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What Twitter’s Shake-Up Could Mean: Midterm Misinformation Run Amok
by Aurelia Butler 4 November 2022, 22:01
Declining trust in institutions is fostering mistrust about voting, leading many Americans to embrace conspiracy theories about elections.A recent exchange between David Becker, a nonpartisan elections expert, and a Twitter user named “@catturd2” — an account with nearly a million followers that sometimes exchanges posts with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the new owner of Twitter — offered a telling example of why misinformation is such an intractable problem.“Funny how we could easily count every vote in every state on election night until a few years ago,” the account tweeted. The false claim racked up 67,000 likes.“With all due respect to catturd,” Becker clarified to his much smaller list of 15,000 followers, “we have never, in the history of our nation, come close to counting all the votes on election night. Every state takes weeks to count all the ballots (incl military) and officially certify the results. Every state. Always.”Why does this matter? Because false information about the mechanics of voting fosters mistrust and is leading many Americans — overwhelmingly on the right — to embrace conspiracy theories about elections.And by the way, Musk is in the middle of firing thousands of Twitter employees, including members of the trust and safety teams that manage content moderation.“It’s an egregiously irresponsible thing to do just days before midterms that are likely to be mired by voter intimidation, false claims of election rigging and potential political violence,” said Jesse Lehrich, a co-founder of the nonprofit watchdog group Accountable Tech.First: Lest there be any doubt, the notion that America ever counts every vote on election night is both flatly untrue and easily checkable. California, for instance, has never come anywhere within shouting distance of that goal. Close races there can take weeks to call. New York State is notoriously slow at counting votes; in 2020, local election boards did not start counting absentee ballots until seven days after Election Day. Some waited even longer.There’s no conspiracy here. It takes a long time to count votes in a country as big as the United States. This is why states have processes in place to certify the results over the course of weeks. Alaska, for instance, isn’t planning to tabulate and release unofficial results of its election until Nov. 23. That’s entirely normal.But with Twitter in turmoil, Lehrich is worried about how misinformation about voting might spread unchecked over the next few days and weeks. “Things are going to fall through the cracks, even if Elon doesn’t do anything intentional to sabotage stuff,” he said.Tweeting alonePart of what’s going on here is declining levels of trust in the pillars of American civic life — a decades-long trend captured vividly in “Bowling Alone,” Robert Putnam’s famous book from 2000.The numbers are even worse now. Jeffrey Jones, an analyst at Gallup, noted in July that Americans had reached “record-low confidence across all institutions.”News organizations polled near the bottom of Gallup’s list. Just 16 percent of the public said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, and only 11 percent said the same for TV news.The differences by party were stark. Just 5 percent of Republicans and 12 percent of independents said they had high confidence in newspapers, and only 35 percent of Democrats said the same. All of these numbers had declined from a year earlier.Coming in the middle of a midterm election in which journalists are trying to inform millions of voters about what’s happening and to help them assess the ideas and personal characteristics of the candidates, Gallup’s finding was alarming.And that’s just one data point. A recent poll by Bright Line Watch, a project run by a group of political scientists, found that 91 percent of Democrats were confident that their vote would be counted, versus just 68 percent of Republicans. That lack of trust is the starter fuel of election denialism.Organized groups on the right have been going after the press for decades, and conservative politicians often take up the chorus. Richard Nixon’s ill-fated vice president, Spiro Agnew, called journalists “nattering nabobs of negativism”; Donald Trump attacked the news media as the “fake news” and the “enemy of the people”; Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida ripped the “corporate media” despite being a frequent guest on Fox News — which, yes, is a corporation. If Walter Cronkite walked among us today, he’d be pilloried as a liberal shill.The left has its own beef with the news media. This week, Dan Froomkin, a reliably acerbic liberal critic of political coverage, wrote a post asking, “Why aren’t mainstream journalists sounding the alarm about the threat to democracy?” He lamented how, in his view, political reporters were “just covering it like another partisan fight.”Political reporters do cover partisan fights; there’s an election going on, and readers care about who is winning, who is losing and why.But mainstream news outlets also invested heavily this year in coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, election denialism, political violence, dangers to election workers, plots to disrupt the midterms, misinformation and threats to democracy more generally. There’s been a lot of tough, critical coverage of election denialism.Local news is often another story. Here’s a tweet from KTNV, a television station in Nevada: “Democrat Cisco Aguilar and Republican Jim Marchant are running to be the next Secretary of State in Nevada. And both have the same focus: election integrity.”The text of the article implies that Marchant, the leader of a far-right slate of candidates for top election posts in several states who deny the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, is spreading “unfounded claims of widespread election fraud.” But it doesn’t say so explicitly.In an interview, Aguilar pointed to the KTNV article as an example of how news coverage had treated the candidates too evenhandedly and was giving Marchant a platform he didn’t deserve. (Marchant did not respond to an email sent to three of his known addresses.)When I asked Adrian Fontes, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, how he planned to combat misinformation if he wins his race against Mark Finchem, a far-right Republican who has stoked conspiracy theories about elections, he made a similar argument.“Actually, it’s not a hard problem,” Fontes said, urging journalists to stop “chasing shiny objects” and “crazy conspiracy theories” and focus instead on what election workers do.