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Disinformation creep: ADOS and the strategic weaponization of breaking news ("DATA" from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government)

Hotlantan

Hotlantan

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Disinformation creep: ADOS and the strategic weaponization of breaking news


In this essay, we conduct a descriptive content analysis from a sample of a dataset made up of 534 thousand scraped tweets, supplemented with access to 1.36 million tweets from the Twitter firehose, from accounts that used the #ADOS hashtag between November 2019 and September 2020. ADOS is an acronym for American Descendants of Slavery, a largely online group that operates within Black online communities. We find that the ADOS network strategically uses breaking news events to discourage Black voters from voting for the Democratic party, a phenomenon we call disinformation creep. Conversely, the ADOS network has remained largely silent about the impact of the novel coronavirus on Black communities, undermining its claims that it works in the interests of Black Americans.



50171916422_fce0cb328c_o.jpg


This essay was published as part of a Special Issue on “Disinformation in the 2020 Elections,” guest-edited by Dr. Ann Crigler (Professor of Political Science, USC) and Dr. Marion R. Just (Professor Emerita of Political Science, Wellesley College). You can find the special issue following this link. Please direct any inquiries about this essay to the corresponding author at mnkonde@law.harvard.edu

Research Questions
  • How have disinformation tactics sought to suppress Black American voter turnout during the 2020 general election?
  • How have references to Black American struggles and enduring stereotypes framed disinformation targeting Black voters on Twitter?
Essay Summary
  • We carried out a descriptive content analysis of tweets from Twitter accounts that used the #ADOS hashtag, using a combination of 534 thousand scraped tweets and 1.36 million tweets from the Twitter firehose, between November 2019 and September 2020.
  • We document how the ADOS network leverages Black identity and breaking news to implicitly or explicitly support anti-Black political groups and causes, strategically discouraging Black voters from voting for the Democratic party.
  • The ADOS network has remained largely silent about the impact of the novel coronavirus on Black communities, undermining its claims to prioritize the interests of Black Americans.
  • We give the name disinformation creep to this method of combining legitimate grievances along with slight factual distortions and reinterpretations of breaking news events that culminate in a contradictory worldview, at odds with the interests the worldview purports to support.
  • We theorize that disinformation creep is a general phenomenon, wherein marginalized communities whose interests and legitimate grievances are ignored by mainstream narratives are targeted by misinformation narratives.

fig.1new.png

Figure 1. A time series of the daily frequency of tweets in the sample set. Pictured are tweets specifically using the #ADOS hashtag, tweets from/mentioning/retweeting Yvette Carnell (@breakingbrown), and tweets from/mentioning/retweeting Tone Moore (@tonetalks). Also included are some tweets illustrating spikes in activity around real-world events. For a high-resolution version of the image, please click here.

misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu

Retracted: Disinformation creep: ADOS and the strategic weaponization of breaking news | HKS Misinformation Review

In this essay, we conduct a descriptive content analysis from a sample of a dataset made up of 534 thousand scraped tweets, supplemented with access to 1.36 million tweets from the Twitter firehose, from accounts that used the #ADOS hashtag between November 2019 and September 2020. ADOS is an...
misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu

:colin:
 
Hotlantan said:
Disinformation creep: ADOS and the strategic weaponization of breaking news


In this essay, we conduct a descriptive content analysis from a sample of a dataset made up of 534 thousand scraped tweets, supplemented with access to 1.36 million tweets from the Twitter firehose, from accounts that used the #ADOS hashtag between November 2019 and September 2020. ADOS is an acronym for American Descendants of Slavery, a largely online group that operates within Black online communities. We find that the ADOS network strategically uses breaking news events to discourage Black voters from voting for the Democratic party, a phenomenon we call disinformation creep. Conversely, the ADOS network has remained largely silent about the impact of the novel coronavirus on Black communities, undermining its claims that it works in the interests of Black Americans.



