Google's propaganda problem

A May 7 screenshot of nonpersonalized YouTube search results for “white helmets.” Three of the top four results returned by the platform are from Russian state propaganda outlet RT, which has actively pushed disinformation about Syria Civil Defense (civilian volunteers, also known as the White Helmets, that provide aid in conflict areas). The search is a replication of one performed by Donara Barojan of the Digital Forensic Research Lab.
 

People may not think of YouTube as a search engine, but it is. By volume, it is the internet’s second-largest search engine, processing some 3 billion searches a month, which is more than Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL combined. Only Google — which, of course, owns YouTube — is bigger.

But both platforms have a disinformation problem. It’s not just that they surface conspiracy theories and suggest increasingly extreme content to users. It’s that they are being used to spread and legitimize Russian propaganda.

As the Digital Forensic Research Lab’s Donara Barojan points out, searches on YouTube for Kremlin hot topics like “Douma,” “White Helmets” or “Skripal” regularly return videos from the Russian state-funded outlet RT. Searches on Google for identical terms also direct users toward Russian state propaganda, often from the Kremlin-controlled Sputnik International.

A May 7 screenshot of nonpersonalized Google search results for “Skripal.” Two of the three top stories suggested by Google are from Russian state propaganda outlet Sputnik.

• Idea: Challenge students to capture Google’s and YouTube’s search algorithms’ vulnerabilities to Russian propaganda or other sources of misinformation using screenshots of results, as I have done above. Then publicly share these captures — along with any questions they have about this issue — on social media and tag Google accounts.
• Related: “After a week of Russian propaganda, I was questioning everything” (Elizabeth Flock, PBS NewsHour)
  • Note: This piece highlights several strategic patterns of Russian propaganda that are important for students to recognize and reflect on:
    • This disinformation positions itself as innocuously providing “alternate explanations” of events not offered by mainstream Western outlets.
    • It routinely mixes legitimate news (about topics unrelated to the Kremlin’s interests) with conspiracy theories, fabrications and “fog” (about topics of great interest to the Kremlin) to try to gain credibility.
    • It tries to use appeals to skepticism — the inquisitive habit of questioning everything — to lure even the savviest of consumers into cynicism, or the belief that truth is a tactical and context-dependent construct.
  • Also note: The goal of this style of disinformation is to “attack the facts” until “everything is possible” and nothing can be confidently said to be true or false. That’s a trap we can’t allow our students to fall into as we try to instill in them the importance of asking critical questions.

Censorship at the UN

Note: The Sift is a product of the News Literacy Project, which is involved in the events described below.

On May 2, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) — which was established in 2005 to fight extremism through open dialogue — indefinitely postponed an event it had scheduled for World Press Freedom Day (May 3) after the News Literacy Project refused the agency’s demand that it censor a preview of a new NLP lesson on international press freedoms.

The lesson — which will be released on NLP’s e-learning platform, the Checkology^® virtual classroom, in August — helps students explore the vital role that press freedoms play in protecting the public and learn about the many ways these freedoms are weakened or restricted by governments. Led by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson of NPR, it includes comments from journalists in several countries with varying degrees of press freedom.

NLP’s founder and CEO, Alan C. Miller, had participated in a World Press Freedom Day panel with UNAOC in 2017, and the agency asked him several months ago to coordinate this year’s event. He assembled a panel that included CNN’s Brian Stelter and The Wall Street Journal’s Farnaz Fassihi to discuss world press freedom issues, and he planned to take several minutes at the event to introduce the new lesson. He submitted the videos previewing the lesson several days in advance, as requested, so they would be ready to share with the audience.

Two days before the event, Miller was asked to replace a submitted video with a version in which a reference to Turkey — which had more journalists in jail than any other country in the world in both 2016 and 2017 — had been deleted without NLP’s consent.

A still from the eight-second segment that UNAOC sought to remove from NLP’s new interactive lesson about international press freedoms. The lesson will be released as part of Checkology 2.0 in August.

When Miller refused to agree to show the censored version, a UNAOC official warned him that the agency might need to cancel the event. UNAOC then broadened its original request, telling Miller that he would not be permitted to use any of the three submitted videos, which included references to limits on press freedom in Mexico, Russia and Egypt and remarks from journalists in Russia and Pakistan about the severe challenges they face.

