A note. This country has seen a rise by white supremacist. We are now seeing information of new groups that recruit aggressively and openly celebrate violence as there ammo. This this is the build up foa long time. That terrible moment. Thats probably our main objective. Something official of the cues and teeth of being a major cause of violence in the nationwide protest following the killing of george floyd. Arrested after prosecutors said he was stockpiling weapons for an attack to fuel race wars. In the u. S. Rightwing extremist willing to at least 15 mers last year. Thats a 35 increase over 2017. The 17 your faces felony homicide charges for shooting three people during tuesday nights protest in kenosha. The alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was a classic case of terrorism and violence in the country could get worse. Rising political tensions, civil unrest and foreign disinformation campaigns. U. S. Security officials are warning that violent domestic extremists pose a threat to the president ial election next month. Month. Federal Law Enforcement sources tell cnn the fbi is concerned about the possibility armed extremist might try to interfere with local vote count expect each scenario could lead to extremist violence with the possibility of deadly confrontations. Are you willing tonight to condemn White Supremacists and Militia Groups, and to say that they need to stand down and not at to the violence in the number of these cities . Stand back and stand by. Cnn has learned Law Enforcement, cities, banks, corporations are all quietly bracing for the possibility of violent clashes around and after election day fueled by extremists. We commit to making sure there is a peaceful transfer of power after the election . We will have to see what happens. With that as backdrop, i am pleased to welcome lisa hagan, a reporter for wabe in atlanta and a reporting fellow. As a fellow lisa works with my other journalists around the country reporting collaboratively as part of nprs guns in america project. Shes also a leader reporter and collison nprs limited run podcast no compromise. Lisa, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for inviting me. Of course. Its our pleasure. So for those who are in our audience who are not familiar with the podcast no compromise, could you tell us a bit about its focus, the door brothers and how theyre using social media to organize around the country . So no compromise is investigate podcast were working on is really i guess more about a movement, and entire Gun Rights Movement that we think is gaining significant in the mainstream. It is a movement that is far to the right of the nra which i think for a lot of listeners might be as shocking concept because for many years we thought of the nra in this country as pretty staunch when it comes to gun rights. We tell the story of this movement by looking at these sort of three members of it, the door brothers in a podcast. Essentially take us through the more recent rise of whats been a much older philosophy of gun rights and the constitution essentially thats been around since the 1970s or so, but what weve watched with the dorr brothers in particular and the party is at their very great adept in skilled at Facebook Live in particular which is sort of allowed for what feels like a Significant Growth in the popular of some of the messaging, like i said, has been around for many years. Hopefully thats enough of an explanation. Yeah, thats a great start for us, thank you. And undoubtedly we will come back and talk more about some of the specifics from the podcast but also from your wider reporting. First though i would like to bring sam jackson into the conversation. Hes an assistant professor in the college of Emergency Preparedness come Homeland Security and cybersecurity at the university at albany. His Research Focus on rightwing antigovernment extremism in the u. S. And he has a new book out with Cologne University press about those cubes. Im so pleased you could join us today. Thanks for inviting me. Your work has focused agreed to on one particular group, you have booked outages mentioned that the can you tell us more of about this group and the most recent activities particularly in the lead up to the upcoming election . Sure. I think one of the two prime factors of what i call the patriot Militia Movement, the second wave of that movement that started in 2008 or so. The other, action is the three tours which a lot of ways is more difficult to talk about. Its this organization that has central leadership. They have a lot of structure and then they also have eight chapters throughout what weve seen over and almost 12 years of a guest 12 years, yeah, that the has been active is a consistent perception of an impending threat coming from the federal government primarily as being this radical force that is going to come and take your guns or force you to take a vaccine or tell you how to manage your land, that government as this tyrannical forces something that americans need to be worried about and need to be preparing for. Since 2016 resealable weve seen a little bit of a pivot, oath keepers engine is quite supportive of donald trump. Many of the members are avid trump supporters. So since trump has been in office weve seen a a pivot wih the group has talked much more about black lives matter and antifa as terrorist organizations or as insurgencies within the country and have really depicted a new, almost a new context of this conflict that they perceive all the time, which is those who dissent from government are now perceived as the threat. And oath keepers and others like him are now talking about the possible need to take violence, often situated as defensive violence against these other americans who are expressing distress was a sin for opposition to government. Great. Thats really helpful overview for us, and just as with lisa expect were going to come back and talk quite a bit more about the oath keepers. But now im going to bring in our third and final panelist who is