“As secretary of state,” he said, “I plan on celebrating them, elevating them and making sure that guys like you, respectfully, don’t ignore them in favor of the weirdos.”Facts are stubborn things, except when they’re not.Increasingly, though, millions of Americans aren’t getting their information from people like me. They’re following sources that have none of the checks and balances — however imperfect — that most mainstream outlets have in place.Over the last few decades, as it has stoked mistrust in the mainstream media, the right has built up a closed-off alternate ecosystem that includes Fox News, but also fringier outlets like Newsmax or One America News Network. But even those places put their names behind their stories, and viewers have a good sense of the perspective and slant they represent.This morning, I asked @catturd2 on Twitter if the user behind the account planned to issue a correction or delete the incorrect information. No response yet, but the account wrote in another tweet: “LOL – Look what Twitter did to my tweet – trying to fact check it with the fake news commie NYT,” followed by five laugh-cry smiley face emojis.Surveys show that younger people increasingly trust what they see on social media about as much as they trust traditional news sources. Data also shows that readers often can’t tell the difference between news reporting and opinion, even when they are labeled explicitly. Social media timelines jumble them all up together.And, as the Pew Research Center has noted, people don’t even agree on what a “fact” is: “Members of each political party were more likely to label both factual and opinion statements as factual when they appealed more to their political side,” Pew wrote in 2018.Those people staking out drop boxes in Arizona to intimidate voters based on false information, or demanding the hand-counting of ballots in Nevada? They aren’t getting their information from mainstream sources.How do honest and fair reporters reach them with accurate news? That’s a much deeper societal challenge, and nobody seems to have any good answers.What to read tonightDonald Trump is expected to announce a third White House campaign soon after the midterms, possibly as soon as Nov. 14, Michael Bender and Maggie Haberman write.In Wisconsin, one the nation’s most evenly divided swing states, Republicans are close to capturing supermajorities in the State Legislature that would render the Democratic governor irrelevant, even if he wins re-election, Reid Epstein reports.San Luis, Ariz., a small farming outpost on the border, played a critical role in the making of “2,000 Mules,” a conspiratorial movie about supposed election fraud in 2020. Now some residents are scared to vote, Jack Healy and Alexandra Berzon write.Sheera Frenkel looks at the phenomenon of “participatory misinformation” on the internet, where hunting for voter fraud has became a game.viewfinderDon Bolduc arriving on Wednesday at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, N.H., for his debate against Senator Maggie Hassan.John Tully for The New York TimesFist-pumping in a classic political battlegroundAt 5:30 p.m., there was an all-out sprint from campaign workers, volunteers and supporters.The goal: to find the best view of a parking lot where Senator Maggie Hassan and her Republican challenger, Don Bolduc, would arrive for their final debate. Each candidate’s supporters fought for position so their signs would be visible.Inside the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, the stage was being set for Hassan, a Democrat, and Bolduc, whose Senate race has tightened in recent weeks, giving Republicans hope for an upset victory.Hassan was the first to arrive, working the line for about a minute before heading inside. Within 30 seconds or so, Bolduc arrived, to cheers and jeers.He pumped his fists in front of supporters, and I captured this image — a look at grass-roots political theater in New Hampshire.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More
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On Social Media, Hunting for Voter Fraud Becomes a Game
by Aurelia Butler 4 November 2022, 13:55
On the messaging app Telegram this week, 300 people gathered in a channel devoted to Arizona politics to play an online game.The rules were simple: Find examples of voter fraud and win virtual points. If members of the group had names of undocumented immigrants who intended to vote illegally in Tuesday’s midterm elections and posted details, they were awarded two points. If they identified people who might be organizing buses to transport those immigrants to voting stations, they got 50 points.“I have a name for you,” one participant wrote in the Telegram channel on Monday. He submitted a common Latino name and said the person was undocumented and planned on voting. Though he didn’t provide evidence backing up his claim, he was given two points anyway.The group erupted in congratulations. “One down, one million to go,” another participant responded, according to messages viewed by The New York Times. “Gotta find them all.”That many of the posts, photos and videos used to score points have been widely debunked as misinformation did not slow down the group. Nor has it impeded the spread of the game to other social platforms, where dozens of private messaging channels are also engaged in a hunt for voter fraud.The Times reviewed 26 such games being played on the messaging apps and social platforms Telegram, WhatsApp, Gab and Truth Social over the past two months. In each, players were granted a loose system of points or honorary titles if they shared supposed evidence of voting irregularities. Many of the participants were encouraged to post as much as possible, egged on by raucous carnival-like conversations and posts.The games originated in online groups that purported to be about voter integrity and securing elections. It was unclear how long the games have existed, because many of the channels have changed names or cleared their digital histories. None appeared to turn up proof of voter fraud, which is exceptionally rare.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.But facts are often not the point of these games. Instead, they are part of a broader trend of “participatory misinformation,” in which people become more actively involved in sharing falsehoods and conspiracy theories. That leads to people integrating with a wider community and earning kudos, which makes them more likely to believe and invest in the misinformation, researchers said.“There’s a feeling that you can participate in the construction of a narrative and have impact,” said Kate Starbird, a professor of human-computer interaction at the University of Washington who studies misinformation. “It’s very empowering.”Fences surrounded the Maricopa County elections center in Phoenix this month. Misinformation about voting has flourished online.Olivier Touron/Agence France-Presse, via Getty ImagesThe gamification of voter fraud on social media has implications for how the legitimacy of the vote will be seen in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Confidence in the electoral process has eroded in recent years, with former President Donald J. Trump casting doubt on the 2020 presidential election’s outcome by falsely claiming he was the victim of duplicitous voting practices.In recent months, candidates such as Kari Lake, a Republican running for Arizona governor, have amplified voting misinformation on the campaign trail, such as questioning the accuracy of voting machines. Falsehoods about voting have circulated widely on Twitter, TikTok, Truth Social, Rumble and Gab.Some people now are so suspicious of the voting process that they have set up watch parties to monitor ballot boxes and prevent tampering on Election Day. States such as Georgia have passed laws that require people to show new IDs to vote. On Wednesday, President Biden condemned Mr. Trump and other Republicans for imperiling American democracy with lies about voting and the 2020 election.The voter fraud games add to the fraught atmosphere, Ms. Starbird said. They are “one more way that people are being pushed to spread, and even create, examples of voter fraud to fuel their false narratives and sow distrust in the midterms,” she said.Participatory misinformation has a history of spurring online conspiracy theory movements, researchers said. QAnon, a movement that revolved around the falsehood that the world was run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping Democrats, was nurtured by people seeking clues online about the identities of those running the group and seeing hidden meanings in supposed symbols and coded messages.After the 2020 election, the “Stop the Steal” movement, which falsely claimed that Mr. Trump had won, was also fueled by online participation. On Facebook, dozens of groups encouraged their followers to find examples that proved the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump.Since then, claims of voter fraud have grown to include unsubstantiated theories that voting machines were rigged, that dead people and pets had voted and that corrupt election officials were not counting certain kinds of ballots.In the voter fraud games on Telegram, WhatsApp and other platforms, the groups viewed by The Times ranged in size from a few dozen people to several hundred. Many players appeared to use pseudonyms and shared only scant personal information. While some of the games awarded points, others bestowed titles like “master” and “grand master” to those who posted multiple examples of purported voter fraud.The points and titles do not appear to add up to any real-world prizes. Instead they gave participants online clout and bragging rights over fellow players.In one Pennsylvania-based Telegram group, 200 people raced this week to find examples of “unverified ballots,” or ballots that were sent without verifying voters’ identities, after Mr. Trump falsely claimed on Tuesday that 250,000 of these ballots had been mailed to voters in the state.