50171916422_fce0cb328c_o.jpg


This essay was published as part of a Special Issue on “Disinformation in the 2020 Elections,” guest-edited by Dr. Ann Crigler (Professor of Political Science, USC) and Dr. Marion R. Just (Professor Emerita of Political Science, Wellesley College). You can find the special issue following this link. Please direct any inquiries about this essay to the corresponding author at mnkonde@law.harvard.edu

Research Questions
  • How have disinformation tactics sought to suppress Black American voter turnout during the 2020 general election?
  • How have references to Black American struggles and enduring stereotypes framed disinformation targeting Black voters on Twitter?
Essay Summary
  • We carried out a descriptive content analysis of tweets from Twitter accounts that used the #ADOS hashtag, using a combination of 534 thousand scraped tweets and 1.36 million tweets from the Twitter firehose, between November 2019 and September 2020.
  • We document how the ADOS network leverages Black identity and breaking news to implicitly or explicitly support anti-Black political groups and causes, strategically discouraging Black voters from voting for the Democratic party.
  • The ADOS network has remained largely silent about the impact of the novel coronavirus on Black communities, undermining its claims to prioritize the interests of Black Americans.
  • We give the name disinformation creep to this method of combining legitimate grievances along with slight factual distortions and reinterpretations of breaking news events that culminate in a contradictory worldview, at odds with the interests the worldview purports to support.
  • We theorize that disinformation creep is a general phenomenon, wherein marginalized communities whose interests and legitimate grievances are ignored by mainstream narratives are targeted by misinformation narratives.

fig.1new.png

Figure 1. A time series of the daily frequency of tweets in the sample set. Pictured are tweets specifically using the #ADOS hashtag, tweets from/mentioning/retweeting Yvette Carnell (@breakingbrown), and tweets from/mentioning/retweeting Tone Moore (@tonetalks). Also included are some tweets illustrating spikes in activity around real-world events. For a high-resolution version of the image, please click here.

misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu

Retracted: Disinformation creep: ADOS and the strategic weaponization of breaking news | HKS Misinformation Review

In this essay, we conduct a descriptive content analysis from a sample of a dataset made up of 534 thousand scraped tweets, supplemented with access to 1.36 million tweets from the Twitter firehose, from accounts that used the #ADOS hashtag between November 2019 and September 2020. ADOS is an...
misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu

:colin:
Click to expand...
i see no lies here
 
Did Stanford Try to Whitewash its Involvement in an Anti-Black, Misinformation-Filled Research Project?

The Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) has quietly deleteda research project from its website after questions surfaced about the project’s legitimacy.

The research initiative, Disinformation Creep: How Breaking News Stories are Used to Engage in Online Voter Suppression, was undertaken by PACS Practitioner Fellow Mutale Nkonde at Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab in 2019. It falsely alleges that the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) movement uses social media to spread disinformation intended to foster apathy and cynicism among the Black Democratic electorate. Stanford PACS has also discreetly removed any mention of the research initiative from Nkonde’s bio page.

Nkonde’s bio on Stanford PACS’s website previously included links to her “Disinformation Creep” research project.

All previous evidence of Stanford PACS’s connection with the “Disinformation Creep” research project has been scrubbed from its website and Nkonde’s bio. A Google search for Stanford PACS and “Disinformation Creep” brings up a link that leads to a “Page Not Found” error. :hmm:

Stanford’s hushed expungement of the material came immediately after inquiries were made by the ADOS Advocacy Foundation to the lab’s research director, Lucy Bernholz, about whether or not Nkonde’s project (which admits to having received significant financial and authorial support from prominent liberal political action committee MoveOn.org) violated the terms of eligibility set forth in the Stanford PACS Practitioner Fellowship guidelines. The guidelines clearly state that a fellow’s research project “cannot involve a partisan political campaign or legislative lobbying efforts.”

However, prior to and during the period of Nkonde’s research, MoveOn.org coordinated multiple fundraising campaigns to “stop disinformation and online voter suppression.” The express aim of those efforts — which were part of a broader $49.8 million fundraising venture in the 2019–2020 election cycle — was to get the donations into Democratic Party coffers. Indeed, since MoveOn.org’s formation in 1998, their organization has consistently ranked among the top contributors to Democratic Party election campaigns. And so far in 2021, MoveOn.org has spent $20,000 on lobbying efforts. It is also worth noting that in September of 2020 MoveOn.org campaign manager and Disinformation creep co-author
Mary Drummer announced that the organization was taking “extra precaution” and “removing petitions referencing ADOS from [its] platform” due to “concern about messages being co-opted” (i.e. disinformation).