jon lewis. Hes a researcher with the George Washington University Program on extremism where he studies extremist organizations in the u. S. As well as activities of the islamist, the Islamic State both in the u. S. And europe. Hes an investigator with the National Counterterrorism Innovation Technology and education center, and provide support for the congressional counterterrorism caucus which is the leading bipartisan voice in congress for pragmatic approaches to tackling extremism and radicalization. John, thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much for having me. So i i wonder now if you cod tell us more about the organizations that you been watching most closely, which you are seeing take most event of social media in the runup to the elections. Absolutely. Thank you. I would say that unlike what sam just described and what is this very organized oath keepers movement, one of the bigger movements we had seen in the past six, seven, eight, ten months has been the bubble movement. This is a newer touch more Online Movement that doesnt have any central organization, has very little in the way of a driving kind of ideology or ethos. Its primarily antigovernment. Its acceleration is antigovernment which at its core aims at committing violence, incited violence in hopes of bringing about a societal collapse, a the civil war, a re war, to being on which branch of this movement you want to focus on. I would say what we seen a lot in the lead up to november of what we seen a lot of especially in relation to covid19 pandemic and culminating like the restrictions is in response a lot of this uncertainty is seen a lot more mobilization, radicalization, recruitment online by this Boogaloo Movement which brings in individuals that oftentimes come from organizations like the United States are come from smaller Militia Movement already radicalize come already whether its at this up and his antisemitic xenophobic ideologies and bring that into this Boogaloo Movement that is essentially, when it is as easy to join a moment when all you have to do is throw on a hawaiian shirt and pick up an ar15, its very easy for individuals to kind of move in and out of this very disorganized movement which makes it harder to track and prevent a lot of these attacks of attempted violence weve seen. We have now heard about three different specific organizations that are organizing online. The dorr brothers which is coming in a podcast, the oath keepers and boogaloo. I wonder if we could take a step back for just a moment and provide a bit of kind of higherlevel context. I would like to hear from each of you, maybe sam, i will start with you, your thoughts about how what we are seeing online right now in the lead up to 2020 can pierce what we saw four years ago in 2016. Because i think for a lot of americans 2016 was the first time they really started paying attention or knew that the sorts of groups were beginning to organize online. I think thats right. In 2016, we we saw a pot of focus and explicit attention paid to the election and to concerns about electoral integrity, disinformation, all of these other things from various actors across the political spectrum. And we saw in particular some concerns raised by organizations like project veritas of the Democratic Party is going to engage in voter fraud or voter intimidation. Those sorts of things. Some groups in the paramilitary might come antigovernment right, whatever level you want to use for that decided theyre going to do something about it. I think there is a little bit less explicit and specific attention being paid to the election, instead of a lot of the rhetoric around the election is also caught up in covid measures, pandemic majors in the ongoing arrest of whats related to black lives matter protested antiprotest, what i have seen is more focused on the other threats, covid shutdown measures in blm who are depicted as being part of marxist or globalist or whole word of the pickney of the Global Terrorist Organization in encouraging americans to be prepared to take that defensive action that i mentioned earlier in response to these thats. Are there any other particular noteworthy trends that you would reflect on between 2016 and now . Its an interesting question especially because i am not a researcher, ive been focusing on reporting just the story for about two years, not quite looking at the same stuff, what i will say is i was aware of what the militia was doing in the area around 2016, its hard for me too say again im not an expert on a reporter on one particular story, we saw a lot in the 2016 election, trumps victory was just as much as a surprise to many people on the far right in Militia Groups as it was to people all over the country, with Hillary Clinton at the time functioned as a real serious bogeyman that you can pretty much switch out today against donald trump, here at least we are seeing lots of language around you gotta get trained for when Hillary Clinton comes and breaks in the door, and, lot is coming for your guns and what i would want to say in response and we focus on the door brothers like their certain players in a larger movement, i think what ive learned from doing our word and an oiled machine has become better and better at managing social media to be ready at any moment furthers the confusing thing that is happening and its a big example in election planing example, there always trying to get more attention and mobilize their machine that they birdied created when there is a specific example for them to pounce on, obviously elections are huge part of that and weve had a lot of chaotic news in 2020 so there are many moments, governments collapsing in our group and i will stop talking now. , i think it would be useful as we continue our conversation even to hear a bit more over the two years weve hear covered thr brothers, what you see change in how their organization has evolved over time first go to john, do you have any additional thoughts on 2016 to 2020, i know you been following a variety of organizations