for years now. If not for the Barack Obama elections, it would be a lot lower. And I think there are a lot of communities across Philadelphia that have not been served well by journalists and political parties and organizations that have lost a lot of faith in democracy in the first place. And when we go out and talk to those voters, they'll tell us, why does my vote matter? Like what is the government going to do for me? I think some of what we have to pay attention to is like which people are we talking about? When we're talking about that loss of faith and democracy? I think there are a lot of communities that have lost some of that faith for a while ago. These are the systems of voting are so complex, that it is very hard to understand and you shouldn't have to understand it. You should not have to understand how the voting machine works and how your vote is counted. But then it makes it very easy for people to exploit and it is about undermining faith and democracy. But frankly, that is not a problem that's in a vacuum. We've seen attacks on the judiciary, we've seen attacks on school boards, we've seen attacks on all sorts of systems, right? It's not just the act of voting, and it is scary. It is scary that it is in a vacuum like that. And I sometimes I've talked to some of my colleagues about the fact that we actually need to sometimes take a step back and think about how we treat that. Because this stuff is not just about one single election or one single school board vote or one single candidate. It is about a broader campaign to create these narratives around what democracy looks like and what America is supposed to look like.
Okay, great, thanks. I'm not sort of oops, one example I used once when when talking to loutra about sort of faith in in us as traditional institutions. I was talking with I have half of my family is suspect or susceptible, or should I say to too much of this disinformation. And I was talking to a cousin and her husband and he was was just adamantly going after this theory about why the US has been supporting Ukraine. And it has nothing to do with the evil of Russia invading a sovereign country. It was about Monsanto and protecting their agricultural interests and something I had never heard. But I looked it up and I immediately found a back check about it. And I showed it to him. I think it was PolitiFact. And he had no interest in hearing it. He just had no trust in any media that I would show him. But the interesting thing was my cousin, his wife, who had been listening to him on all this and believe what he was telling her, wanted to see this. And it kind of gets to what you were saying, Jonathan about, you know, you're not going to change the mind of the person who posted that false information, but you might reach the people who are getting it through their feeds. So I just wanted to ask you Nasir about trust and, you know, rebuilding trust in traditional media, and what you're doing in India to do that with with the more credible media outlets, and are you having any success? Sure.
Sure. One of the things that we and there was a session earlier in this conference about learning from leaders in other industries. A major part of that also applies to Saudi this mic is really weird.
I think everyone can hear you though.
Yeah, okay, fine. It applies especially to this context, because there's a behavior science element to how people process misinformation, right and towards building trust. And I think with our new cycles, we don't necessarily have enough time to you know, there's a framework called service design, which essentially takes into account you know, signals from the audience and then designing products and services around them. We don't necessarily design our fact checking services or even our newest products, using something like that, right. It's rooted enough in in understanding the audience at that granular level. In India, one of the things, most of the stuff that's being used to try and build trust is is isn't necessarily election specific, right. There's the there's the short term, immediate goals that you want to be able to meet, which we'll come back to in a second. There's the long term stuff, the longer stuff is the obvious media literacy interventions that they're doing with, you know, youth and school goers, essentially in educational institutions, and finally work with curricula and things like that. For the short term goals, what they're trying to do is kind of equip you for the kind of situation that you faced half of everyone's family is susceptible to misinformation. So apart from just the fact check, are you able to look at patterns of what's coming back up again? And again, you know, rumors are seasonal. There's something from two years ago and you'll get to see that come back up again, again, and they come in waves as in like, you know, think of it as sponges, the latest rumors kind of start around the same time. So when they see patterns like this, they will put I don't want to say a toolkit, but essentially like a package out there, if you come across a rumor related to x, here's four things that you can show them right now. One of them might be a fact check that takes it heads on, but there's also like in slightly explainer, or think of it as a primer that you know, you can use to do whatever except the problem with this is if we go back to the family situation, you're talking to multiple generations. And it's not very easy to show a grandfather a tick tock check, and try and get them to understand you know how something like this works. Some of the more successful organizations, I would point to boom in particular, were calling Venkatesh has worked been working for a while. They've been doing very well simply because a media brand itself takes five to seven years to build credibility with credibility with the artist as in they need to survive five to seven years, barely survive or survive. Well, that same material before people actually start recognizing them and kind of trusting them for a while, right? Most fact checking organizations spun up over the past two or three years. The only reason they've been able to do that is because big tech third party fact checking programs. Almost every fact checking organization, my part of the world is is primarily living off of big tech support. The biggest distribution channel that's available to them is what they're able to do when platforms allow them to tinker with your feed newsfeed or search results or whatever, right? You take that off, then they don't have much. Yeah. So while the trust building Yes, is the important piece, I think we're miles away from figuring that out completely. We've got it figured out in bits and pieces. We've got efforts in bits and pieces. How much they add up to is debatable. I do think though, that the long term stuff like I said, media literacy etc. People have done you know, surveys after such the some of these programs. They've been working very well where they help with the next elections. I don't know what that one after that much more effective.
