Musicians Have Been Slow to Support Biden. Is Harris Finally Bringing In the Stars?

8/14/2020 by Steve Knopper BILLBOARD

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AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., arrive to speak at a news conference at Alexis Dupont High School on Aug. 12, 2020.

By this time in 2008, Stevie Wonder was opening for Barack Obama and superstar rappers were writing songs about the man who would become the first African-American president. By this time in 2016, Katy Perry had performed at a handful of Hillary Clinton events. And while Joe Biden's newly announced running-mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, has galvanized pop stars, celebrities and their followings, the former vice president's biggest music event to date has been a June livestream with songs by John Legend and Andra Day, Dave Matthews and Kristen Chenoweth and a speech by Barbra Streisand. It raised $800,000 and drew 1.2 million Facebook views, but it didn't exactly scream "excitement for the nominee."

"We're finding it very easy for musicians to say, 'Fuck Trump,'" says Nick Stern of Stern Management, who is working as a liaison between the music business and the Biden campaign. "But we're finding it very hard to say 'Vote for Biden' -- and it's a very important distinction."

That could change with Harris' presence on the ticket -- Taylor Swift, Pharrell Williams, Ciara, Nick Jonas and P!nk made enthusiastic social media posts, as did Legend, Sheryl Crow and Sara Bareilles, who had already pledged their support to Biden. And this morning, the Democratic National Convention announced a roster full of star power for next week: Billie Eilish, Leon Bridges, the Chicks, Common and others. "I do think people will get on board," country singer Chely Wright says. "These young influencers are going to ultimately push their very powerful and important voices behind the Biden-Harris ticket."

READ MORE

Here's Who's Performing at the Democratic National Convention

Still, unlike Obama, Clinton or his former rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Biden has so far done little to mobilize top-tier music stars for his cause. Cher, James Taylor, Carole King, Joe Walsh, Jimmy Buffett and others have made their way to the campaign, but the younger A-listers who supported Sanders -- from Cardi B to Ariana Grande -- have been noticeably silent since Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee in early June.

"It's less 'vote for this person.'" Jordan Kurland, who manages Death Cab for Cutie and advises the Biden campaign, adds: "Honestly, it hasn't been all that easy to get artists to be outwardly supportive of Biden. A lot of people in our business are very pro-Bernie, or pro-Elizabeth Warren, and having another centrist white guy is not all that inspiring."

This is concerning to Biden supporters. "He is the choice and we need to fall in line. Period," says Billy Porter, the singer, actor and progressive activist. "In this moment, in this time in the world, your opinion of him doesn't matter. Get over yourselves." Adds singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright: "If they're true Sanders supporters, they will do as he said and vote early and vote for Biden. It's plainly evident what we have to do, i.e., save the planet."

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Old Man, Take a Look at My Rights: Can Creators Stop Trump From Using Their Songs in an Online World?

Stern, who had a similar volunteer role in 2016, says the Clinton campaign could have done more with artists, like deploying smaller stars with regional followings to speak to their fanbases. He fears that Biden's surrogates are repeating these oversights this year. "We're trying to get the [Biden] campaign to focus on us more than they did in 2016," he says. "Artists are influencers who can make a difference, especially the ones from swing states."

The Biden campaign has put on star-studded online events, such as a late-May "Rock Out on a Night In" livestream starring Buffett, Sheryl Crow, David Crosby, Wainwright and Walsh, who told Billboard, "We've got to rebuild democracy. I'm proud to endorse Joe Biden and will do whatever it takes to get him there. You should too." Michelle Kwan, the Olympic figure-skating champion who is Biden's surrogate director, promises more A-list events. "We're a very inclusive campaign and we are talking to every single person," she says. "Local bands and indie and folk and rock and rappers -- we're covering them all, the broadest coalition you can imagine."

Some in the music business, though, say the campaign hasn't followed up on all of its efforts -- former Bon Iver manager Kyle Frenette, who runs a get-out-the-vote group called Pledge 46, participated on a call earlier this summer with a Biden campaign rep and 20 to 25 artist managers, and "people were motivated," but after a few follow-ups over time, participants mostly lost interest. "There's been a few emails and attempts to rally folks," he says. "I haven't heard anything since."

READ MORE

Taylor Swift, John Legend & More Cheer For Joe Biden's Vice Presidential Candidate Sen. Kamala Harris

Another roadblock for musicians is the pandemic -- there has been no opportunity this year to set up get-out-the-vote tables at festivals like Lollapalooza or Coachella, and the swing-state Bruce Springsteen or Beyonce rallies of recent election years are almost certainly impossible. Like everybody else in the music business, activists have had to pivot to the internet. Frenette's original plan was to put on 46 concerts to help elect the 46th president; he tried to shift them to livestreams, but "we weren't getting a very active response," so his group rebranded as Pledge 46, a Patreon-like platform that offers prizes for volunteering and voting, such as a virtual Jason Isbell guitar lesson. As of late July, the group had raised $12,000, nearly 5,000 pledges to vote and 400 volunteer sign-ups. "It's working, for sure," Frenette says. "It wasn't comfortable at first, but it feels comfortable now."

With so many people sitting at home during the pandemic, streaming audio and video, online events could be more efficient than live productions in reaching large numbers of voters. "It gives you the ability to really tap into an artist's world, including their fans," says Jonathan Azu, who manages Emily King, Michelle Williams and others and is communicating with the Biden campaign. "It'd be amazing if you went to a campaign event and see the person speak, but there's something to be said about these Instagram Lives and Zooms, where you really get to know the candidate."