for quite some time, is there anything else that you would note that we might want to keep her eyes on and be thinking about different than from now. I was a broadly speaking the threat has grown a bit in these four years and is diversified a bit, online and offline, when you look at 2016 2021 of the big differences we seen this bike and offline violence that was talked about a lot in 2016 and the potential that could have but in this instance to the election in covid lockdown and other protest, and the activity with the movement and unaffiliated conspiracy driven plots. And online as well, you see facebook take a lot of action against the global movement, q, similar militia organizations that sam touched on, i think you have seen and will continue to see a lot of these groups attempt to remain active players online, facebook or through moderation efforts, they get pushed off of facebook onto some of the smaller less regulated platforms, i expect that you will see more and more of those groups of movements continue to try and remain online organized with other actors online through 2020. I think thats really important and i would love for us to return later in the discussion to think about the potential legal and policy responses including from the text platforms themselves, but i wonder if we might think a little bit or talk a little bit together about how these dynamics operate at Different Levels within the United States, i think that we often think, lets take the recent events of michigan for example. There has been a lot of focus on how rhetoric coming from the talk and specifically coming from donald trump has had a fax talk down on this sort of actions or has led these organizations to feel emboldened, but i wonder how we might think about the bottomup element of these in these organizations operating, lisa im thinking in particular about how the door brothers really are individuals, three brothers that you focus on who live in one locality, around the country and yet they operate the organization across many different state lines, how do they in particular use social media and other online environments in order to build National Movement from very specific local places. The question. I think with the door brothers in particular, we have struggled to try to understand, is the National Movement what theyre really interested in, there are lots of accusation that twirl around in particular in theyre mostly making a living off of the work that they do and so spreading out across multiple states other critics of their say basically this is about not getting caught and moving on to a place where people dont know you as well or your tactic but as for why states are in an effective level in which they can organize, i think both state and national, there is a lot of gun policy at the state level in the United States, theres a lot of discussion in media very frequently about federal gun laws and whats happening in congress, the truth is americans in all states live under the rules of their particular state legislature when it comes to gun rights, if you were actually looking to change the laws around gun policy, it is really the place you want to be working, not only that but the nra, the National Rifle association is a group that we have seen rise true tremendous political significance over the last many decades, they made some choices about how they would run the organization and some of that involved hiring an impressive ad campaign in this prep company that they hire, sorry the words are escaping me. But it put a lot of effort into branding themselves a certain way which works for quite a while to raise awareness and excitement about the organization but meanwhile local state groups were organizing and had nothing to do with the nra and thats where the door brothers and their partners in one fraction again of the no compromise movement which is one fraction of gun rights activists in america as a whole but these guys pop up in states because there is an opening, there is a vacuum of personality and leadership and we have this wonderful new tool with Facebook Live that allows people to make emotional connections about people from the comfort of their own home in the lines over and over again the help form a worldview and it feels more effective on smaller scales because it is, the fewer people youre talking to in the more personalized you can make it and it feels like people can feel connected to you, thats what i would say. That makes a great deal of sense. Are there particular ideas or issues that you think these movements resonate particularly well at the local level, or are there ultimately goals at the National Level, how did they navigate is my underlying question, how do they navigate the different dynamics and what is a complex system ultimately, political system. It is difficult to think about in a cohesive and coherent tidy way, i tend to talk about some of the actors is adopting a position of strategic ambiguity where they adopt really powerful and resignation ideas and values like tierney and liberty and selfreliance and independence in all of these sorts of things but they really define what those things mean, what is tierney, how do you know when youre facing, what are the proper bounds of liberty, are there any proper bounds of liberty, one of the strategic ambiguity does when is deployed at a National Level or National Organization or abroad Movement Like a no compromise group movement, if it allows individuals in specific places to plug in play their own issues that they care about, in the rocky mount region we all know the case of clyde and bundy away tierney was forcing him to pay catalan land when endangered tortoise lives. In states like new york, that tierney is often more about gun control and gun regulation and things like that, there is strategic ambiguity that is really helpful concept for thinking about these things that we havent quite figured out exactly how it works and i dont know actually to what extent it is strategic and to what extent of course you