Great. Quickly, I want to get some questions so I'll give you a quick chance. No, then
just just hone in on that and is that in the case of fried chicken we did the same in together on Malita is that we are not necessarily building trust with political information that is much harder. We are building trust ASCII, answering questions in some cases. related to health issues, or more viral that Are you perhaps saw that chart that appeared last week in California and two months before in Florida? I don't know where and then we are useful for that people answering directly what they are asking us not saying that any question is a silly question. And then after or doing that for a while, help us after to send any information about politics or economy and they can receive it in a different way.
All right, let's open it up to questions. I don't know if we have a mic. If there's any is anybody from OMA here with a mic? If not, I would ask you to just project Yes, let's go to you first and then you. Yeah. Oh, you do have a mic. Great.
I just had a really quick question about whether using several different techniques to combat disinformation. So how can you as you're sort of throwing all of this at the wall? Jonathan, you described sort of doing it as it's happening. How can you tell what's working and what's not? Laura? I think you mentioned a number of research projects, but those are long term, as you're doing it in the newsrooms, how can you tell that it's working? It's worth more effort or it's something to abandon?
Jonathan or whoever wants to take them I
yeah, I I don't know that we have a good answer for it. My sense of it has been that especially in the middle of a big election, you can't take chances. So you might as well try something and see hope that some of it works. And if you don't know, there was like an old saying around advertising. You know, you know, half of it works but you don't know which half I think it's like that it's like some of it's got to work a little bit and you just keep doing it. I don't have a good answer. But I'd like Lars answer about corruption.
In our case, at least to not to do is complex lat long texts just right for expert you need to avoid that if you want to reach the people that need you most. And that can sounds obvious, but in general, journalists love to write texts, that in lots of cases, have a lot of caveats then usually you should think about as your audience, someone that believes already in the disinformation on the or the problematic story or narrative, and then go to the point is always our concern. We edit three times each piece, trying to simplify it and makes complex things simple. If not, we are loving the people we need to reach and the second one is think about for example, all your audio pieces are our visual pieces that are not necessarily the same quality, or the same, the same complex production that some years ago. People love you just with your cell phone explaining on camera, something clear. And then I prefer much more more videos of that. Putting out and as Jonathan said, posted one time after the other every time that we realize about that narrative, and not to wait a week to have super well done production.
Looks like you're about to speed up but I do want to get his know that we're already at 330. So I do want to tell you too, that there are research projects going on that are very risky looking at what we're doing.
Johnson Hi, Kimberly Johnson from the Wall Street Journal. Question is for Jonathan, how did you get buy in from those above you and across the newsroom to be as explicit in your copy? As you pointed out in your presentation
session. How to get newsroom by in that is a full session. That's like that's an entire conference. I think honestly, you have to appeal to the journalism's mission and the mission of the work that you're doing. And we were very clear might be as we developed it, we were very clear on saying, you know, we are pro democracy biased. We are in favor of elections. We are in favor of democracy. We're in favor of voting. We are in part of that, if that cascades down properly is that we have to help people get access to good information and they have to be able to understand that information. And so it was actually not a very hard decision to make to say so and so lied. This is not true. This is a fever dream of a conspiracy theory. We can say that because we had started with the principles around. This is good information that people need to have access to and it is important that that be the case.
Great, thanks. So we are at 330 If anybody needs to leave but we'll go go with some more questions if if people want to stay
so I have to make a plug to us democracy day.org. Organization on September 15. Moving up to September 15. We're working with newsrooms to do more reporting on democracy, not horse race politics, exactly what Jonathan is talking about and there's tools, there's lessons plans for teachers, all of that. So thank you for letting me make the plug but after that, please do get involved with it. My question is to Nasser because I look at the situation in India, and I don't think the US is far behind and I just wonder from your perspective, what are the steps that we should be looking out for I think, obviously, you know what happened recently with local governments rating a newsroom, closing it down. It's happened in India and other places in the world and I think that we as a very large democracy should be looking at the largest democracy in the world and the state of it. So the question is
or that's to you about, I guess I may be to paraphrase the question is, do you see this coming to the US the worst of what's happening in India?
Plus, I think you lucked out in the last election. Your majority Majority Leader didn't come back for a second term as dead. So we actually have a slightly bad neither if that's the right way to put it. What you would ever think to earlier is this agency government agency called the enforcement directorate, which is being used to go after owners of promoters and fact checking organizations and news organizations and in some cases, they've also been able to force shutdowns. I don't necessarily see that playing out as effectively or at that scale here. I think you have better checks and balances, or let me put it this way. We also had good checks and balances, but we're way more innovative with subverting them. Don't have a good answer about you know, all of that damage is definitely coming to you, but it might not be as effective. In our case. We're very creative about how to our governments are very creative about how to use the infrastructure they have access to to their advantage, for example, and this is not a misinformation example. The current government in in one of the largest states, the state that has Bombay, they lost the election. The opposite. The other side was announced as a winner in one week. They managed to legally without you know, any facing any kind of prosecution by out legislators on the other side, make the government collapse in a no confidence vote and then become the government in place. Now, I haven't seen that happen as effectively anywhere. Else. So you're doing better.