Even before Harris joined the ticket, some in the music business saw signs of an upswing for artists supporting Biden's campaign. George Floyd's murder and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests were a turning point, says Binta Brown, an artist manager who has worked with Chance the Rapper and Peter CottonTale. "People weren't as comfortable speaking out and facing major backlash," says Brown, also co-chair of the newly founded Black Action Music Coalition. "The breadth of the movement and the protesting has awakened artists and influencers about the need to be politically active. There are more artists coming to management saying, 'What can we do?'"

READ MORE

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It's too early to say whether Harris' star power will reinvigorate music stars' support for the ticket, although P!nk's Twitter account may be a clue: She has ripped Trump numerous times in recent months, while never overtly mentioning Biden. But after Biden announced Harris on the ticket, P!nk tweeted, "You both have my vote."

"The announcement of 'OK, this is the ticket' has moved everybody into that fighting stance. I saw a lot of posts like, 'Here we go, now we're talking, let's get cracking,'" says R&B star Lalah Hathaway. "People are just getting ready. They're gearing up to go."

AUSTRALIAN ARYANISM

The Australian’s racist Kamala Harris cartoon shows why diversity in newsrooms matters

August 14, 2020 2.48am EDT

A Johannes Leak cartoon published in The Australian today, in which US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is depicted calling his vice-presidential running mate Kamala Harris a “little brown girl”, has drawn widespread condemnation.

Several Australian politicians, including former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, have described the cartoon as racist, as have a suite of journalists and media observers (ex-Labor leader Mark Latham said he loved it).

I am firmly in the camp that thinks this is a racist and sexist cartoon. As a journalism lecturer with an ongoing interest in the diversity of Australian media, I think today’s outrage shows there is still much work ahead in making newsrooms less overwhelmingly white.
Context matters

My own view is this cartoon should never have been published, and it has no place in Australian media. I’m glad to see Australian politicians and public figures coming forward and saying it’s unacceptable.


The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Chris Dore, told Guardian Australia that Leak’s cartoon “was quoting Biden’s words” from a tweet the US politician issued this week about young girls drawing inspiration from Harris.


“When Johannes used those words, expressed in a tweet by Biden yesterday, he was highlighting Biden’s language and apparent attitudes, not his own,” Dore told Guardian Australia. “The intention of the commentary in the cartoon was to ridicule racism, not perpetuate it.”

I think Dore’s explanation is unconvincing. Biden’s tweet is clearly referring to girls who look up to Harris. It’s a massive sidestep to say Biden is talking down to his recent vice-presidential pick. The contexts are totally different.


I cannot imagine The Australian published today’s cartoon without knowing it would provoke outrage - and that this outrage would delight parts of their audience. Part of the delight is in the outrage it provokes.

Read more: Australia's media has been too white for too long. This is how to bring more diversity to newsrooms
Australia looks backward

It’s hardly the first time, either, that a racist cartoon published in our mainstream media makes us look backward and out of step as a country.

Think back to the embarrassing episode of blackface on Hey Hey It’s Saturday in 2009, or Johannes Leak’s father Bill’s cartoons in the past, and the Herald Sun’s widely condemned Mark Knight cartoon depiction of Serena Williams in 2018. (It should be noted, the Press Council ruled the latter “non-racist” and Knight defended it - unconvincingly - by saying he had “absolutely no knowledge” of the Jim Crow-era cartoons of African-Americans.)

These examples show the work of making sure Australian newsrooms are diverse is ongoing.

There’s still so much room for improvement when it comes to editorial decisions, reporting and making sure we have a range of stories told about who we are as a country. That hasn’t been done well so far in Australia and cannot be done well while the media is largely dominated by white men.

As I wrote in an earlier Conversation article, despite a quarter of Australians being born overseas and nearly half having at least one parent who was born overseas, our media organisations remain blindingly white.

A 2016 PriceWaterhouseCoopers report found 82.7% of Australia’s media workers speak just one language, and speak only English at home. There’s a high prevalence of media workers in the inner Sydney suburbs, it found, concluding that a lack of diversity – in ethnicity, gender and age – is holding back industry growth.

Unless these trends are addressed, we will continue to see work like Leak’s cartoon making it through the gate.

Read more: The Herald Sun's Serena Williams cartoon draws on a long and damaging history of racist caricature
A long history

There’s a long history of racist cartoons in Australian media. What’s different is the response. Today’s cartoon has blown up on Twitter — and yes, I realise it is a place closely watched by Australian politicians and media people but largely ignored by most Australians — but at least the online outcry allows some kind of accountability.

In the past, the media could publish racist cartoons without being called to account. These days, the pushback is manifesting in real time.

Should we all have just shaken our heads and ignored it? I don’t think so. Once something like that is published, the horse has bolted and you have to respond. I think collectively ignoring a racist cartoon won’t remove its prominence or significance.

We are forced to revisit this debate every time a racist cartoon or article is published, or a racist comment put to air. I hope that by revisiting it forcefully enough and by making these points enough times, the conversation moves forward and we can make some progress. I also hope racist cartoons are never published in Australia’s mainstream media again. But I won’t be holding my breath.

Read more: Racist reporting still rife in Australian media

Author

Janak Rogers

Associate Lecturer, Broadcast Journalism, RMIT University



RMIT University provides funding as a strategic partner of The Conversation AU.