“There are hundreds of thousands, makes them easy to find,” one person in the group wrote. “I say one point a person.”In a WhatsApp group that was an offshoot of a larger Ohio-based Telegram group, nine participants recently kept a leaderboard as they played their game. At the top of the board was a member who the group said had uncovered cases of dead people who had voted. The player had not provided evidence of his accusations.Not all of the games have a formal structure, or take place in dedicated channels. On Truth Social, the platform started by Mr. Trump, the gamelike approach of awarding points or acclaim to users participating in misinformation has spilled into the comments sections.When Mr. Trump asserted to his 4.4 million followers on Truth Social on Monday that voter fraud was rife in Pennsylvania, for example, comments and links to his post included promises that those who found any alleged wrongdoing would be rewarded.One person who shared Mr. Trump’s post said he would give “special status” to anyone who captured footage of the unverified ballots. Others said they would go door to door to verify voters themselves and “get a point” if they found the ballots.On Telegram, some groups that have exhorted people to watch ballot boxes in Arizona to prevent voter fraud have also treated it like a game. “Ten points if you spend an hour” monitoring a ballot box, one person wrote in a Telegram channel with nearly 100 people. “1,000 if you catch them,” the person added, using expletives to describe undocumented immigrants.Similar Telegram channels have popped up in other states. In New Hampshire and Wisconsin, groups dedicated to monitoring the elections next week were also conferring points to players for finding local cases of voter fraud.In one Wisconsin-based Telegram group, where 100 people were engaged in scoring points by finding voter fraud, one participant, whose user name contained a racial slur, posted a video last week of someone claiming to burn ballots.The player obtained 10 virtual points for the video. But the footage had already circulated widely on the internet after the 2020 election and was debunked as fake. The person shown in the video was burning sample ballots, not ones that voters had used. More
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Unregulated, unrestrained: era of the online political ad comes to midterms
by Evelyn Reynolds 4 November 2022, 06:00
Unregulated, unrestrained: era of the online political ad comes to midterms Parties once focused on TV but now a billion-dollar effort embraces the highly targeted and almost rule-free digital worldThe advert is in grainy black and white, with an edgy horror movie soundtrack. As gunfights erupt in the streets, the narrator announces in a gravelly bass voice that John Fetterman, Democratic candidate for a US Senate seat in Pennsylvania, “has a love affair with criminals”.Fetterman has voted “over and over to release the state’s most violent criminals, including murderers”, the narrator says. If elected, he would “keep the drugs flowing, the killers killing, and the children dying”.Republicans and Democrats are spending billions on ads – with very different messagesRead moreThe advert was laser-targeted on a demographic which was seminal in securing Joe Biden’s victory in 2020: women over 25 in the suburbs of Philadelphia. That same group could now hold the fate of the Senate in its hands.Should Philadelphia’s female suburban voters come out for Fetterman on 8 November, they could push him over the winning line in his battle with the Republican nominee, Mehmet Oz. That in turn could help the Democratic party retain control of the upper chamber, and by doing so keep Biden’s agenda alive.The stakes could not be higher. Yet the Philadelphia women who were bombarded with the “Fetterman loves criminals” ad 6m times over just 10 days through YouTube and Google were told next to nothing about who was behind it.“Paid for by Citizens for Sanity” is all that the advert reveals in small type at the end of the 30-second video. It took the sleuthing of the non-profit group Open Secrets to expose the producers as former members of Donald Trump’s inner circle, including the far-right senior White House adviser Stephen Miller.From the other side of the political spectrum comes another grainy black-and-white attack ad, titled Herschel Walker Can’t Be Our Senator. The ad is also targeted exclusively at women, but this time in Georgia, where another nail-bitingly close Senate race is reaching its climax.“Herschel Walker,” the ad begins, referring to the former NFL star now running as a Republican for a Georgia Senate seat. “Decades of violence against women. Guns. Razor blades. Choking. Stalking.”The female voters who were besieged by the ad some 60,000 times over four days were only told that it was created by a group named “Georgia Honor”. Open Secrets records that the group is a Super Pac that supports the incumbent Democratic senator, Raphael Warnock, and has so far spent $34m in assailing Walker.Two grainy black-and-white videos out of a vast mountain of political advertising which is on track this year to smash midterm spending records. It may even exceed the amount poured into the 2020 presidential cycle.The total investment in 2022 is projected by the non-partisan ad tracking firm AdImpact to be $9.7bn, pushing America close to a stunning new norm: the $10bn election.Of that, AdImpact estimates that 30% of the political advertising spend, about $2.9bn, is going into digital advertising or to ads placed through connected TV (CTV) – smart TVs that support video content streaming through apps such as Roku or Apple TV.Such vast sums suggest that the age of the online political ad is firmly upon us. It has been propelled by the “cord-cutting” generation which has dispensed with conventional television in favour of streaming and on-demand formats.Take Priorities USA, the largest Democratic Super Pac. It has decided to place its entire $30m spend in 2022 in the digital basket – the first time it has entirely dropped broadcast TV advertising.“Online is where more people are spending their time, especially Black and Latino voters who are critical to the coalition that we are trying to build,” Aneesa McMillan, Priorities’ deputy executive director, told the Guardian. Some 45% of the Super Pac’s spending this cycle has gone on reaching African American and Latino voters, using platform data on social media and YouTube, as well as keywords associated with demographic groups, to target the message.McMillan said that the shift online was informed by research. The group found that 75% of the TV ads they injected into House races in 2020 went to homes outside the congressional district to be consumed by people who could not even vote in the relevant elections.The conclusion was clear: “Digital is much more efficient,” she said.The rise of online political advertising began tentatively with Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008 and has grown exponentially every cycle since. Despite its billion-dollar size, the world of online political ads remains almost entirely unregulated.Outside groups, which have beamed millions of attack ads on to voters’ smart TVs and tablets this year, can do so without having to meet federal rules on disclosing who they are or whose money they are spending.