know what a tyrant is, it comes to violate liberties, is perfectly clear, that plugandplay dynamic is really important when thinking about different geographical granularitys of how this movement works. Can i jump in very quickly, what he is saying and ringing some bells for me in the final episode of the podcast which comes out tomorrow, we talk a little bit about the book called confrontational politics which was written in the 1970s and its basically a roadmap for how to mobilize people on the far right to advance your overall cost, one particular principal, it does not matter, you dont have to educate people about the specifics of your cause because that will not make them more effective, you have to mobilize them with emotion and have them watch strategically, what we have seen in a lot of our reporting is exactly what you are talking about, when i start probing the Little Details and differences of policy because i know this stuff, i dont care about that, i care about tierney, its very much about a larger emotional attachment to a cause rather than any specific policy goals, i just want to jump in and say that. That is brilliant because i would like to go to john and ask a little bit more because they love the concept or love, i dont know if thats quite the right way to put it but im fascinated by the concept and the impact power of strategic ambiguity and i wonder how that might work when it comes to thinking about violence and justifying violence within the organizations and movements, are they making use of the strategic ambiguity when it comes to justifying when they should take up arms. I think im going to jump on the sam jackson bandwagon, i agree, its a huge issue because in these movements what you have is a very disorganized movement that is not large of individuals that have fixed same extravagant plot, 22 individuals in different states to organize and facebook and social media platforms and mobilized to go to the city to commit the alleged act, i think one of the problems was countering a Movement Like this, it has inherent that nationwide they can very quickly latch onto to national or local issues and a system, i learned the example would be who is individual in maryland and shot and killed and made by a no knock warrant. It was very quickly picked up by the movement and it became just as for breonna taylor, this very quickly allowed adherents to rally around the flag that this is an example Police Brutality therefore we need to kill Police Officers, you saw california where individual allegedly shot and wounded an officer at the courthouse and you saw another incident in las vegas where individuals were planning on to bring them cocktail molotov coco a george floyd protest, many were the name and they are very adept at rationalizing or violence iq said and they showcase as we are fighting back against unjust government and who are the flag bears for the government, we see governor witmer you see Police Officers and federal service officers, i would say agreeing with sam by and large these movements have been depths at picking on local issues like covid lockdown, National Issues like Police Brutality and to suit what their goals are, violence. If i could stay with you for just another minute anyone turning to the postelection. I wonder what youre seeing that has you particularly concerned, even if there are specific areas of the country that you think might be most right for potential violence after the election. Absolutely, the biggest concern that i have, again i am paraphrasing whatever fellows, she essentially made the point that anytime you have multiple heavily armed groups of individuals at a protest, there is a good likelihood there will be violence or, the concern obviously the movement especially aims at not only promoting unrest capitalizing on it, thats not unique you see it with other groups like the basin white supremacist, specifically with the movement which is been the one of the most active antigovernment movements, you have seen them attempt capitalize on what they believe will be an opportunity, a protest in members are going to go to the protest with heavily armed with guns and hopefully they can incite violence, its very possible you have a situation in postelection certainty you have multiple heavily armed groups of protesters and counter protesters, even if its one group, second group and the members on the side, theyre willing to take advantage of any of the unrest and potential for violence to try for the goals that they have. I know you been focused on one group in particular, in your conversation with those who are supporters and those on the fringes, has there been anything that concerns you in particular in the lead up and potentially after the election. There are many things that concerning. I would say the movement that we are focused on which we call the no compromise Gun Rights Movement serves more than either of my two guest, they study extremism and we are looking at a movement that is positioning to be just at the very edge of mainstream thought and just over the horizon to very, very extreme antigovernment views and plans to do things about that, so we certainly see Militia Groups, white supremacist recruiting in the comments section of many of the videos in groups that i think cm and john are talking about but as far as actively planning on a Public Safety Facebook Page with violence or do anything like that, i think that is the sort of thing that you would be dumb to do in public which i dont think most of that happens but i want to say, there is obviously a different kinds like john was talking about how protest when theres a lot of emotional people gathered and it can be one area and obviously another kind in a recent state of arrest out of the michigan area and kidnapping and allegedly kidnapped governor witmer there. I wanted to point something out about that, it really sticks out to me, they did not wait for the end of the election and they soared over talking about election stuff in the affidavit but one of the main leaders