The following day, UNAOC announced that the event was being postponed due to a scheduling conflict.

• Note: In a blog post on May 2, NLP explained its decision to stand up for its principles. After UNAOC issued a misleading statement about its reasons for its action, NLP responded in a follow-up post.
• Also note: Turkey was one of two sponsors of the initiative that led to the creation of UNAOC in 2005. Turkey has also led the world in the number of journalists jailed for their reporting in the last two years. In 2016, 31 percent (81 of 259) of the journalists jailed globally were in Turkey; last year, nearly 28 percent (73 of 262) of the journalists jailed globally were in that country.
• Discuss: Explain the irony in the above events. In your opinion, should either party involved have done something differently?
• Also discuss: What country do you think has the greatest degree of press freedom in the world? Which do you think has the least? Where do you think your country’s level of press freedoms falls in relation to other nations? Does your country have any journalists in jail for alleged crimes related to their reporting?
• Idea: After posing the above questions, have students explore press freedom rankings as determined by Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House, along with the database of imprisoned journalists compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
• Related: “Turkish Cartoonist Wins Prize on World Press Freedom Day” (Stephanie Nebehay, Reuters)
  • Idea: Have student groups research and collect their favorite cartoons about press freedom in Turkey, then share and explain them to the class.

At left, the computer-generated image of Kratos, a character in God of War. At right, a promotional image from Warner Bros. of actor Jason Momoa as Aquaman. A fan of the God of War video game combined them into a composite image (middle) for a fake announcement about a (nonexistent) God of War series on Netflix. (The triptych above is from Snopes.com.)

A screen capture on May 5 of Google predictive search suggestions, using a private browsing session.
 

YES: There are three Americans known to be held captive in North Korea (as of May 7). NO: The Obama administration did not repeatedly seek and fail to secure their release. YES: Two of the three prisoners were detained after Donald Trump became president. NO: None of the prisoners has been freed, despite Rudy Giuliani’s claims on Fox and Friends last Thursday that North Korea would be “releasing three prisoners today.” YES: The triptych below shows the same girl being helped by three different men. NO: The images are not from different events. NO: The images were not staged in any way — by either CNN or any governments. YES: The images are all from the aftermath of a bombing at a wake in Syria in August 2016. YES: The girl was a survivor of the blast and is shown being helped by different individuals at the scene of the bombing.
 

• Note: This is a pernicious example of a “crisis actor” or “false flag” rumor. The image is frequently used as “evidence” to support the false claim that governments and news media stage tragic events.
• Also note: Educators, collectively, are in a position to wipe out stubborn viral rumors by “inoculating” their students against them in the classroom.
• Idea: Display this false meme as a bell-ringer and ask students to respond: Is this true? What is actually going on in these images? Collect their responses on the board or a sheet of chart paper. Then ask teams of students to research the rumor for 15 minutes and compare what they know now with the original list of responses.
• Act: Ask students to evaluate the spread of this rumor by doing a reverse image search on the meme. How common are this image and its accompanying “crisis actor” claims online? What action can students take to wipe out this particular piece of misinformation?

• News lit lesson: Purveyors of misinformation often use controversial events and issues to capitalize on intense public interest and strong emotional reactions to help their creations to go viral.
• Note: A number of viral rumors about Wolf have circulated since the dinner. This particular rumor originated on Daily World Update, a site that publishes what it calls “satire” but that is regularly mistaken for news. The hoax was plagiarized by another “fake news” website, The Liberty Raise.
• Idea: Have students find the WHOIS data for both of the sites named above (GoDaddy’s WHOIS search portal generally works well), then use the following discussion points to lead students through a series of fact-checking steps:
  • Discuss: Who owns the Daily World Update? (Notorious “fake news” mogul and troll Christopher Blair.) What physical address is associated with this domain? (A small house in Blair’s hometown of North Waterboro, Maine.) What can we learn about this person? Who owns The Liberty Raise? (Someone named Natasha Cvetkovska in Veles, Macedonia, a town notorious for producing this style of misinformation.) What physical address is associated with this domain? (This residential building in Veles.)