“We live in an increasingly online society, and political campaigns are moving online, but federal transparency rules have never been updated to take that into account,” said Daniel Weiner, head of the elections and government program at the non-partisan Brennan Center.Adav Noti, legal director of the non-profit Campaign Legal Center, spent 10 years as a lawyer at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) which is responsible for enforcing campaign finance laws. He expressed dismay at the agency’s inability to keep up with a dramatically changing media landscape.“We are more than a decade into an era of campaigns increasingly being conducted through digital, and the only government agency charged with regulating that activity has done nothing about it. Literally not a single piece of regulation.”Noti said that one of the effects of the FEC failing to engage with the explosion in online political advertising has been that social media giants and other big digital platforms have been left to their own devices. “Facebook, Google, TikTok and the rest have become the de facto regulators, and they set their own rules.”The big players have gone in different directions. Facebook and Google have both set up public databases listing their political ads, introducing a modicum of transparency.Other platforms such as TikTok have prohibited political advertising, though candidates are increasingly using the sites directly as megaphones.Attempts by Congress to legislate for more accountability have all succumbed on the rock of Republican intransigence in the US Senate. The Honest Ads Act, a bipartisan bill backed by the Brennan Center that would make digital ads subject to the same disclosure rules as broadcast TV and radio, was included in the Freedom to Vote Act that failed to overcome a Republican filibuster in January.In the absence of central regulation, outside groups can distribute extreme or false messages with impunity. Citizens for Sanity, the Super Pac created by former Trump advisers, blasted out an advert last month attacking Biden’s immigration policy.It was viewed 600,000 times over nine days by voters in the border state of Arizona.“Who is Joe Biden letting in?” its female narrator asks. “Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats have erased our southern border and released a record number of illegal immigrants into the United States, all at your expense.”The ad goes on to warn about a “giant flood of illegal immigration” that was “threatening your family”. It accuses Biden of allowing drug dealers, sex traffickers and violent predators into the country, one of whom raped a little girl.“She was three years old,” the narrator says.The Poynter Institute’s factchecking unit, Politifact, reviewed the ad. It found that the immigrant who allegedly sexually assaulted a three-year old girl had been in the US since at least 2011; he has been behind bars since February 2020 – almost a year before Biden entered the White House.Politifact rated the advert “False”.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsSocial mediaAdvertisingDigital mediaRepublicansDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More
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Elon Musk Takes a Page Out of Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Media Playbook
by Aurelia Butler 3 November 2022, 00:01
As Mr. Musk takes over Twitter, he is emulating some of the actions of Mr. Zuckerberg, who leads Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.Elon Musk has positioned himself as an unconventional businessman. When he agreed to buy Twitter this year, he declared he would make the social media service a place for unfettered free speech, reversing many of its rules and allowing banned users like former President Donald J. Trump to return.But since closing his $44 billion buyout of Twitter last week, Mr. Musk has followed a surprisingly conventional social media playbook.The world’s richest man met with more than six civil rights groups — including the N.A.A.C.P. and the Anti-Defamation League — on Tuesday to assure them that he will not make changes to Twitter’s content rules before the results of next week’s midterm elections are certified. He also met with advertising executives to discuss their concerns about their brands appearing alongside toxic online content. Last week, Mr. Musk said he would form a council to advise Twitter on what kinds of content to remove from the platform and would not immediately reinstate banned accounts.If these decisions and outreach seem familiar, that’s because they are. Other leaders of social media companies have taken similar steps. After Facebook was criticized for being misused in the 2016 presidential election, Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s chief executive, also met with civil rights groups to calm them and worked to mollify irate advertisers. He later said he would establish an independent board to advise his company on content decisions.Mr. Musk is in his early days of owning Twitter and is expected to make big changes to the service and business, including laying off some of the company’s 7,500 employees. But for now, he is engaging with many of the same constituents that Mr. Zuckerberg has had to over many years, social media experts and heads of civil society groups said.Mr. Musk “has discovered what Mark Zuckerberg discovered several years ago: Being the face of controversial big calls isn’t fun,” said Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law School. Social media companies “all face the same pressures of users, advertisers and governments, and there’s always this convergence around this common set of norms and processes that you’re forced toward.”Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and a Twitter spokeswoman declined to comment. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, declined to comment.Elon Musk’s Acquisition of TwitterCard 1 of 8A blockbuster deal. More
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Debunking Voting Misinformation About the Midterm Elections
by Aurelia Butler 2 November 2022, 12:37
Here are some of the main falsehoods and rumors that have spread on social media in the lead-up to Election Day.Voting-related falsehoods and rumors are flourishing across social media in the final stretch before Election Day on Tuesday.Much of the misinformation and conspiracy theories, which are swirling on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, build on familiar and unsubstantiated narratives spread about the 2020 presidential election. They include debunked claims of meddling with voting equipment, falsehoods about fraudulent ballots, alleged malfeasance by elections officials and unsubstantiated rumors about mail-in voting.Many of the posts are outright falsehoods, while others appear intended to simply raise doubts and undermine confidence in voting, researchers said. And they are spreading through more conduits, such as the fast-rising video app TikTok and right-wing social media sites like Truth Social, Rumble and Telegram, according to the data research firms Zignal and Graphika and researchers.