Will white people’s participation in Black Lives Matter protests yield real change?

 

After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they now?

Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

August 13, 2020 8.10am EDT

The first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, which crested after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, had the support of less than half of white Americans.

Given that Americans tend to have a very narrow definition of racism, many at that time were likely confused by the juxtaposition of Black-led protests, implying that racism was persistent, alongside the presence of a Black family in the White House. Barack Obama’s presidency was seen as evidence that racism was in decline.

The current, second wave of the movement feels different, in part because the past months of protests have been multiracial. The media and scholars have noted that whites’ sensibilities have become more attuned to issues of anti-Black police violence and discrimination.

After the first wave of the movement in 2014, there was little systemic change in response to demands by Black Lives Matter activists. Does the fact that whites are participating in the current protests in greater numbers mean that the outcome of these protests will be different? Will whites go beyond participating in marches and actually support fundamental policy changes to fight anti-Black violence and discrimination?

As a scholar of political science and African American studies, I believe there are lessons from the civil rights movement 60 years ago that can help answer those questions.The Civil Rights Act of 1964 being enacted by President Lyndon Johnson. Universal History Archive/Getty
Principles didn’t turn into policy

The challenges that Black Americans face today do not precisely mimic those of the 1960s, but the history is still relevant.

During the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, there was a concerted effort among Black freedom fighters to show white Americans the kinds of racial terrorism the average Black American lived under.

Through the power of television, whites were able to see with their own eyes how respectable, nonviolent Black youth were treated by police as they sought to push the U.S. to live up to its creed of liberty and equality for all of its citizens.

Monumental legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed, purportedly guaranteeing protection from racial discrimination in many public spaces and equal opportunity to register to vote and cast a ballot.

Additionally, whites were increasingly likely to report attitudes that many would now view as nonracist over the following several decades. For example, white Americans were more willing to have a nonwhite neighbor. They were less likely to support ideas of biological racism or the idea that whites should always have access to better jobs over Blacks.

But these changed values and attitudes among whites never fully translated into support for government policies that would bring racial equality to fruition for Blacks.

White Americans remained uncommitted to integrating public schools, which has been shown to drastically reduce the so-called racial achievement gap. Whites never gave more than a modicum of support for affirmative action policies aimed to level the playing field for jobs and higher education.

This phenomenon – the distance between what people say they value and what they are willing to do to live up to their ideals – is so common that social scientists have given it a name: the principle-policy gap.

White Americans’ direct witness of police brutality led to a shift in racial attitudes and the passage of significant legislation. But even these combined changes did not radically change the face of racial inequality in American society.
Going backward

By the 1970s and 1980s, political leaders would capitalize on whites’ sentiments that efforts for racial equality had gone too far.

That created an environment that allowed the retrenchment of civil rights-era gains. The Republican Party’s so-called “Southern Strategy,” which aimed to turn white Southern Democrats into Republican voters, was successful in consolidating the support of white Southerners through the use of racial dog whistles. And the War on Drugs would serve to disproportionately target and police already segregated Black communities.

By the 1990s, racial disparities in incarceration rates had skyrocketed, schools began to resegregate, and federal and state policies that created residential segregation and the existing racial wealth gap were never adequately addressed.\

Fifty years after police brutality toward young Blacks in Selma, Alabama, awakened whites to violent racism in the U.S., Selma, shown here, is a struggling city. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
From understanding to action?

Scholars have made efforts to reveal the intricate and structural nature of racism in the U.S. Their analyses range from showing how racial disparities across various domains of American life are intricately connected rather than coincidental; to highlighting the ways in which race-neutral policies like the GI Bill helped to set the stage for today’s racial wealth gap; to explaining that America’s racial hierarchy is a caste system.

But my research shows that white Americans, including white millennials, have largely become accustomed to thinking about racism in terms of overt racial prejudice, discrimination and bigotry. They don’t see the deeper, more intractable problems that scholars – and Black activists – have laid out.

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Consequently, it has taken a filmed incident of incendiary racism to awaken whites to the problems clearly identified by Black activists, just as it did for previous generations.

My research also shows that individuals’ understanding of the problem influences their willingness to support various policies. A big issue that our society faces, then, is that white Americans’ understanding of racism is too superficial to prompt them to support policies that have the potential to lead to greater justice for Black Americans.
Attitudes and policies don’t match

Some have suggested that this second wave of the Black Lives Matter movement is the largest social movement in American history. These protests have led local representatives to publicly proclaim that Black Lives Matter; policymakers, government officials and corporations to decry and remove Confederate symbols and racist images; and congressional as well as local attempts to address police accountability.

But, as after the civil rights era, the principle-policy gap seems to be reappearing. Attitudes among whites are changing, but the policies that people are willing to support do not necessarily address the more complex issue of structural racism.

For example, polling reveals that people support both these protests and also the way that police are handling them, despite evidence of ongoing brutality.

The polling also shows that the majority of Americans believe that police are more likely to use deadly force against Black Americans than against whites. But only one-quarter of those polled are willing to support efforts to reduce funding to police – a policy aimed to redistribute funds to support community equity.

More whites are willing to acknowledge white racial privilege, but only about one in eight support reparations to Blacks.

Americans may choose to dig deeper this time around. Some state legislators, for example, are attempting to leverage this moment to create more systemic changes beyond policing – in schools, judicial systems and health matters.

