Syracuse University research identified 2,203 pages that carried propaganda on social media, including false information and deepfakes
A Syracuse University (USA) announced on Wednesday (10.Jul.2024) that 2,203 pages on Facebook and Instagram ran paid ads mentioning American presidential candidates. In total, they spent US$ 18.7 million with ads that mention Joe Biden (democrat), Donald Trump (Republican) and other primary candidates from September 1, 2023, to April 30, 2024.
The research of the IDJC (Institute of Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship) identified that most of the pages are linked to legitimate groups, but that there are “inauthentic actors” –apparently unique pages, with unclear origins and hidden links to other groups with identical messages. Read the full of the report (PDF – 6 MB, in English).
According to the ElectionGraph project’s assessment, the ads run by this subgroup include false or misleading information. There is also evidence of deepfakes with manipulated audio of figures such as former President Donald Trump and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Among the main topics, considering both legitimate and inauthentic pages, ads related to the economy received the most money directed towards advertising.
Segmented by political leaning, conservative pages spent US$ 8.6 million and mainly focus on the issue of immigrationwhile progressives focus more on economyspending US$ 6.5 million.
The ads analyzed were viewed by users more than 1 billion times. According to the report, women and older Americans are the audiences most frequently targeted by ads.
For the project’s lead researcher, Professor Jennifer Stromer-Galleyresearch reveals a number “surprising” of actors about whom very little is known and who are “spending money to reach voters with messages on social media, where there is little transparency”.
According to Stromer-Galley, tech platforms need to do more to allow academics and journalists access to platform data so that political actors can be held accountable by the public.
Currently, the Goal (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) is the only one that allows authorized organizations to access ad data. A similar report could not be done with data from TikTok, Google, YouTube or Snapchat, which are not available.
The search
ElectionGraph is a Syracuse University program that seeks to identify misinformation trends in the 2024 US presidential election and other major races. This is the second report released by the program.
Researchers identify the origin of messages and track misinformation through algorithmic ad collection and classification.
They use a graph data platform to analyze the information. The technology connects information from multiple data sources, allowing researchers to identify and analyze hidden patterns and uncover networks of connections. The platform is owned by Neo4j and has already been used in several journalistic investigations, such as the Panama Papers case in 2015.
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