“People are primed, much more mobilized and more soaked in conspiracy theories,” said Mike Caulfield, a research scientist who studies election misinformation at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.Here are some of the most widespread falsehoods and rumors related to voting.Voting machines aren’t rigged.President Donald J. Trump and his allies falsely claimed in 2020 that ballot-tabulating machines had changed votes for him to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. They claimed the voting machines were connected to the internet, allowing corrupt election officials and outsiders to tamper with the equipment.While voting machines sometimes encounter programming errors, they are rare, and the equipment is tested before and after Election Day, election officials said. For example, in Maricopa County, Ariz., a political battleground and focal point of conspiracy theorists around the 2020 election, four independent auditors check the security of the equipment, which does not connect to the internet.Even so, falsehoods about the machines have picked up online in recent weeks.On Twitter, “voting machines” has been a top voting-related narrative related to the midterm elections, with more than 89,888 mentions in October, nearly double the 49,765 mentions during the same month in 2021 but down from 191,391 in October before the midterm elections in 2018, according to Zignal.Last month, a Wisconsin state representative said voting machines in the state were connected to the internet. Equipment makers and security experts refuted the claim, but Mr. Trump seized on the falsehood and posted the Wisconsin official’s statement on his social media site, Truth Social.“Rigged Election, what a mess,” he wrote. The post was shared more than 5,000 times and liked more than 13,000 times.Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow and a Trump supporter, was featured last week in several interviews on the video-sharing site Rumble saying that voting machines were connected to the internet and had been tampered with to steal elections. One of his interviews on Rumble was viewed more than 20,000 times.Ballot fraud isn’t rampant.Over the past month, there were more than 365,592 mentions of “voter fraud” on Twitter, up 25 percent from October 2018, according to Zignal.Claims of voter fraud have often centered on ballot drop boxes. One false theory involves Democrats paying people to stuff the boxes with illegal ballots. The idea was stoked by the May release of the film “2000 Mules,” which asserted with little evidence that illegal drop box stuffing could be traced through cellphone location data. Security experts and former Attorney General William P. Barr have refuted the claims.Last month, Melody Jennings, a Trump supporter and the founder of CleanElectionsUSA, an activist group that has spread unfounded rumors of illegal drop-box stuffing, warned on Truth Social that “mules” — or people who were allegedly vote-trafficking — were “doing their thing” at drop boxes in Maricopa County. She and other conspiracy theorists falsely said these mules had stuffed boxes with illegal ballots and called for volunteers to watch over the boxes. Her post was shared more than 3,000 times and liked 7,400 times.Conspiracy theories about the handling of ballots by election officials are also circulating on social media. According to one unsubstantiated theory, election officials are purposely confusing voters over the kinds of pens that can be used to mark ballots — and declaring that ballots marked with Sharpie pens aren’t counted.Those false claims, which have circulated since 2020, resurfaced in July when a Maricopa County election office sent an advisory suggesting that voters use felt-tip pens on their ballots. The advisory created a backlash online, with several voters posting on Twitter and Facebook that they would instead use blue ballpoint pens because they worried that ballots marked with felt-tip pens provided at polling stations would not be counted.Dead people and illegal immigrants aren’t being exploited.False rumors of voting by dead people and illegal immigrants have long circulated, including after the 2020 election in states such as Arizona, Virginia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. In all of these states, a small fraction of ballots were cast in the names of dead individuals.The trope has reared its head again online ahead of the midterms.Politicians including Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, have recently said without evidence that Democrats want immigrants who are in the United States illegally to vote.“Any illegal alien who attempts to vote in our elections should be arrested and deported,” Mr. Gaetz tweeted on Sunday. His post was shared more than 7,000 times and liked more than 48,000 times.Last week, Texas Scorecard, a self-described citizen journalism group, posted a video on YouTube claiming without evidence that Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for governor in Texas, had sent pre-filled voter registration applications to dead people. Texas officials validate all voter registration applications. The video was viewed 5,000 times.An election worker sorted ballots in October 2020 at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix.Matt York/Associated PressVoting by mail isn’t untrustworthy.Some Republican candidates and voters are using social media to cast doubt on whether ballots sent by mail or submitted into drop boxes are counted. “Mail-in voting” and “mail-in ballots” have been mentioned over 338,528 times in the past month on Twitter, up from 137,507 in the October 2021 and 114,159 in October 2018, according to Zignal.Conspiracy theorists also seized on a story last month of the burning of a mail truck that was allegedly carrying ballots in Georgia. Images of the burning truck were spread across social media as a sign of cheating in the election, even though an election official later said there were no ballots on the truck.Social media users have used such incidents to warn against mail-in voting. The hashtag #GetOutAndVoteInPerson has spread widely on Telegram from communities with pro-Trump, Christian, military and election conspiracy theory leanings, said Kyle Weiss, a researcher at Graphika.Voting by mail has taken place for more than 150 years, and fraud is extremely rare, according to the Brennan Center, a nonprofit voter rights organization. In rural areas and for low-income and disabled voters, voting by mail is often the only option. Rules for mail-in voting and the use of drop boxes vary by stateDelays in counting votes are not irregularities.Official results for many races on Tuesday won’t be announced that night and may not be for days because the counting of votes could take longer. Some social media users are focusing on potential counting delays to raise suspicions of election irregularities, state officials and voting experts said.Last Thursday, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, responded to a news report that Pennsylvania’s top elections official expected official vote counting to take days. “Why is it only Democrat blue cities that take ‘days’ to count their votes?” he tweeted. “The rest of the country manages to get it done on election night.” The tweet was shared more than 5,500 times and liked 19,200 times.Tallying a final count typically takes days in some states because of the many mail-in votes. In Pennsylvania, officials can begin counting mail-in ballots only on Tuesday morning. In Arizona, election officials said the count could take more than a week because a bipartisan processing board had to certify mail-in ballot signatures. If any ballots are questioned, the law allows five days for the ballot to be reviewed and tallied. More
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Truth Social’s Influence Grows Despite Its Business Problems
by Aurelia Butler 1 November 2022, 12:54