Bernholz did not respond to the ADOS Advocacy Foundation’s requests for clarification on the matter, but the furtive removal of the material in question would appear to tacitly confirm that Nkonde’s collaboration with MoveOn.org constituted a clear breach of the center’s policy of keeping a political agenda out of scientific research.

Mutale Nkonde’s research initiative, which was ultimately published in Misinformation Review at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, has been met with sharp criticism from both ADOS activists and members of the journal’s own editorial board. The latter have publicly stated that — had they prior knowledge of Misinformation Review’s intent to publish the article—they would have “recommended rejecting the piece.” Presently, “Disinformation creep” is undergoing a post-publication review by Misinformation Review editorial staff—a staff that has heretofore completely refused to engage with ADOS activists who dispute the article’s many unfounded claims and allegations.

Stanford’s recent actions appear to only give credence to those activists’ assertions that the article is deeply flawed methodologically and predicated solely on the researchers’ own biased assumptions of #ADOS being a political adversary. More than that, the university’s actions suggest that Nkonde’s research project should have never been authorized in the first place. They suggest that the stipend and grant funding that supported Nkonde’s research was either deceitfully secured or knowingly and wrongfully disbursed by grant agencies, philanthropic donations, and the host institution.

As such, the ADOS Advocacy Foundation is calling on the PACS Advisory Board to demand an institutional investigation into the matter and determine whether the financial involvement of an influential liberal advocacy group in a research project at its lab violated the declared terms of that project’s eligibility. And if (as it certainly seems) blatant misconduct did occur with “Disinformation Creep”, then leadership at Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and the Digital Civil Society Lab must be held accountable for financing a project that, by their own criteria, lacked the necessary impartiality. Lucy Bernholz, as research director, cannot expect to simply quietly cover up an apparent compliance breach and avoid culpability for the dishonest and impermissible research taking place under her roof.

We further urge the 15-member advisory board add their signatures to our petition demanding that Misinformation Review issue a full retraction of “Disinformation creep,” along with a formal apology to the ADOS Advocacy Foundation for the article’s defamatory nature. The Board should exhort the leadership at PACS and the Digital Civil Society Lab to do the same, as the Center possesses the utterly shameful distinction of serving as the genesis for a research project that has baselessly vilified a grassroots reparations movement under the guise of scientific inquiry. Worse still is that the report — which casually introduces misinformation into the public sphere — appears to have been illicitly conceived and developed.

If the Advisory Board fails to make the appropriate recommendations for Stanford’s PACS and Digital Civil Society leadership to meaningfully address the concerns of ethical violations, then they will fail in their most basic duty of ensuring the integrity of their research institute. The clandestine actions of Lucy Bernholz already indicate blameworthiness. It is now up to the Advisory Board to determine how much more credibility their research center will bleed.

https://adosfoundation.medium.com/did-stanford-try-to-whitewash-its-involvement-in-an-anti-black-misinformation-filled-research-8d7dfab863b2

@KingTaharqa
 
How I wish we had a ...crickets... emoji!!!

Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review Retracts Article, Admitting Editorial 'Failure'

The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review has admitted to publishing misinformation. :D

The journal, published by HKS’s Shorenstein Center, retracted an article last month that concluded a slavery reparations advocacy group discouraged Black voters from participating in the 2020 presidential election.

The group in question, the American Descendants of Slavery Advocacy Foundation, publicly refuted the article’s findings, leading the journal to launch internal and external reviews of the research.

The reviews, which concluded in August, found mistakes and data discrepancies in the study, calling into question its conclusions. The Misinformation Review retracted the article, titled “Disinformation creep: ADOS and the strategic weaponization of breaking news,” on Dec. 20, writing in an editor's note that the authors admitted “defects” in their work.

“The retraction decision was not taken lightly but is one that we feel was necessary, as certain of the principal conclusions reported in this paper cannot be considered reliable or valid,” the Misinformation Review’s editorial staff wrote. “It is important to acknowledge that this outcome also represents a failure of the journal’s editorial process.”

The article underwent three peer-reviews and one editorial review prior to publication, according to Maria Y. Rodriguez, a co-author of the article.