But ultimately, Americans will have to overcome two intertwined challenges. First, they will have to learn to detect forms of racism that don’t lend themselves to a mobile-phone filming. And they will have to recognize that dismantling centuries of oppression takes more than acknowledgment, understanding and well-meaning sentiment. It takes sacrifice and action.

Author

Candis Watts Smith

Associate Professor of Political Science & African American Studies, Pennsylvania State University

Pennsylvania State University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.

How to deal with the Infodemic – The role of Disinformation in the Corona Crisis..and some answers

BY ADMIN ON MAY 5, 2020 ALL

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Dis- and misinformation can spread just as viciously as a virus – especially via social media – it erodes trust in governmental policy and measures against the pandemic and as a consequence weakens the commitment of the population to support and to live with pandemic restrictions2. Media dynamics that can be observed at the moment are not new. It is similar to that of other news situations – be it a terrorist attack or a plane crash: first, something bad happens, then information spreads in social media within minutes, finally media reports. People read posts or articles, look for more information, for certainty. But because there is still little secure knowledge, there is room for rumors, misinformation, and even conspiracy theories. The effect is intensified by the fact that the level of knowledge around the center of the news situation – in this case, coronavirus disease – can change constantly, and what seems certain today could be disproved tomorrow.

The poisoning impact of the mixture of unsecured information, out-of-context or false news, and conspiracy theories was visible during the Ebola crisis 2014 in West Africa and 2018 in DR Congo. Experts have agreed that misinformation was one of the lead contributors to the Ebola outbreak. During the Ebola epidemic in the DRC, there were rumors that ‘white people’, ‘the central government in Kinshasa’, or the ‘international aid organizations’ were behind the outbreak. Trust in medical workers and aid organizations was low and people didn’t cooperate with authorities, which lead to a very quick distribution of the virus epidemic.

On the other hand, it is a fact that we see in the context of the current Corona Pandemia a very interested, Information-dedicated public. Generally, people worldwide are able to access a lot of different sources – and many of these sources are originated in science. Theoretically, there is access to a variety and high quantity of well researched professional and fact-based information!

This is also the result of a current analysis of the Reuters Institute3 which examined the Info-use since the beginning of March disclosing general trends in global news consumption on Corona: News use is up in all the examined countries, and most people are using either social media, search engines, video sites, and messaging applications (or combinations of these) to get news and information about coronavirus. And there is a second result too: people with low levels of formal education rely less on professional news organizations for news and information about coronavirus and are more likely to rely on social media and messaging applications. 

The problem is not that there is not enough reliable news – the problem is the amount and irritating quantity of new and a digital distribution, where fact-checking does not play a sufficient role – be it on the side of the platforms, be it on the side of the users. Mis- and disinformation can proliferate when there is a lack of, or conversely, an overabundance of information. In this sense we are really confronted with an “infodemic” – a word raised by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on 15 February (“we’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic”)

Social Media play a special role

It is not only the Reuters Institute research that marks the special role Social Media is playing in proliferating wrong, misleading, or half-true information. We see the above-mentioned linkage between people with low levels of formal education relying more on social media and messaging applications. And we witnessed the real consequences of viral disinformation even in very developed media markets like the UK or other European countries: Even there, disinformation is often followed by quite real violent actions: In recent weeks, more than 20 mobile phone masts have been damaged in Great Britain, a few days after conspiracy theorists claimed that there is a connection between the mobile phone standard 5G and Covid-19.

Disinformation is more harmful in weaker media markets

But disinformation is of course even more harmful in countries with weaker communication infrastructure –be it technically, professionally, or politically. If there is a weak internet penetration, an economically unsustainable media market, low journalistic capacities, or censorship by the government – disinformation will get broader audiences and a lot of shares, especially on social media. And these weaker media markets are very often the countries where the pandemic is still in its early stages – and where the disease will hit a population with low access to news organizations.

A very important factor for disinformation going viral is influencers. A source for false and misleading information, conspiracy, and even pure lies not only spread by social media users, are political leaders – not just on Twitter but also in government press conferences. A current example is the proposal by the American president to inject people with disinfectants or to introduce strong light into their bodies. If political decision-makers spread such disinformation, the consequences are often devastating. They are engines distributing information – be it right or wrong, news or fake!4 

Limiting the impact of disinformation? Forget the one-fits-all-solution!

What are helpful approaches to debunk dis- and misinformation? To start with bad news: There is no “one-fits-all-solution”. User behavior is locally specific. Differing levels of internet penetration (see data here), the rising scale of Social Media usage (see data here), and the diversity of Social Media usage worldwide create a need for targeted responses. As a consequence, effective and efficient measures to counteract and debunk disinformation must be different from region to region. We need a clear and differentiated picture of the local conditions: people’s favored channels, most trusted sources, level of literacy and media literacy, and preferred languages, formats for receiving and sharing messages5. Starting with this base-line-analysis we could easily develop good ways to limit disinformation. The concrete answers could differ, but they all follow a very principal idea: Target groups where they communicate! 

Let’s deal with local differences

In DRC, where the internet penetration is only 7%, and where word of mouth remains the most common way for information to spread, the direct interaction with multiplicators and communicators in the communities and radio was key to limit disinformation during the Ebola crisis. 

In Cambodia, GIZ is currently supporting the Cambodian Ministry for Health in cooperation with WHO to deliver facts and figures about Corona, because Facebook is the most commonly used social media platform and false or hysterical information circulates widely on the platform.

