Governments using social media to shape public opinion: Studies

LONDON — Governments are increasingly using social media to propagate their policy messages and manipulate public opinion, revealed a new set of studies from Oxford University.

The studies on computational propaganda, conducted on nine places — the United States, China, Taiwan, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Poland, Russia and Ukraine — found that “the lies, the junk, the misinformation” of traditional propaganda is widespread online and “supported by Facebook or Twitter’s algorithms”, The Guardian quoted Philip Howard, Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford University as saying.

Computational propaganda is the use of algorithms, automation and human curation to purposefully distribute misleading information over social media networks.

The Computational Propaganda Research Project found that among the techniques used by governments to spread their messages online are the use of automated accounts to push content on social media feeds.

Others include utilising bots to deploy messages and interact with other users’ content, strengthening online propaganda, and manipulating trending algorithms.

In the US findings, the researchers even found that bots have the ability to “manufacture consensus”, or give the illusion of significant online popularity in order to build real political support — as evident in the 2016 presidential election.

“Social media bots manufacture consensus by artificially amplifying traffic around a political candidate or issue. Armies of bots built to follow, retweet, or like a candidate’s content make that candidate seem more legitimate, more widely supported, than they actually are,” the study said.

“This theoretically has the effect of galvanising political support where this might not previously have happened.

“To put it simply: the illusion of online support for a candidate can spur actual support through a bandwagon effect. (US President Donald) Trump made Twitter centre stage in this election, and voters paid attention.”

In the study on China, the research focused on how the state uses social media to enhance its legitimacy.

The country’s domestic Internet is “highly controlled” using sophisticated censorship and filtering technologies, a complex legislative regime and the cooperation of major domestic media companies, said researchers.

The study noted that fake accounts are common on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo, and are active in disseminating certain information, both political and commercial.

“Chinese state employees also post large amounts of positive propaganda online to social media, state websites and newspaper websites, particularly around sensitive times,” said the study.

In addition, the Chinese government has used social media to promote its position on cross-strait relations with Taiwan.

The Taiwan study revealed that a campaign against President Tsai Ing-wen involved numerous heavily coordinated, although not fully automated, accounts disseminating Chinese mainland propaganda over social media.

“For the most part, the content posted was not acrimonious or invidious. The messages mainly expressed a desire to reunify China and Taiwan, and extolled the Eight Honours and (Eight) Shames,” the researchers said, referring to the eight principles of morality stated by former Chinese president Hu Jintao. AGENCIES