The journal pledged to review its practices “to prevent similar occurrences in the future.”

The article concluded that ADOS used discussions of current events on Twitter to support “anti-Black political groups and causes, strategically discouraging Black voters from voting for the Democratic party.”

The external review — written by Bruce Desmarais of Pennsylvania State University — found that the article relied on a small subset of tweets from ADOS’ co-founders, Yvette Carnell and Antonio Moore, to demonstrate that the group attempted to dissuade its Black Americans from voting — conclusions that were “insufficiently connected” to the quantitative analysis.

In a written response to the Misinformation Review’s retraction that was obtained by The Crimson, the co-authors criticized the Misinformation Review for not conducting a more rigorous pre-publication review of the piece. They added that issues raised post-publication could not have been known at the time research was conducted.

The 10 co-authors also accused the Misinformation Review of failing to defend them against ADOS criticism.

“Instead of using Harvard’s institutional power to shield authors from blowback, the publication risks becoming a lens to focus greater blowback on authors,” they wrote. “At the very least, it should put resources into raising these issues pre-publication, rather than post-publication.”

Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of Buffalo, said she still stands by the work.

“I personally think that this paper was done well, and I have received that feedback from colleagues,” she said in an interview. “It's unfortunate that it was retracted, but I don't have control over that.”

Natascha Chtena, editor-in-chief of the HKS Misinformation Review, declined to comment beyond the retraction note.

In a rebuttal to the article published on its website, ADOS denied discouraging its supporters from voting. The organization wrote that it primarily promotes candidates who align with its calls for reparations and aim to break down racial barriers faced by Black Americans.

“In the absence of such a candidate, ADOS has consistently advocated voting down ballot Democrat on Election Day; that is, voting along the Democratic Party line below the President,” ADOS wrote. “This tactic is not, as the report’s authors disingenuously suggest, a withdrawal from the electoral process and civic engagement; nor is it an approach that implicitly indicates support for the Republican Party.”

ADOS’s rebuttal alleged the article was part of a “smear campaign” by progressive political action committee and advocacy group MoveOn, which employed five of the article’s 10 authors at the time of publication. MoveOn “assisted with data collection and management,” according to a disclosure in the article.

“With the relatively new Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, MoveOn appears to have found a propaganda-friendly platform to carry out a dishonest delegitimization campaign against our movement,” ADOS wrote.

The Misinformation Review, established in 2019, publishes work from academics studying misinformation and disinformation. Articles are submitted to the journal through an accelerated peer-review system, described on the publication’s website as a “new format of peer-reviewed, scholarly publication.”

The Misinformation Review publishes research within two months after submission, according to the journal’s website.

In its rebuttal, ADOS decried the journal’s fast-track peer-review method, writing that it “de-emphasizes academic rigor in favor of disseminating information that may or may not be accurate.”

Carnell, an ADOS co-founder, frequently used the hashtags #CrimsonSmear and #PoisonIvy in tweets demanding a retraction.

Rodriguez, one of the co-authors, said ADOS “trolled” her as part of its retraction campaign.

“I received lots of mentions from people that I didn’t know who were calling me many things online, to the point where I invested in some sort of third party support for my account,” Rodriguez said.

www.thecrimson.com

Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review Retracts Article, Admitting Editorial 'Failure' | News | The Harvard Crimson

The Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review retracted an article concluding that the ADOS Advocacy Foundation discouraged Black voters from participating in the 2020 presidential election.
www.thecrimson.com www.thecrimson.com
 
VAiz4hustlaz said:
How I wish we had a ...crickets... emoji!!!

Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review Retracts Article, Admitting Editorial 'Failure'

The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review has admitted to publishing misinformation. :D

The journal, published by HKS’s Shorenstein Center, retracted an article last month that concluded a slavery reparations advocacy group discouraged Black voters from participating in the 2020 presidential election.

The group in question, the American Descendants of Slavery Advocacy Foundation, publicly refuted the article’s findings, leading the journal to launch internal and external reviews of the research.

The reviews, which concluded in August, found mistakes and data discrepancies in the study, calling into question its conclusions. The Misinformation Review retracted the article, titled “Disinformation creep: ADOS and the strategic weaponization of breaking news,” on Dec. 20, writing in an editor's note that the authors admitted “defects” in their work.