I think coming from South America, the difference that we are seeing is that perhaps you've thinks your institution or not working our works worst, much worse. And and the other thing that you have on we don't have is that for a lot of people that have been living for years in extreme poverty, democracy is not necessarily a value. And, and you are not necessarily in the same page but But what I'm seeing in the US is that I read a lot by American researchers or journalists talking about informative deserts outside the states. And in the last year in the States, we are seeing that here. The Spanish speaking community are not getting informed in the US with high quality journalists, and quite high quality journalists is not just all what Jonathan said related to know the processes. It's also been timely in the places with these people that in some cases work outside their house to allow us or 14 hours need us to be.
Great point. I will take one more if anybody has it. And then we'll we'll wrap up and say thanks.
Hey, my question is related to something that allowed I said about not only doing the disinformation work during elections, because that's part of how you build trust. So you're, you're constantly asking so my question is actually for Jonathan at the Philadelphia Inquirer, because I don't see that in the US fact checking system that we're not doing it year round and we're not doing it on topics that people aren't that people are are interested in, outside of our like Big J journalism stuff. And so I wonder if if you see how you might apply what you did to other beats that are side by side to politics, but are not politics?
Yeah, I mean, sort of like what we're talking about the attacks on courts and schools and voting and everything else, right. It's not just one thing. It's sort of everything. If you're a teacher, if you're a librarian if you're a poll worker, I don't have a great answer for this. My only answer really goes back to what I've been trying to push, which is that if you're not reaching those communities on everything, not just on voting, as you just said, like you have to talk to the everybody and you have to talk to all those communities that aren't being served right now. So if you only go to misinformation sessions and you don't go to D and I sessions, then you are missing out on what you're supposed to be doing right. I don't have a good answer, because I'm not going to pretend that the Philadelphia Inquirer has a good answer for that either. But we have to try and we have to understand that it's not just about elections every four years or something. It is about engaging all the communities on all those topics that they care about and then building that trust.
Great. That's a good answer. And I will thank the panel. Thank you, Laura, Jonathan, and Nasr for your expertise. And just end on a hopeful note that wherever we are all three of the countries we've talked about today, let's hope that our next elections are not Riven with disinformation. Thank you very much, everybody. Take a picture
Yeah, so we have a research study. It's actually based in the UK. And she has, as I said, we're doing five countries and the first one was Georgia, so she's already embedded in news outlets in Georgia, specifically one news outlet. Yeah. And so what they're doing is interviewing people across the newsroom, and in sort of adjacent newsrooms or support organizations about what kinds of disinformation they're seeing and then looking at what anecdotally or through interviews, what is working, what is combating of it, the second part of Georgia and in each of the countries to try and get more scientific data about what to believe. So that part hasn't happened yet. But you know, locally. What we have a US partner that has a lot of experience across the world, and they have a GA. So they are going to be leading it but I think they will be looking for a local partner or a single CRC. All right, one that we haven't even talked about that yet and that's great.
event related to discrimination if you want to CrCl remember that but if you want to send me any info about them, that'd be great.
Yeah, thank you.
Oh, by the way, in Georgia, we started the Caucasus school for Journalism and Media Management at GE.
Yes. Yeah. Okay.
Great. Thanks so much.
Bye bye.
Oh, whatever
we give you an answer. You We already checked it out, as you know. Sure.
Got my email there. You've got mine. So just right. Okay, great. Thanks.
To help us with this summary. Then, you could be super useful especially to your family or
whatever, you know.
Oh, yeah. Okay. Great. We have Thank you. Of course I can give you a card as well. And I'll help you with this house
No, you whatever. Other ideas that you have. I have my cards I don't anymore, but it's the same
Okay.
Raise happy to trotline for me world.
Election
used are you at NHK? Yeah. Okay. Well, we used to work with NHK. Yeah, we did on a on an exchange program between Japanese and US journalist. I just met one of your colleagues in Washington who was on a program like a State Department Visitors Program from NHK. I can't I don't have his name handy. But, but we talked about, you know, we'd love to revive that program in a partnership with NHK. So I don't know, you know, we can fund we need to find a source of funding for it. But, but so I don't know. I'm trying to think yes, yes. Who I know that would have ideas for your research institutions in Japan. Okay, other kinds of information is yeah, no. No. These situations Yeah. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any buddy but I can put out some feelers if you want to reach out to me. I'll see if I can connect you with somebody who might know more than I do.
Okay, great.
Okay, sounds great. Thank you
electoral Oh, good nation, targeting Latino communities that we saw in the last in the last two weeks. So that and then at least you show that you are paying some attention. Yeah, we got it.
Oh, well, you had an internship on there. I don't think it was a job did Yeah, we don't we don't have a we don't do fact checking ourselves. We help organizations like Lauer's that are doing fact checking, but we don't, we wouldn't have were different. Yeah, we certainly collaborate with them but no yeah, you might be thinking of the International fact checking network at pointer, yes, yes.