In Nigeria and Ghana, an open-source software (SORMAS) is part of the answer collecting and communication concrete facts and figures about cases of infections, using Apps or phone calls to take note of them. This was developed by the Helmholtz-Zentrum for infectious disease. GIZ – on behalf of the German Ministry for development cooperation – is helping to implement SORMAS in the Ecowas region. 

For Africa, where only 36% of the population had internet access in 2019 and where traditional media could not fill this gap, especially people in rural areas are cut off from public information, which can lead to severe problems during epidemics. Mobile phones are part of the solution here because more than 80% of Africans have access to mobile phones. 

For these regions, GIZ developed, together with the NGO Viamo, a tool called “Call vs.corona” – a software through which individuals can easily access factual and at the same time entertaining information by participating in a phone quiz, which works as follows: People call a free hotline, where they navigate through prerecorded questions by using their phone keyboard, which works with the most basic phones. Throughout the quiz, people learn about preventive measures such as social distancing and hyenic routines. The voice-response software has advantages over SMS-information, as illiterate people can be reached very easily. Additionally, by using the quiz format, messages are delivered in a concise but humorous way and information on preventive measures against the spread of the virus can be distributed widely.

To help stop the spread of the coronavirus, GIZ is developing new ideas like these examples and is refocusing existing projects. It is taking a wide variety of approaches, from setting up early-warning systems and combating fake news on Facebook, to ensuring barrier-free access to information. What we learned from our work on responding to global health crises in the past, is that there need to be both targeted responses (countering false information on social media, community-based approaches to trustful dissemination of information) as well as support for building up communication infrastructure. 

A successful approach: working on different layers with various partners

Debunking alone will not be successful, because it always comes too late, is a reaction and following media development research result will not have a remarkable outreach to bring the “correct” facts through. To develop customized regional answers it is important to develop them with a local partner, it needs an interdisciplinary approach on competences of users and journalists, on infrastructure and policy. Measures should be taken on very different layers:

1. Technical infrastructure and access to information: internet penetration, media, and platforms
2. Attractive, concise, comprehensive and fact-based content
3. Press freedom – a governmental context where objective information, independent journalism are not oppressed or manipulated
4. Fact-checking engagement of platforms6 and media
5. Good level of digital literacy among users 
6. Verified databases by multilateral/international organizations like the WHO with cross-checked facts and figures as a reference system

After the crisis is before the crisis: building up digital literacy and enhance resilience 

Good crisis management lives from a clear commitment and common understanding of roles, responsibilities, and duties. This is not the case in this crisis: political leaders are spreading wrong and misleading information or only part of the information. States are neglecting the problem or downplaying the disease. The origins of incomplete and misleading information rarely come from simple citizens on social media but from political leaders, propaganda, and the fact that governments simply neglect the facts of the pandemic. 

On the other hand, the Corona-crisis is abused by a number of autocratic regimes to tighten the pressure on independent journalists, on bloggers and citizen reporters, and enhance their censorship of the media system itself. Current examples are Iraq, where the news agency Reuters lost their license, or Egypt where The Guardian reporters who reported about a growing number of infections are forced to leave the country – or China, where state propaganda is now creating a positive frame concerning the pandemic-management and where critical citizen journalists have been arrested. 

This is why dealing with disinformation in the Corona crisis is also about developing suitable instruments to strengthen the resilience of the media, media users, journalists, and citizens in dealing with disinformation, to provide them with suitable instruments to distinguish facts from fake. This is in our own interest because it makes us more confident and resistant in dealing with disinformation, for which not only Corona can be an occasion. In this respect, it is worth working on it, because after the crisis is before the crisis.

Footnotes:

[1] This is the written edited version of my input at the Debate pandemic not panic – disinformation and global health https://www.friendsofeurope.org/events/pandemic-not-panic-disinformation-and-global-health/

This event is part of the Development Policy Forum (DPF), oganised by Friends of Europe, which brings together a number of important development actors, including the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) I work for as the Head of Media and Public Relations, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the United Nations and the World Bank.

[2] Unchecked medical advice can have a detrimental impact on the health of the population and the healthcare system itself, which lacks capacity. For successful navigation of the crisis it is critically important that people have access to news and information that they trust and that can help them understand the coronavirus crisis, what they can do to protect themselves.

[3] https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/infodemic-how-people-six-countries-access-and-rate-news-and-information-about-coronavirus

[4] Be it in the global north or the global south: the number of misleading contributions to corona is high(this also applies to highly developed media markets in Europe, as research by the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the NDR at the end of April showed. Misinformation is mainly distributed via social media – and the main hotspot is youtube. In only a few days, 18 videos containing misinformation about the coronavirus were viewed more than twelve million times on the video platform youtube. The recipe for misinformation on Corona is very common: Currently, more and more supposed experts from completely unrelated fields are appearing on Social Media. The problem: opinions are mixed up with facts, speculation, and conspiracy theory. These contributions sow doubt but are difficult to verify.

[5] https://www.socialscienceinaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SSHAP-Brief.Online-Information.COVID-19.pdf 

[6] Initiatives from the social media and platforms itself to eliminate and limit false information are very important. For example in Nigeria, where WhatsApp is trying again to limit the amount of misinformation through its platform. The messaging app is deploying changes to its settings that limit how often a message can be forwarded: once a message has now been forwarded more than five times, users will only be able to forward it to one chat at a time.

http://uteschaeffer.de/how-to-deal-with-the-infodemic-the-role-of-disinformation-in-the-corona-crisis-and-some-answers/

Fake not Fact – Who wants reality to disappear, and why?