“The retraction decision was not taken lightly but is one that we feel was necessary, as certain of the principal conclusions reported in this paper cannot be considered reliable or valid,” the Misinformation Review’s editorial staff wrote. “It is important to acknowledge that this outcome also represents a failure of the journal’s editorial process.”

The article underwent three peer-reviews and one editorial review prior to publication, according to Maria Y. Rodriguez, a co-author of the article.

The journal pledged to review its practices “to prevent similar occurrences in the future.”

The article concluded that ADOS used discussions of current events on Twitter to support “anti-Black political groups and causes, strategically discouraging Black voters from voting for the Democratic party.”

The external review — written by Bruce Desmarais of Pennsylvania State University — found that the article relied on a small subset of tweets from ADOS’ co-founders, Yvette Carnell and Antonio Moore, to demonstrate that the group attempted to dissuade its Black Americans from voting — conclusions that were “insufficiently connected” to the quantitative analysis.

In a written response to the Misinformation Review’s retraction that was obtained by The Crimson, the co-authors criticized the Misinformation Review for not conducting a more rigorous pre-publication review of the piece. They added that issues raised post-publication could not have been known at the time research was conducted.

The 10 co-authors also accused the Misinformation Review of failing to defend them against ADOS criticism.

“Instead of using Harvard’s institutional power to shield authors from blowback, the publication risks becoming a lens to focus greater blowback on authors,” they wrote. “At the very least, it should put resources into raising these issues pre-publication, rather than post-publication.”

Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of Buffalo, said she still stands by the work.

“I personally think that this paper was done well, and I have received that feedback from colleagues,” she said in an interview. “It's unfortunate that it was retracted, but I don't have control over that.”

Natascha Chtena, editor-in-chief of the HKS Misinformation Review, declined to comment beyond the retraction note.

In a rebuttal to the article published on its website, ADOS denied discouraging its supporters from voting. The organization wrote that it primarily promotes candidates who align with its calls for reparations and aim to break down racial barriers faced by Black Americans.

“In the absence of such a candidate, ADOS has consistently advocated voting down ballot Democrat on Election Day; that is, voting along the Democratic Party line below the President,” ADOS wrote. “This tactic is not, as the report’s authors disingenuously suggest, a withdrawal from the electoral process and civic engagement; nor is it an approach that implicitly indicates support for the Republican Party.”

ADOS’s rebuttal alleged the article was part of a “smear campaign” by progressive political action committee and advocacy group MoveOn, which employed five of the article’s 10 authors at the time of publication. MoveOn “assisted with data collection and management,” according to a disclosure in the article.

“With the relatively new Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, MoveOn appears to have found a propaganda-friendly platform to carry out a dishonest delegitimization campaign against our movement,” ADOS wrote.

The Misinformation Review, established in 2019, publishes work from academics studying misinformation and disinformation. Articles are submitted to the journal through an accelerated peer-review system, described on the publication’s website as a “new format of peer-reviewed, scholarly publication.”

The Misinformation Review publishes research within two months after submission, according to the journal’s website.

In its rebuttal, ADOS decried the journal’s fast-track peer-review method, writing that it “de-emphasizes academic rigor in favor of disseminating information that may or may not be accurate.”

Carnell, an ADOS co-founder, frequently used the hashtags #CrimsonSmear and #PoisonIvy in tweets demanding a retraction.

Rodriguez, one of the co-authors, said ADOS “trolled” her as part of its retraction campaign.

“I received lots of mentions from people that I didn’t know who were calling me many things online, to the point where I invested in some sort of third party support for my account,” Rodriguez said.

www.thecrimson.com

Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review Retracts Article, Admitting Editorial 'Failure' | News | The Harvard Crimson

The Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review retracted an article concluding that the ADOS Advocacy Foundation discouraged Black voters from participating in the 2020 presidential election.
www.thecrimson.com www.thecrimson.com
Click to expand...
it's funny because the agents have been trying to cast dispersions on us while undermining freed Blacks' quest for justice in this country. Tranny ass pro white supremacist little bitch won't even address this retraction though.
 

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