I’m not going to bury the lead here: there’s information you need to share, now, particularly with your friends online with whom you most disagree. It could help save US democracy. That information is that the outcome of the US election is unlikely to be fairly known on Tuesday night, or even Wednesday morning.
Read on to find out why spreading this information, particularly beyond your own filter bubble, is vital.
You can rarely see a pandemic coming, down to within hours of it seeping into a population. But we have such a prediction today. And I believe that you can act now to impede the infection’s spread and its potential devastation.
This pandemic is one of US election disinformation that could push America over the edge, into chaos, wrecking structures, norms, and institutions in ways that we can’t even understand yet. Here’s why it could happen, why we know when it may start, and how your actions can help smother it before it takes hold.
The rare prediction is in a report from The Guardian, published just today. In essence, this US election is unique. Because of Covid19, and massive early voting in America, vote counting might take longer than usual. Since Covid19 causes more concern in densely populated areas, and because such areas are where many enthusiastic new voters are concentrated (young people, new citizens, etc.), city precincts are likely to report their votes later than usual, perhaps days later.
Combine that with the massive urban/rural divide in American political discourse: cities are far more aligned with Democrats, and rural areas go more for the GOP. Add in that the GOP presidential candidate has made strong statements that cast doubt on the validity of the American voting process this cycle. All these signs point to the following scenario:
On Tuesday night, the precincts counted could look like a win for Trump, but it might take days to discover that this is in fact, not the case.
To understand how this could sow disinformation, it’s important to realize that it’s not uncommon for American news outlets to call a state as having been won by a candidate with very few precincts reporting. It’s a questionable practice at the best of times, but one could, in the past, justify it with various statistics, exit polls, etc. But we all know that such mathematically guided guesses can be misleading, and even manipulative in the wrong hands. It’s not hard to see that such manipulation is more likely now than ever. And social media is sure to play a major part.
So, it’s likely that a disinformation storm online will happen soon after elections close on Tuesday night. It could cause chaos, maybe even violence. And we know it is coming, for once. So, what can we, the people, do about it?
The answer is for us all to act now, creating an online truth inoculation event, today. This is in line with the comments of Tom Ridge, the former Republican Governor of Pennsylvania, and former DHS Secretary under George W. Bush, who has said: “We’ve hopefully begun to inoculate and educate Americans around the necessity of patience so that every vote can be counted.” But have we? And more importantly, has that message broken out of today’s ever-present online filter bubbles?
Drawing on the research I discussed in my book, Rage Inside the Machine, we know that filter bubbles are an inevitable consequence of social network dynamics. Online messages rarely cross the dividing lines between polarised political tribes. But if we want substantial herd immunity to disinformation on election night (and in the days of counting that follow), we need as many people as possible to get the message that, this year, we need the patience to make sure every vote is counted, if we want democracy to work and continue.
How do we break this message out of the filter bubble? Our research shows that it won’t happen naturally under the configuration of current social media information personalisation algorithms. But the algorithms aren’t the only actors in social media systems. You are an actor. And you can help. Particularly those of you on or near the edge of a filter bubble. That is, those of you who are connected (or can reconnect) to friends with whom you do not politically agree.
So, here’s the thing: push the following message to all your social media friends, especially those with whom you politically disagree! Pushing this information over the edge of filter bubbles is the key to rapidly overcoming polarisation and the effectiveness of the disinformation storm that is likely to start Tuesday night.
Here’s the (non-partisan) message to share, as much as you are able, over and over again:
1) We can’t expect all the votes to be counted on election night this year, due to Covid19.
2) We won’t know the real winner for days after the election.
3) If we care about democracy, we have to be patient and ignore any early declarations of any candidate having won.
4) If we are patient, we will eventually have a true result, preserving and sustaining the US democracy that we all want to believe in.
I suggest pushing this message and continuing to push it from now until every vote is fairly counted. A relentless, filter-bubble-breaking cascade of truth could overcome this rare, predictable disinformation event.
Please share.