BY UTE ON OCTOBER 28, 2018I N ALL, ENGLISH ARTICLES



This essay was created for the catalogue of the art-exhibition NEWSFLASH in Nuremberg, organized in cooperation between the Kunsthalle Nürnberg and the Kunsthaus, which misses how digital (dis)information works and what manipulative power it can unfold. What skills do we need to deal with this appropriately and critically? The artists assembled in the exhibition are also looking for answers to this and other questions with their works.

“It’s all fake!” Meanwhile, this English word is being used everywhere to decimate another person’s opinion with a single blow. Even Donald Trump berates reporters from CNN and other media1 as representatives of “fake news”, although he himself is one of those repeatedly spreading false information via Twitter. But to return to the actual meaning: in this context “fake” means incorrect information. That is, the deliberate dissemination of manipulated news and intentionally false reports in order to influence those addressed or to do damage to a group or a single individual. Fake has more than one shape: sometimes it is a completely false, freely invented item of information or pure speculation – as in the case of conspiracy theories regarding 9/11. But far more often, fake combines facts that are actually true, e. g. about a terror attack in Europe, with false information – about the perpatrator, the victims, the course of events. Contexts are deconstructed by repeatedly spreading old information as “current” once again, or media reports are placed in an entirely different context of meaning. Among our neighbours, the effects of disinformation campaigns online are even more clearly discernible than they are here: The British “Yes!” to Brexit. The best ever result for the extreme right’s Front National in the first round of the presidency elections in France: 11.5 million of the 47 million French eligible to vote voted for Marine Le Pen.




copyright: shutterstock

Demonstration of the rightis extremist Front National – today the name of the party changed to Rassemblement National; the party is distributing its propaganda and xenophob messages vial digital media

Here, it is possible to see what destructive power digital disinformation may unfold. In the USA every second item on Twitter is already such a manipulative, incorrect news item – in Germany, as yet, it is “only” every fifth tweet. But the creation of opinion in this country is facing the onset of such development3, for which we are unprepared – either as voters or media users, citizens, journalists or artists. A Threat to Democratic Debate: The Echo Chamber Effect A fundamental change in the public sphere of information and the creation of opinion is underway. It entails great opportunities, as knowledge is now available to all via the Net, independent of place and time. But the creation of opinion online also entails great risks, for facts here are being manipulated, challenges we face politically. And so, for example, the parties represented in the Bundestag attempted to keep provocative themes to a minimum in election campaigning. Like the demand for more direct participation by citizens, or the urgent question discussed with such controversy by many people, of whether and how we can achieve the integration of refugees. Complex decisions, which touch upon the framework of values in our society – like “marriage for all” or the “online search regulations” – were enforced in a hurried procedure before the end of the legislation period, without much parliamentary or social discussion. But if there is no discussion in parliament and the media, others will take over – and they do so primarily online. For two years now, I have exposed myself daily to the self-styled “alternative media”, have been a member of public and restricted Facebook groups relating to the AfD and Pegida, following the sources of this digital counterpublic on Twitter, receiving newsletters, and watching – on the “hidden” servers of rightwing extremist and potentially violent nerds – how they produce radically right-wing tweets and memes or construct pro-AfD campaigns for social media. I have conducted research in the echo chambers of media true to Erdogan, and trolls, and I have perused disinformation disseminated by the Russians. Extremist populists find opportunity online to spread their information entirely without filters and without troublesome questioners or presenters. In many places, they use the possibilities of the Net far more purposefully than the classic people’s parties or media. They successfully address the growing number of people in our country who are turning away from the traditional parties and media, and have long been operating in their own informational sphere, which they call “alternative”, “uncensored” and “democratic”. Over the period of my research it has been possible to see clearly: all these actors and sources have increased their scope of influence online. And they make no secret of their digital information strategy; their strategies for digital propaganda and disinformation are published online and are easy to find. Stories from a Country Poised on the Edge The heart of this communication is stories arousing fear and outrage, using artificial and martial concepts. A communication that discredits – using its own language and narratives – our democratic institutions, our model of an open society and diversity of opinion, and also sows doubt in the functioning of our polity as a whole.


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Anti-migrant-demonstration of rightist extremists and critical citizens organised by the activist group “Pro Chemnitz” and some AfD groups – campaigning for the demonstration was mainly distributed on social media