had been kicked out by his girlfriend, i think we should also obviously having rhetoric as hot and high at his is at all times is not safe, people make all kinds of decisions based on a combination for their political beliefs and whats going on in their personal life about what they are going to do violence wise, i think we see examples about all the time so for me, what concerns me not specifically a plot here or there of course all it takes is a couple of people to put together Something Like an Oklahoma City bombing, its more if we live in this environment, if we have a lot access to firearms and explosives and deadly weapons, there will be a point at which one or group of people will decide this is a time in their life, now or never and it may or may not coincide with an election and may not coincide with the local City Council Member saying something nasty to them, there are so many catalyst to some of the folks to inhabit these worldviews that we are talking about, i would never really want to make a prediction when things are most dangerous. That makes a lot of sense, is not just we have to be on the lookout for local or National Event but even personal events can be catalyst for this and really important. I think all three the panelists have reflected on the fact that much as lisa was saying, there is a number of elements that can come together and that are coming together now and will likely be the case after the election, undoubtedly a piece of the current mobilization is at least in part related to the events over the summer that were really stirred by the death of george floyd, i wanted to ask you about what you see as the role of race and racism in these movements in these organizations. Great question, there is a little bit, i wont say intention but maybe an agreement in this sort of thing about how we should understand and think about it, from my own perspective, i like to disambiguate different parts of the far right in the u. S. , i wrote a report year ago that suggest there are three categories of rightwing extremism in the u. S. , there is racism extremism, nativist extremism and antigovernment extremism. Those three categories overlap and i have diagram that i try to use that shows boundaries and suggest that sometimes its really difficult to play specific actors in one of those categories but i think its analytically useful for us to make the distinction because there are some actors that specifically organize around a racial identity and a perceived threat to that racial identity when we think about adam, thats a perfect example when we think about the traditional forms of rightwing extremes extremism is him like the kkk or neonazis, these are organizing around a white racial identity that they think is under threat. A lot of the actors that weve been talking about today are not organizing around a racial identity through organizing around of patriotic or National Identity that they explosively say is colorblind so of course we all know that racism is throughout American Society and i dont want to downplay that by any means, there is racism within antigovernment extremist movements in groups, but the difference of them not actually organizing explosively around racial identity is important and allows them to create partnerships or alliances or even welcome members into their groups who are minorities or people of color to whom they can point and say we have a black member, he is on our website, we coulhow could he possibly be ra. Again just to emphasize, im not trained to suggest there is no racism within the groups or movements, there is certainly plenty of bigotry, for example there nasty exam a phobia and racism within their movement over time, it is the analytical distinction that is important and it has important for how we want to respond to these types of groups but i will hold that off a little later. Lisa i saw you nodding enthusiastically, is there anything that you want to add. This is been something as storytellers that we have had to struggle with a lot in talking about with the no compromise movement, a lot of times people want to simplify reality and i think racism is really complicated, has a history that shifts in changes and learns from its environment and learns what it has to jettison and take on in order to keep marching forward, and editorial meetings people were suggesting that we had to make specific choices we talk about racism and say its a motivator for people and i wanted to be incredibly careful about it because just like sam said, people in the no compromise movement love to point out people of color who are gun owners and share their beliefs and who are spokespeople for their movement and say we are not racist and of course i think any sort of discerning human being can look at someone statement that they are not racists in the larger context in the context of putting out into the world and make their own decisions about that, i think its naive to think of extremist groups as a model list that are only interested in establishing, they are not only, maybe that is at the end of the day someones heart and what is motivating them but what we see over and over again with these movements is that people are willing to put various details of their ideal society aside long enough to organize and come together with likeminded people in order to obtain power. I forgot to make a plug amended ago, if i could do that now rebecca, amy is a sociologist at vanderbilt who has done great work on this, she is really influenced a lot of my thinking about how antigovernment extremists is related to racism and she did a fantastic topography of a Militia Group in michigan in the early 2010 and basically found im going to poorly paraphrase her that members were no more races than members of any other group that you would find but they were blind to a lot of the systematic biased in their policy preferences and their ideal Political Community and those sorts of things. I think this in itself is something that we can talk all afternoon about, unfortunately