The right-wing social network faces two federal investigations and an uncertain financial future. But it has still managed to outpace its rivals.Truth Social, the right-wing social network, has faced one business calamity after the next since it launched in February. Two executives resigned after its app launch was mired with problems. Another executive was fired after filing a whistle-blower complaint, claiming that Truth’s parent company was relying on “fraudulent misrepresentations.” Two federal investigations are putting $1.3 billion in much-needed financing in jeopardy.Yet users logging into Truth Social each day saw something quite different during that time: a vibrant right-wing ecosystem increasingly brimming with activity.Truth Social’s long-term future remains in doubt, but experts say the app itself has only grown more influential in conservative circles ahead of the midterm election.Much of that is owed to former President Donald J. Trump, one of the app’s founders and its star, who now uses Truth Social as his primary megaphone to the world. His posts on the site reach more than four million followers and regularly reverberate across mainstream news and social media sites.He is now joined on Truth by a coalition of right-wing Americans, including conservative celebrities like Dan Bongino, the radio host and television commentator; political firebrands like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; and a constellation of conspiracy theory peddlers, far-right influencers and rank-and-file voters.Dan Bongino is one of the conservative celebrities on Truth Social’s platform.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe website had 1.7 million unique visitors in September, according to estimates from Similar Web, a company that monitors web traffic. That barely registers as competition against mainstream sites like Facebook and Twitter. But it towers over its closest social media rivals, including Gab, Parler, Gettr, MeWe and Minds, which averaged about 360,000 unique visitors that month.“How many of you are on Truth Social?” Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, who has repeatedly sowed doubt about election integrity, said at a recent rally. The crowd erupted in applause. “If you’re not on it, go there and get on it quick.”The site has become a key organizing platform for election deniers ahead of the midterms, stoking concerns about voter fraud and spreading rumors about problems at the polls. One group used the site to promote stakeouts of ballot drop boxes in a search for illegal voting, posting a picture on Truth that went viral and helped spur similar efforts in at least 10 states.Mr. Trump has used the site as a public sounding board for his legal defenses as several investigations encircle him. He has continued to shape Republican talking points and boost candidates running in close races. And he has embraced messages and imagery from QAnon, the conspiracy theory movement that also found a new home on Truth Social.Truth Social SoarsSince launching earlier this year, Truth Social has gained more unique monthly visitors than several other right-wing social media competitors.
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Note: Truth Social launched a waitlist for its app in October 2021 before officially launching in February 2022.Source: Similar WebBy The New York Times“I definitely see Truth Social as a place where these various factions are coalescing,” said Josephine Lukito, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media who studies the relationship between disinformation and violence. “Both the more traditional Republicans who are Trump supporters as well as the more far-right, extremist and conspiratorial.”The real test for Truth Social may arrive in the coming months, as initial excitement around the app fades and the problems with its financing possibly come to a head. The site shows few signs of courting a wider mix of users from across the political spectrum, which would be necessary to reach lofty targets set by the company before the app launched.The site’s parent company, the Trump Media and Technology Group, has its hopes pinned on a deal announced a year ago with Digital World Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company that raised $300 million in an initial public offering of stock. The company later secured commitments from three dozen hedge funds to provide an additional $1 billion in financing upon the completion of the merger.But the deal and that $1.3 billion are now in doubt as investigations by federal prosecutors and securities regulators could force Digital World to liquidate itself in early December and return to shareholders the money raised in its I.P.O., derailing the merger. Digital World has struggled to get its shareholders to approve a measure that would give it until next September to complete the merger with Trump Media. The SPAC faces another deadline for securing that vote on Thursday.If the deal with Digital World collapses, Trump Media will need to come up with financing to keep Truth Social running. It has raised roughly $37 million, mainly from Republican political donors.William Wilkerson, a former Trump Media executive who was fired in October after he said publicly that he had filed a whistle-blower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission, said in an interview that the company was using up about $1.7 million in cash each month. Truth Social recently began running advertising on its site.But Mr. Wilkerson said if the deal with Digital World were to fail, a plausible alternative would be for Trump Media to consider a merger with Rumble, a conservative video-sharing alternative to YouTube, which has emerged as Trump Media’s main business partner.Mr. Wilkerson, as well as a second person with knowledge of Truth Social’s operations, said about half the people working at Trump Media’s office in Sarasota, Fla., are Rumble employees. Rumble provides much of the back office operation to Truth Social. In August, Mr. Trump’s company joined the video-sharing company’s ad platform.Rumble recently completed its own merger with a SPAC, giving it access to roughly $400 million in cash.“It is a high probability now that Rumble is a publicly traded entity,” Mr. Wilkerson said during the interview, which he did while with his legal team of Philip Brewster, Patrick Mincey and Stephen Bell.Trump Media did not address a potential future merger with Rumble. But in an emailed statement, the company blamed the S.E.C. for the delay in completing the merger with Digital World.“Despite being chartered to protect retail shareholders,” Trump Media said, “the S.E.C. is willfully damaging them with its illicit political targeting scheme — and should expect severe consequences for doing so.”Rumble did not respond to requests for comment.A combination of Rumble and Trump Media could present an imposing conservative alternative to Twitter, especially as Truth Social faces an increasing competitive threat from Elon Musk, who completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter on Thursday. He has promised more lenient moderation policies that could draw some conservatives — including Mr. Trump himself — away from Truth Social. Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, also plans to buy Parler, in a deal that could draw conservative users.“I like Elon, but I’m staying on Truth,” Mr. Trump said during a Fox News interview after Mr. Musk’s takeover.But those risks have largely overshadowed a series of smaller victories for Truth Social, capped this month with the release of its long-delayed Android app, making the app available to about 40 percent of Americans who use that operating system. (Its iPhone app launched in February.)“Did anyone happen to notice that Truth Social is Number One, ahead of TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, and all others?” Mr. Trump asked on Truth Social this month after the Android app launched and received more than 100,000 downloads. “Just asking!”A survey by the Pew Research Center conducted in May found that 27 percent of adults in the U.S. had heard of Truth Social, beating Gettr and Gab, along with the video streaming websites Rumble and BitChute. Only Parler, which launched six years ago, had more name recognition.Name RecognitionThe share of people saying they had heard of popular right-wing social media and video websites.
