The threat of disinformation-fueled violence in France and Sri Lanka
Countries: France and Sri Lanka
Online disinformation goes far beyond election meddling. In particular, the United States should be worried about disinformation’s potential to spark violence. That said, policymakers have few effective tools to combat it.
Lessons:
Disinformation-related violence—both by individuals and organized groups—is a serious threat, even in developed Western democracies.
As France illustrates, violence as a result of disinformation may be a greater threat than election manipulation.
Governments currently have few tools to push back, and many existing tools—such as blocking access to social media—are incompatible with freedom of expression online, as the case in Sri Lanka shows.
The rise of online disinformation in the United States has received enormous public attention. To most, disinformation means foreign propaganda campaigns, broad distortions of the public debate, and elections swung by lies.
This presumption may miss entirely the biggest threats posed by disinformation and misinformation, alike. (The terms often are used interchangeably, but disinformation is deliberately false, while misinformation is inadvertently false.) In fact, there is only limited evidence that exposure to false news stories directly influences votes or election outcomes.[1] Instead, disinformation seems to mostly have a polarizing effect: radicalizing existing partisans to even more extreme views.[2] (Note: This is true only of false news stories spread online. Other types of information warfare, such as hacking and stealing emails and documents, almost certainly impact election results.[3])
If online disinformation does not swing elections, then its true threat is resulting polarization, violence, and even terrorism. To date, false rumors spread online have spurred lynch mobs and other spontaneous violence in France, India, Mexico, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and the United States.
In France, disinformation-fueled violence has become a growing concern. The French government accused Russian social media trolls of attempting to fuel the Yellow Vest protests, a series of clashes beginning in late 2018.[4][5] While the protests were driven by real grievances—such as rising fuel prices—the conflict may have been amplified by online disinformation, including rumors that police were mutinying and calling for protests against the government. At the same time, association with Russian trolls has perhaps been a convenient way for the French government to dismiss a genuine and organic protest movement.[6] The label of “fake news,” as in the United States, tends to muddy the line between the real and the propagandistic.
Another incident in France had a racial component directed at the historically marginalized Roma community. In March 2019, vigilante mobs attacked Roma camps in response to online hoaxes about kidnappings with white vans.[7]
All these scenarios for disinformation—existing protest movements driven toward violence, conflation of real grievance with foreign manipulation, and spontaneous mob attacks on minority groups—are not only possible but already present in the United States. Above all, France’s example reinforces that developed Western democracies are not immune to growing violence spread by false information on social media.
What makes disinformation violence so frightening is that increasingly a false story need reach only one individual susceptible to radicalization to cause devastating terror and violence. On August 3, 2019, a lone gunman killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.[8] Shortly before the attack, the gunman uploaded a manifesto to an online message board notorious for conspiracy theories, white supremacy, and disinformation.[9] This shooter closely resembles others around the world that seem to have been radicalized online. Commentators also have drawn links between disinformation and the 2015 shooting at Emanuel AME—an historic Black church in Charleston, S.C.—as well as the 2016 threatened shooting at Comet Pizza in Washington, D.C.[10]
As much as disinformation and violence are pressing problems in the United States and elsewhere, Sri Lanka’s example shows just how few effective tools governments have to push back. While false rumors on Facebook have been blamed for sparking violent clashes between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Sri Lanka,[11] the real red flag is the government’s response.
After terrorist attacks killed more than 250 people on Easter Sunday in 2019, the government responded by blocking all access to social media.[12] This move was criticized as excessive, a dangerous precedent for freedom of expression online, and immediately harmful as it limited many families’ ability to communicate in the chaos after the attacks.[13] According to Allie Funk, a research analyst at Freedom House, “curbing civil liberties and civil rights doesn’t make people more safe…. These are societal issues that are going to take long-term solutions.”[14]
The Sri Lanka case shows how the tools currently available to governments in responding to disinformation-related violence are blunt and potentially dangerous. As U.S. policymakers seek to constrain the spread of such violence, they must also take care to maintain First Amendment freedoms online. At the moment, there may not be a simple way to do both.
More nuanced and targeted responses are clearly needed. True solutions--such as the growing movement for media literacy education --are complicated and take time. (See “Inoculating against misinformation” case study.) Without action, however, the bloodshed fueled by online falsehoods will only grow.
Recommended Reading:
https://www.wired.com/story/sri-lanka-bombings-social-media-shutdown/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/world/asia/sri-lanka-attacks-death-threats.html
End Notes:
[1] Ben Raderstorf and Michael Camilleri, “Online Disinformation in the United States” (The Inter-American Dialogue, 2019), https://www.thedialogue.org/analysis/online-disinformation-in-the-united-states/.
[2] Raderstorf and Camilleri.
[3] Jane Mayer, “How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump,” The New Yorker, September 24, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump.
[4] “France to Probe Possible Russian Influence on Yellow Vest Riots,” Bloomberg.Com, December 8, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-08/pro-russia-social-media-takes-aim-at-macron-as-yellow-vests-rage.
[5] Debbie White, “France Riots ‘Whipped up by Russian Trolls Sharing Fake News,’” The Sun, December 10, 2018, https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7943418/france-paris-riots-russian-trolls-fake-news/.
[6] Andrew Roth and Angelique Chrisafis, “Gilets Jaunes: Grassroots Heroes or Tools of the Kremlin?,” The Guardian, December 17, 2018, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/17/gilets-jaunes-grassroots-heroes-or-kremlin-tools.
[7] Agence France-Presse, “Roma Attacked in Paris after Fake News Reports,” The Guardian, March 27, 2019, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/27/roma-call-for-protection-after-vigilante-attacks-inspired-by-fake-news.
[8] “El Paso Shooting: Victim Death Toll Rises to 22 Today, Prosecutors to Seek Death Penalty for ‘Domestic Terrorism’ for Walmart Mass Shooting Suspect Patrick Crusias (Update) - CBS News,” accessed August 15, 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/el-paso-shooting-victim-death-toll-rises-22-today-death-penalty-for-domestic-terrorism-in-walmart-shooting-2019-08-05/.
[9] Queenie Wong, “8chan: What You Need to Know about the Troll Haven,” CNET, August 6, 2019, https://www.cnet.com/news/el-paso-shooting-shines-light-on-8chan-a-racist-troll-haven/.
[10] Martenzie Johnson, “How Fake News Led Dylann Roof to Murder Nine People,” The Undefeated (blog), December 14, 2016, https://theundefeated.com/features/how-fake-news-led-to-dylann-roof-to-murder-nine-people/.
[11] Amanda Taub and Max Fisher, “Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match,” The New York Times, April 21, 2018, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/world/asia/facebook-sri-lanka-riots.html.
[12] “Sri Lanka : US Official Wounded in Easter Sunday Bomb Attacks in Sri Lanka Succumbs to Injuries,” accessed August 15, 2019, http://www.colombopage.com/archive_19A/May08_1557326496CH.php; Hannah Ellis-Petersen, “Social Media Shut down in Sri Lanka in Bid to Stem Misinformation,” The Guardian, April 21, 2019, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/21/social-media-shut-down-in-sri-lanka-in-bid-to-stem-misinformation.
[13] Issie Lapowsky and Louise Matsakis, “Don’t Praise the Sri Lankan Government for Blocking Facebook,” Wired, April 23, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/sri-lanka-bombings-social-media-shutdown/.
[14] Issie Lapowsky and Louise Matsakis, “Don’t Praise the Sri Lankan Government for Blocking Facebook,” Wired, April 23, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/sri-lanka-bombings-social-media-shutdown/.