we only have a few minutes left and i would like to wrap up our conversation by reflecting a bit more on what might be possible solutions or policy responses, john if i start with you i know that you been working on and thinking a lot about the platform responses, their own policies and including content moderation, what are your thoughts on this . Absolutely i think what we have seen thus far in 2020 interns of content moderation is a good first step seen twitter take action against this information in twitter and facebook take action against a broad range of the antigovernment stuff, the other Conspiracy Theory and hate speech leading to violence type of content on these platforms, i think what is important, outside of regulation there is always the specter of section 230 hanging over our heads, we talk a lot about the content moderation stuff but when you look at what platforms can and should do, think its important that they build trust and transparency, we dont want to be building into extremist narratives of marginalization or giving them the spaces, i think its important when facebook or through Something Like gypsy tea like when attempts to moderate, remove, some of facebook things that they did were not black and white, it was focusing on the recommendation, the demonic ties and, it is really about giving the antigovernment extremist a free space to assemble on a platform like facebook and organize, i think thats a good first step, but it cannot be a single platform against a single strand of what they call the violent balloon movement at a specific point in time, what we seen with the boogaloo and ill be the first to always keep their stuff on the online stuff but when you look at it what you see, they will come up with a new language term or phrase from big include, and make the word boogaloo does not mean a whole lot of anything outside of this contents. When a group is no deeper than hawaiian shirt and the gun in a weird word that does not mean anything else, its hard to moderate the content if its always changing, i think getting back to the Building Blocks of not just black and white content removal but removing the morality of some stuff, taking coordinated action across a range of platforms and antigovernment extremist is probably the best path forward for the online stuff. Thank you john we are now at time, i want to take the opportunity to think each of our panelists for sharing your incredible thoughts and insight, recent events make it clear how serious the threat of postelection violence really is in the work that each of you is doing it will be incredibly important in the days and weeks ahead, thinking to each one of you. After short 15 minute break we will reconvene for our fourth and final panel of the day, it is going to future conversation about political mobilization in the wake of covid19 in the influence of digital platform. Please join us then. George Washington University institute for data, democracy and politics hosting the conversation on digital politics after the 15 minute break a look at covid19 affect some political mobilization and digital platforms, in the meantime doctor laura nguyen, George Washington visiting professor talked about how the u. S. Is handling the pandemic. Thank you so much for joining us, i would like to start off by asking you the data in terms of disparities of covid19 infection rates and outcome for people of color around the United States. First of all i am glad to join you and thank you for focusing on this route into really critical topic, we know that this disease, covid19 is not affecting people equally that communities of color are bearing the brunt of this pandemic and in fact this pandemic has unmasked many Underlying Health disparities that weve known for a long time have existed, but are really being brought out in the week of this pandemic, we have seen the africanamericans, Latino Americans, native americans and those who bear the brunt of so many Health Disparities are experiencing the worst outcome, they have disproportionally the many rates of hospitalization, deaths due to covid19 and when you look at the reasons as to why it several full, first we know that social distancing is a privilege that not everyone has access to, people of color tend to be essential workers who from the very beginning of the outbreak have not had the opportunity to practice physical distancing in addition we know that people of color tend to live in crowded multigenerational housing were even basic precaution i isolation quarantines are difficult and then you also look at who has already Underlying Health condition that will then make people more susceptible of the outcome of covid19 preview look at a city in baltimore where one in three africanamericans compared to one in 12, is it any surprise that africanamericans also disproportionally have diabetes, Heart Disease, obesity and use conditions that predispose to severe outcomes because of covid19, all of this is a reminder that it is not the virus in this case that is doing discriminating, it is our health system, it is the condition in which people live the social determinant that we know influence health in many ways but certainly influence the Health Outcome when it comes to covid19 very tragically perhaps the most tragically of all, the same trend that we see in adul adults, they are married and children, three quarters of the deaths that have occurred among children due to covid19 are among the same population in black and brown children. Do you get the sense looking at the data and the trends on the ground that we are improving over time over the course of the pandemic itself, how do these trends of the impact of communities of color actually change over the course of the last several months or are we simply watching over time. It is a really good question and one that i dont have the answer to, that is because we have been missing data all along in the pandemic from the very beginning we have a big problem and maybe in the beginning you can understand because we are just