Fake news could ruin social media, but
there’s still hope
by: Guðrun í Jákupsstovu
Camille Francois, director of research and analysis at Graphika, told the audience of her talk at TNW Conference:
“Disinformation campaigns, or fake news is a concept we’ve
known about for years, but few people realize how varied
the concept can be and how many forms it comes in. When
the first instances of fake news started to surface, they were
connected with bots. These flooded conversations with alternative stories in order to create noise and, in turn, silence
what was actually being said”.
According to Francois, today’s disinformation campaigns
are far more varied than just bots – and much harder to
detect. For example, targeted harassment campaigns are
carried out against journalists and human-rights activists
who are critical of governments or big organizations.
“We see this kind of campaigns happening at large scale in
countries like the Philippines, Turkey, Ecuador, and Venezuela. The point of these campaigns is to flood the narrative
these people try to create with so much noise that their original message gets silenced, their reputation gets damaged,
and their credibility undermined. I call this patriotic trolling.”
There are also examples of disinformation campaigns mobilizing people. This was evident during the US elections in
2016 when many fake events suddenly started popping up
on Facebook. One Russian Facebook page “organized” an
anti-Islam event, while another “organized” a pro-Islam demonstration. The two fake events gathered activists to the
same street in Texas, leading to a stand-off.
Francois explains how amazed she is that, in spite of social
media being the main medium for these different disinformation campaigns, actual people also still use it to protest
properly.
If we look at countries, like Turkey – where there’s a huge
amount of censorship and smear campaigns directed at human right defenders and journalists – citizens around the
world and in those places still use social media to denounce
corruption, to organize human rights movements and this
proves that we still haven’t lost the battle of who owns social
media.
This is an ongoing battle, and it lets us recognize the actors
who are trying to remove the option for people to use social media for good. But everyday you still have people all
over the world turning to social media to support their democratic activities. This gives me hope and a desire to protect
people’s ability to use social media for good, for denouncing
corruption and protecting human rights.
Adapted from:<https://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2018/05/25/> .
Access 09 Oct. 2018.
Glossary
bot: (short for "robot"): um programa automático que roda
na Internet; to flood: inundar; trolling: fazer postagem deliberadamente ofensiva para provocar alguém; popping up:
surgir, aparecer; stand-off: impasse: smear campaigns:
campanhas de difamação.
In the text, Turkey is used as an example of a country
where
