Government agencies and political parties are investing millions of dollars to exploit social media platforms for spreading fake news, exercising censorship, and undermining people’s trust in media, public institutions and science, an Oxford study has found.
Manipulating public opinion over social media platforms has emerged as a critical threat around the world, despite efforts to combat computational propaganda, scientists say.
A report from Oxford University in the UK has found that the problem is growing at a large scale.
“The number of countries where formally organised social media manipulation occurs has greatly increased, from 28 to 48 countries globally,” said Samantha Bradshaw, co-author of the report.
“The majority of growth comes from political parties who spread disinformation and junk news around election periods,” Bradshaw said.
“There are more political parties learning from the strategies deployed during Brexit and the US 2016 Presidential election: more campaigns are using bots, junk news, and disinformation to polarise and manipulate voters,” she said.
This is despite efforts by governments in many democracies introducing new legislation designed to combat fake news on the internet.
“The problem with this is that these ‘task forces’ to combat fake news are being used as a new tool to legitimise censorship in authoritarian regimes,” said Phil Howard, lead researcher on the project.
“At best, these types of task forces are creating counter-narratives and building tools for citizen awareness and fact-checking,” Howard said.
Another challenge is the evolution of the mediums individuals use to share news and information.