The overall framework, the stage for all these narratives, is the downfall of Germany. Censorship, limitations of citizens’ rights and persecution of those who think differently are, following the current of reports in my right-wing newsfeed, on the order of the day in Germany. It seems that little value is placed on human rights, freedom of the press, or democracy in our country. For they are being wantonly and deliberately restricted – and not by just anyone, but by the government and the liberal establishment. Dramas happen on this stage: there are brutal dictators and an oppressed people. Perpetrators and victims. Foreign hordes. And upstanding saviours of the freedom of opinion. Conspiracies and plotting are on the daily agenda. The roles are attributed quite clearly. This creates excitement and people enjoy sharing it. They are stories that report on catastrophes, so underlining the sense among users that they are being disadvantaged, overrun by foreigners, robbed by the political elite, in short: they have been degraded to second-class citizens. Thereby, these narratives are all about decisive themes: about our daily existence, peace in our country, and identity. “The state is failing, imposing a state of emergency on Germany.” “Martial law rules.” The stories are concerned with the “chancellor dictatorship”, “state terror”, or the “state of emergency”. There is talk of a failing, weak state, in which the “enemies of the people”, “traitors” or “system parties” govern the people in a dictatorial manner. Another badgering narrative is that of civil war being brought to the country by a foreign horde: the story of the “great invasion”, whereby the “rapefugees” and “asylum demanders” are swamping Germany in violence and terror and bringing the “sex-jihad” to the country. Disinformation as a Constitutive Means for Extremists and Populists The narratives of the extremists and populists are all about moods and emotions rather than facts. Fake is a constitutive means for populists and extremists, for they aim at emotional stories to win over and keep their supporters: with victims and perpetrators, obvious enemies and of course with heroes. For some, that is the election victor Trump, who is acclaimed on the media platforms of right-wing populists all over Europe. For others, the jihadist terrorists of Paris, who roamed the French capital murdering people for several hours in November 2015. The violent members of the three teams of IS terrorists armed with Kalashnikovs and explosive belts ignited bombs and fired at street bars. 130 people died, 89 of them in Bataclan concert hall. But the violent participants and murderers are lauded in videos made by the IS and disseminated online. These are stories to share, like, comment on. Stories inviting us to join in. By means of the Net, I can be there “live”, in real time. The result is the development of a space of participation and experience, in which every user can become involved with little effort, in which everyone is important!



Discussion with the german artists Monika Huber and Wiebke Elzel about the effect and impact of Echochambers and digital Desinformation in the Nurnberg Exhibititon in Oktober 2018
This is true of the information and disinformation campaigns of state-directed foreign media, financed by many millions of euros, in Russia and Turkey, as well as the extremists of the IS. Different though their aims may be individually – what they have in common is a declaration of “information war” on the democratic order in our country, on liberal political ideas, a willingness for integration and
the openness of our society, and the fact that they are waging this war primarily digitally in order to assert their interests in Germany or to win over new supporters. And that they ingeniously exploit the functions of the Net – a vast range of influence and frequency – to deliberately address specific users. Radicalization through the Net What does the 17-year-old Islamist terrorist who attacked people on a regional train near
Würzburg4 have in common with the extreme rightwing demonstrators in Bautzen?5 What unites the demonstrating Russian-Germans as they protest about the disappearance of 13-year-old Lisa with
supporters of the extreme right Identitarian Movement, who climbed up the Brandenburg Gate and rolled out a banner there in protest against immigration? Not a lot, at first glance.

But they all source their information on the Net. They plan their actions and form their political attitudes online, even though their political positions and interests are totally different. They have been radicalized via the Net, where they are also connected to operators who are disseminating radical misanthropic messages: extremists – like the terrorist organization Islamic State –, who propagate violence and recruit young men prepared to use violence for acts of terrorism like the one in Würzburg or the attack on the Christmas market in Berlin. Extreme right-wing actors – from the NPD to the “Reichsbürger” to the Identitarian Movement – and right-wing populists in the sphere of Pegida and the AfD, who reject people for their religion or race and do not wish to see human rights being applied equally to all – that is, independent of race, skin colour, and national or social origins. What concerns our society is reflected on and spread online. And there are obvious links between what is being spread in the way of information and disinformation – and what happens, politically and socially, in our country. This explains why so many people with Turkish roots in our country affirm the undemocratic changes to the constitution being made by Erdogan. It explains why young men in the midst of our society are becoming Islamist terrorists. It answers the question why refugee hostels are being set on fire in the very regions where there are only a few refugees.
What begins as a tweet or post online often leads to practical violence: murder threats against MPs in the German Bundestag after the resolution on Armenia, for example. The deliberate cases of aggression in Dresden during the celebrations of the Day of German Unity on 3rd October 2016, Police protection for MPs due to their critical attitude towards Turkey. Massive threats against the liberal Islamic academic Lamya
Kaddor, which led to her withdrawal from active teaching. There is a measurable growth in politically motivated crimes: a fivefold increase in predominantly right-wing motivated attacks on asylum-seekers’ accommodation6 when many refugees came to Germany.

How Language Changes Reality
Does language create reality? Not directly.But language changes our view of reality – and thus our opinions and attitudes.7 “We ought to be allowed to say that,” as we hear regularly from the ranks of the AfD. Provocations and breaches of taboo are an essential part of its communication, key aggressive concepts such as “lying press”, “mob of migrants”, “traitors to the people” are constructed online and then
transferred to political discussion. “Mainstream media”, “Rautenfrau”, “migrant disaster”, “old parties” – all terms that are used with great matter-of-factness when one keeps one’s ears open in the supermarket around the corner or on the underground train, terms that may be used in conversations with neighbours or acquaintances – and they all originate from discourses online. Such terms are representative
of the agenda of the New Right and its groups. They question the functioning and stability of the democratic system, and on Twitter these attitudes turn into hashtags like #stopinvasion, #remigration, #refugeesNotwelcome, #MerkelhatBlutandenHaenden, #KanzlerinderSchande. Successful agenda setting means getting key aggressive terms into people’s heads so that they stick and can be activated easily.

