How Misinformation Might Impact The Election

With the rise of new technologies like social media and artificial intelligence, misinformation is a grave concern in these elections. Americans have been worried about the status of their democracy, and the increase of misinformation has only exacerbated those concerns.

Stuart Thompson is a New York Times journalist who writes on disinformation/misinformation, he gave his thoughts on how he believes this issue will impact the election and the best ways to combat it.

How widespread is misinformation in the US 2024 elections compared to previous election cycles?

There's a total flood of false and misleading content online this year. In many ways, it actually seems worse this year compared with previous elections, despite social media companies working for nearly a decade to fight this problem. Unlike previous elections, the platforms are more fragmented and there are more places that market themselves as havens for misinformation. There used to be a Trust and Safety team at Twitter, but Elon Musk fired those people. Now he's one of the most prominent voices sharing manipulated content.

What impact has misinformation had on voter behavior and public opinion during the 2024 elections?

It's always hard to measure the impact of misinformation on the voting public. It's hard to separate that from all the other content that people see, conversations they have, etc. What we know is that misinformation adds to the toxic environment online, and people say they are more disaffected by politics than ever, and the country seems more divided than ever. A lot of the misleading content is shared by influencers and on platforms that are devoted to stoking a partisan divide. They're not generally interested in sharing balance or nuance. Instead their whole business model is based on keeping people engaged through a never-ending deluge of negative interpretations of what their perceived enemies have done.

Can you provide examples of some of the most significant misinformation incidents during the 2024 elections?

There are lots of examples of stunning misinformation out there. A recent one was from Elon Musk, who owns X. He shared what seems to be a "deepfake" video of Kamala Harris, with an AI-generated voice over a genuine campaign ad. AI-generated content is the latest vector for misinformation, and AI voice cloning, as it's called, poses a real risk to confuse and deceive people. Even though this was a joke, it seems likely that a lot of people don't clock the humour and think it's real. A lot of people aren't aware of how sophisticated AI has become. 

What methods and tools do journalists use to identify and verify instances of misinformation during the election?

Thankfully there is a large network of professional fact-checkers that devote time into researching potential falsehoods, calling up primary sources and getting the truth out there. That's one of the best antidotes to misinformation: picking up the phone and getting answers from the sources closest to what's happening. Good old fashioned journalism. But in the age of AI, there are more technological possibilities. There are a number of AI detectors available that claim to know whether a video, audio clip, image or piece of writing was manipulated by AI. They are not 100% accurate, but they're adding to the toolbox to keep up with AI content.