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Note: Survey of U.S. adults conducted May 16-22, 2022.Source: Pew Research CenterBy The New York TimesMr. Trump remains the app’s raison d’être. While his four million followers are a shadow of the 88 million who subscribed to his frenetic Twitter feed before he was banned in January 2021 over fear that he would incite violence, his “truths” can resonate far beyond the confines of Truth’s ecosystem.After Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was searched by federal agents looking for classified documents, he made the unsupported claims on Truth that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was corrupted by Democrats, that the documents may have been planted, and that the documents were declassified the whole time.“If he wants that message to break into the Twittersphere, he needs people to screenshot it or post it or write something about it,” said Jared Holt, the senior research manager for Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “That happens all the time.”The day after the Mar-a-Lago search, web traffic to Truth Social more than doubled from earlier averages, according to data from Similar Web.Days later, an armed man tried to break into an F.B.I. office in Cincinnati and was later killed by law enforcement. A Truth Social account bearing the name of the man identified by law enforcement, Ricky Shiffer, had posted about the Mar-a-Lago search and told followers to “get whatever you need to be ready for combat.” The same account also appeared to confess to an attack on the F.B.I.“That was a tell that the platform was reaching a milestone,” Mr. Holt said. “Because the unfortunate truth is that any platform — once it gets big enough — has to deal with somebody doing something like that.” More
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Bolsonaro Is Silent After Brazil Election Defeat
by Aurelia Butler 31 October 2022, 12:33
President Jair Bolsonaro has not yet recognized his election defeat after months of warning, without evidence, that opponents would rig the vote.BRASÍLIA — Brazil on Monday woke up to a moment that it had long been bracing for.President Jair Bolsonaro narrowly lost the presidential election to his leftist challenger, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but 12 hours later, he had yet to say anything publicly.His silence was becoming increasingly worrying because Mr. Bolsonaro, a far-right leader often compared to former President Donald J. Trump, has been warning for months that he might not accept defeat, raising concerns about the stability of Latin America’s largest country and one of the world’s biggest democracies.Mr. Bolsonaro has consistently claimed, without evidence, that Brazil’s electronic voting system is rife with fraud and that the left was planning to rig the vote. As a result, millions of his supporters have lost faith in the integrity of their nation’s elections, according to polls, and many said publicly that they were prepared to take to the streets at his command.But in the hours after Mr. Bolsonaro’s election loss, Brazil remained relatively calm, aside from the dancing in the streets among Mr. da Silva’s joyful supporters.As of 9 a.m. local time Monday (8 a.m. E.S.T.), 13 hours after the race was called, Mr. Bolsonaro and his three politician sons, who are prolific users of social media, had not commented publicly since election results were announced.Just after 10 p.m. Sunday night, the lights were already out at the presidential palace and Mr. Bolsonaro’s closest aides had left.Voters in Brazil ousted President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right leader, after just one term and elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist former president, to replace him.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesYet in the meantime, some of Mr. Bolsonaro’s top allies were accepting Mr. da Silva’s victory, albeit begrudgingly.“The dream of freedom of more than 51 million Brazilians lives on,” Carla Zambelli, a far-right congresswoman who has warned of rigged elections for years, posted on Twitter on Sunday night. “And I PROMISE you, I will be the toughest opposition Lula has ever imagined,” she added, referring to Mr. da Silva.Ms. Zambelli is one of Mr. Bolsonaro’s most prominent allies in Congress, with millions of followers on social media, as well as one of Brazil’s most combative politicians. A day before the election, she made headlines for pulling a gun on a supporter of Mr. da Silva in São Paulo in a scene captured on video. She was not charged.Many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters appeared less ready to throw in the towel.Misinformation about potential voter fraud spread rapidly in conservative corners of the Brazilian internet in the hours after the election, including unattributed videos that purported to show voting machines malfunctioning and speculation that patterns in the vote returns suggested something was amiss. Brazil’s election officials said there was no evidence of fraud on Sunday.On the streets of some of Brazil’s biggest cities on Sunday night, many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters also shouted that the election was stolen — and then said they were returning home, dejected, to wait for word from the president.“I don’t know if my vote was counted nor the votes of the people here,” said Marcelo Costa Andrade, 45, a government worker scrolling through his phone at what he hoped would be a victory party in Mr. Bolsonaro’s wealthy beachside neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. “I feel robbed.”Mr. Bolsonaro, center, arriving to vote in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. For months he had been warning that the country’s voting machines could be rigged. Maria Magdalena Arrellaga for The New York TimesBut, despite his suspicion that the election might have been stolen, he was preparing to leave. “Now I’ll go home, talk to my family, lean on God and wait for Bolsonaro to say something,” he said.There were signs, however, that some of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters were not going to wait for him to speak before publicly rejecting the results. In Mato Grosso, the heart of Brazil’s farming region, near the center of the country, truckers started fires and tried to block parts of a main highway that is a vital link for shipping agricultural goods in the hours after the results were announced, according to videos posted on social media and local news reports.Brazil’s truckers broadly support Mr. Bolsonaro and, a year ago, some had attempted to stop working and block roads in protest of the Brazilian Supreme Court’s efforts to counter some of Mr. Bolsonaro’s policies.And on Monday morning, thousands of supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro joined more than a dozen groups on the messaging app Telegram that called for “paralyzing” the country to show they would not accept Mr. da Silva’s victory.In a group focused on Rio de Janeiro, they circulated plans to create a blockade outside one of the nation’s largest oil refineries, just north of the city, on Monday morning. In another group centered on Brasília, the nation’s capital, people posted calls for a military intervention and massive protests in the afternoon.Adding to some officials’ concerns on Monday was that Mr. Bolsonaro lost in the narrowest presidential election in the 34 years of Brazil’s modern democracy. Mr. da Silva won by 2.1 million votes, or 1.8 percentage points, in an election where more than 118 million Brazilians voted.In his acceptance speech on Sunday night, Mr. da Silva recognized the country’s deep division and said he would seek to unite the nation. “I will govern for 215 million Brazilians, and not just for those who voted for me,” he said. “There are not two Brazils. We are one country, one people, one great nation.”Mr. da Silva is set to take office on Jan. 1.Flávia Milhorance and Leonardo Coelho contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro and André Spigariol from Brasília. More
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Campaign Press Aides Move From the Shadows to Social Media Stardom