They have an effect on how we think about a subject. They are not neutral terms – they all evaluate. They may add value to something (resistance fighter = member of the AfD or Identitarian Movement) – or reduce the value of something (system parties, synchronized press). By means of this valuation they connect a subject to an interpretation. It is easy to check what images are linked to which terms. It is enough to insert them into Google image search, where “asylum demanders”, “sexjihad”, “refugee invasion” trigger a flood of images of violent migrants. The phrase “Schlepperkönigin” (queen of trafficking)
leads directly and almost exclusively to images of the Chancellor. The term “traitors to the people” leads to images of government members, ranging from the Chancellor to the Minister of Justice, from the Foreign
Secretary to the Minister of Defence. It even leads to an image in which the heads of the aforementioned individuals are depicted in front of a scaffold. The heading reads: “Please don’t push. Everyone will get a turn.” The search reveals which online images are shared frequently. In this way, we can get an indication of which images have become fixed in the minds of the users.

Catalyser Themes
There are two topics with the effect of fire accelerants in the newsfeeds of my research: acts of terror and migrants. The fatal attack at the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin on 19.12.2016 is exploited by many media platforms of the New Right, and the Epoch Times concludes: “And again, they are all involved in the murders. Politics, media, judicial system, police, do-gooders – all those who have caused and approved such conditions.” The extreme right Identitarian Movement tweeted: “It must be said quite clearly: #Breitscheidplatz happened because Merkel and her cronies allowed the perpetrators into the country.”8 In the comment columns one can read, among other things: “[…] The problem and the reason for this is the ruling clique, high treason against the German people […].”9 The “Patriotic Platform”10,a Facebook group close to the AfD, posted a photomontage picturing Angela Merkel sitting beside the Berlin terrorist Amri in the truck. The headline: “Asylum policy was in the cab with him!” A tasteless satire? After
all, it referred to a fatal terror attack in Germany that cost 12 people their lives. Here, expressions of opinion and false assertions are being merged deliberately to the extent that we can scarcely determine what is
still the reporting of facts and where disinformation begins.


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Migrants are a “trigger-issue” for many speculations, sterotypes and fake information distributed in the echochambers of the rightist mobements all over Europe

Analogue Mass Propaganda also Champions Fake

Of course, post-factual narratives and propaganda are not merely a 21st-century phenomenon. And although post-factual was not word of the year until 201611, the phenomenon has
existed across all eras. Hannah Arendt wrote impressively on the subject – in very analogue times. She wrote about German society after the collapse of the National Socialist regime, after travelling to
Germany in 1949 and 195012, and noted in regard to the National Socialist dictatorship that every totalitarian regime is dependent on disinformation as a constitutive means:
“Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality
itself”. The ideal subjects of totalitarian rule, according to Arendt, are not ideologically convinced National Socialists or Communists but “people for whom the distinctions between fact and fiction […] true and
false no longer exist.” The flight from reality into interpretation, exaggeration, agitation have always been preconditions to all mass propaganda. And so the National Socialists quite intentionally developed
post-factual narratives in the Weimar Republic in order to respond to the deepseated disappointment of many Germans and the sense of damage to their own identity after defeat in World War 1. In 1931, Adolf
Hitler rejected the simple assertion that the modern political and social world was compicated “as wicked propaganda from democrats.”

Instead, National Socialist propaganda offered simple explanations and denied the facts: Parliamentary system? A deceptive façade by which people were deceived and MPs made themselves rich! Democratic
parties? A corrupt crowd! Liberal press? Among National Socialists, it became the “asphalt press” or “Jewish press”. And the term “system parties” had been used during the economic crisis since 1930, referring
to those parties who were waging “a campaign of destruction against their own people”. It cannot be overlooked that the rightwing populists of today are readopting the linguistic phrases and narratives of that
time. This is true in particular of those narratives regarding the community of the people, cultural superiority through race or religion, discrimination of cetain groups across the board, immense inhumanity, and
of the elitist criticism shaping their narratives. In terms of content and language, these are the old keywords and recipes – which is not to say that all AfD voters represent such exteme attitudes.
But there is a fundamental difference between analogue propaganda and digital disinformation: the mass character and frequency with which manipulated information is disseminated online. Disinformation and propaganda today achieve a much greater scope of influence through the Net than at a time when the post-factual was spread via radio, newsreels or the daily press. The number of actors sowing doubts in our democratic system through disinformation, poisoning democratic debate with their language and narratives – and the number of media platforms, groups and forums they use – have multiplied in number. And as a result, so have propaganda and false information.

It is a mistake to ignore this antidemocratic,hate-filled white noise on the Net along with the disinformation circulating online. For it will remain and grow in Germany as well – and this will have practical
consequences for our lives together, our politics,our political and democratic undersstanding. Our handling of it can change, however. The precondition to finding some orientation in this web of fake and fact, truth
and lies, is that we know how to distinguish one from the other. This also involves knowing who is spreading disinformation online and with what interests – and through what narratives, images and linguistic terms it is happening. It is important to take an energetic stand against the misanthropic phrases and group-related inhumanity on the Net, and to reject hate and violence. And we should not give way to pressure to shift the boundaries of the unspeakable. We must not stop comparing and be aware of the boundaries of our own echo chambers, and continue to break through them – to get the full picture, to know the arguments and fears of others. For democracy and the question of what kind of society we wish to live in is also being negotiated on the Net!

This essay is the outcome of two years of investigative research into the spread of disinformation online. The book Fake statt Fakt. Wie Populisten, Bots und Trolle
unsere Demokratie angreifen was published by dtv in summer 2018: 

Fake statt Fakt – how Populists, Bots and Trolls are offending our democracy”