by Aurelia Butler 26 October 2022, 09:00
MINDEN, Nev. — As Adam Laxalt, the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, ambled along a throng of Trump supporters at a recent rally and posed for pictures, it was his campaign’s communications director, Courtney Holland, who was really working the crowd.With an iPhone in her left hand, Ms. Holland used her right one to whip up more enthusiasm from the red-capped Republicans gathered behind her boss. As the crowd took the cue, Ms. Holland framed her shot and blasted the footage out onto the campaign’s various social media channels — as well as her own.With more than 100,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 70,000 others on Instagram, Ms. Holland reflects a new breed of campaign aides — those whose online profiles more closely resemble social media influencers than traditional behind-the-scenes press operatives.The shift seizes on the transformation in how American voters receive information about their candidates, and is changing the way campaign press shops function. Both parties are increasingly using social media to build loyalty to a particular political brand, and targeting critics and journalists to energize supporters and drive online contributions. Instead of drafting political positions for their candidates, these staff members take to social media to make their own statements.Working her first political campaign, Ms. Holland has shown little interest in dealing with mainstream reporters to shape stories about Nevada’s closely watched Senate race — and she didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article. She has used her Twitter account, however, to repeatedly post negative information about Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, and criticize Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic incumbent in the race, for not participating in more TV interviews.Ms. Holland’s posts on Instagram — posing with fellow conservatives or modeling Republican merchandise — have regularly drawn hundreds or even thousands of likes. Several of her memes attacking Mr. Biden have been viewed more than 100,000 times.“Influencers are being subsumed into the political apparatus on the right and the left,” said Samuel C. Woolley, who has studied social media and politics as the project director of the propaganda research team at the University of Texas at Austin. “There has been a blurring of the line between influencers and their positions as staffers that has historically been behind the camera.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Bracing for a Red Wave: Republicans were already favored to flip the House. Now they are looking to run up the score by vying for seats in deep-blue states.Pennsylvania Senate Race: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz clashed in one of the most closely watched debates of the midterm campaign. Here are five takeaways.Polling Analysis: If these poll results keep up, everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a narrow House majority to a total G.O.P. rout becomes imaginable, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Strategy Change: In the final stretch before the elections, some Democrats are pushing for a new message that acknowledges the economic uncertainty troubling the electorate.In Florida, Christina Pushaw had about 2,000 Twitter followers before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her as his press secretary in May 2021. She now has more than 220,000 followers — far more than Lt. Gov Jeanette Nuñez and nearly as many as Casey DeSantis, Florida’s first lady.Ms. Pushaw built her following with an aggressive social media persona that sometimes includes five or six dozen postings a day, often attacking Democrats and the mainstream media. She has called the president a “seemingly senile 79-year-old aspiring dictator” and suggested that a neo-Nazi rally in Orlando had been staged by Democrats, although she later deleted that tweet.Last summer, Twitter locked her account for 12 hours for violating rules on “abusive behavior” after The Associated Press said her conduct led to a reporter receiving threats and other online abuse.Ms. Pushaw, who is now the DeSantis campaign’s rapid response director, has recently urged her fellow Republicans to stop engaging at all with the mainstream media, which she often refers to as “liberal,” “corporate” or “legacy media.”“My working theory is that if ALL conservatives simply stop talking to them, the legacy media will lose any shred of credibility or interest to Americans who follow politics,” Ms. Pushaw wrote in August.In Florida, Christina Pushaw had about 2,000 Twitter followers before Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her as his press secretary in May 2021.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesMs. Pushaw didn’t respond to a request for comment. But Mr. DeSantis has defended his aide, saying he views the criticism of her as a sign of her success.“You can try to smear me or anyone in my administration all you want to,” he told reporters in June. “All that’s going to do is embolden us to continue moving forward for the people of Florida.”The pugnacity from Ms. Pushaw and other Republicans has been deeply influenced by former President Donald J. Trump, whose combative political style has been defined by both his aggressiveness on social media and his sparring with the media. Mr. Trump bestowed his top social media aide in the White House, Dan Scavino, with the title of “assistant to the president,” while former President Barack Obama’s digital director, Jason Goldman, was a deputy assistant.Still, Mr. Obama and his team helped pave the way for turning press teams into content creators. The Obama White House regularly produced photos and videos packaged specifically for direct consumption among their own followers on social media.More recently, some of the 2020 Democratic presidential campaigns were loosely linked to armies of fanatical social media followers who teamed up to bully critics, fellow Democrats and reporters.During that race, a relentless group of superfans for Vice President Kamala Harris, known as #KHive, targeted Senator Bernie Sanders, her rival in that campaign, and numerous reporters.Reecie Colbert, one of the group’s more outspoken members, issued a warning during the campaign to Ms. Harris’s critics in a podcast about the group, saying, “I wanted them to know I will stomp a hole in you if you come for Kamala.” She later told The Los Angeles Times that she was speaking for herself, not the group.Ms. Harris has thanked KHive for its support of her on Twitter, and her husband, Doug Emhoff, regularly interacts with them.Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist, has long maintained an active social media profile. In 2012, when she was working on Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign as the rapid response director, Twitter temporarily locked her profile after she sent so many tweets during a presidential debate that she set off an internal alarm at the company designed to identify bots.But Ms. Smith warned that campaigns can go too far in letting their social media presence define them.“Social media is an increasingly big part of the job, but not in a good way,” she said. “Candidates who use social media in an authentic way can reinforce their strengths. But if you let Twitter supplant the hard work of dealing with reporters, you’re essentially breaking down a legitimate line of communications with the public.”Ryan James Girdusky, a conservative activist with over 110,000 followers on Twitter, said having staff members whose agility on social media could drive attention to a candidate’s message could be a significant advantage during a campaign.“When you have a new social media account, you have to build followers,” said Mr. Girdusky, a co-author of the book, “They’re Not Listening: How the Elites Created the National Populist Revolution.”“When you’re behind the eight ball, it’s definitely a major plus to have people who are known in the conservative movement and bring that level of credibility,” he added. More

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