getting started, we are still missing key data points when it comes to who is impacted, who are the individuals who have increased rates of hospitalization and deaths, different states report the data in ways making a difficult comparison and also you have different groups that may be classified differently some states may report on Asian Americans and others with separate Pacific Islanders from api and we have a big issue with Data Collection overall, one hopes that the disparities are improving over time but based on the limited david that we have, its not looking like were getting any better. You have any particular concern about how information in particular misinformation or even disinformation about the virus itself are being received with communities of color and ultimately impacting these communities. Another good question, i would say that this information in general around covid19 has been a big problem, its manifest in different ways, first there is frank disinformation about how we have heard that covid19 real, even the data around who is dying from covid19, cdc report that was put out looking at the conditions that are reported and even that information has been misinterpreted into many different ways because we know death certificates may not contain one diagnosis, somebody may die from covid19 but also have respiratory failure as a cause of their death or an underlying condition in addition to having covid19 Heart Disease and covid19 but that did not mean that this person did not die because of coronavirus its like saying somebody who died from a car accident but also had cancer that somehow they did not die from the car accident because they also had cancer. Even Something Like that has gotten misinterpreted into many different ways and i think it speaks to what is gone wrong in response that there has been mixed messaging and instead of having publichealth lead in the response so often as we see publichealth being pushed under the bus that the message between publichealth officials has differed and thats led to a lot of confusion, then i think you have a different problem in this case as well at baseline you have communities that have had distrust and things like vaccines, there are for example vaccine skeptics who made the antiscience, and on top of that because of various political interference and political pressure that that also has interfered with Peoples Trust in science and you have a whole group of people who are distrusting the process of Regulatory Approval not because they distrust science but they fear political pressure and manipulation and then you have a third group that has historical distrust in the scientific and medical community for good reasons because these are the groups that were talking about black americans, native americans and other groups that have had legacies of being experimented on on unethical illegal experimentation in our asking the same groups to be involved in vaccine trials because we do want to include everyone in vaccine trials but i think it is important for us to do Public Outreach and education in addition to also make sure when the same therapeutics and vaccines come out that the distribution is such that the same communities that are the most by covid19 also receive these vaccines and therapeutics first because otherwise we will perpetuate this concept that we are experiencing on black and brown bodies for the benefit of white and privilege individuals so this is such a complicated multifaceted issue but we have to be attentive to it and recognize that this information is real. In many communities have underlined distrust and we have to draw best to make sure that science leads the process and were overcoming the mixed messaging that has been hovering a response all along. I would like to talk more about the potential solutions and speaking particularly, you described a very complex problem, we have historical experiences, we have contemporary political actions and motives that are creating an environment of great distrust, if you were still a publichealth commissioner whether baltimore or anywhere around the United States, what are some concrete things that you would want to put in place in this moment right now to try and help solve these and deal with the great complexity. I appreciate the question because i think so often we admire the problem and we do not get to the solution, there are tangible solutions in particular when it comes to reducing the disproportionate impact of covid19 on communities of color denied the opportunity to testify in front of congress the last several months specifically about the solutions urging congress, you talk about what we should be doing as Public Officials which looking at my counterparts across the country, local health officials, state Health Directors have been doing their best under extraordinary circumstances, these Health Departments are already extremely Resource Limited and fighting this information every day and doing so much with extremely few resources while also trying to do Everything Else because they are also the safety net for their communities and also trying to work on food access and assisting with individuals experiencing homelessness, the trying to address the Opioid Epidemic and other why they are doing this has two, actually they are doing as well as they can under these conditions. If i may refrain your question to say what can we all do to say what is the role of congress in our elected officials who must all answer the charge, their specific tangible solutions, first we talk about the issue of data, lets make the data known on the demographic breakdowns when it comes to hospitalization, deaths from covid19 and also to testing, one really specific characteristic that we should be measuring is around test positivity we know the test positivity should be below 5 if its 5 we know were not testing nearly enough, we should be making test positivity rates available across demographics and are crossed specific zip codes in the community level, what i mean he may have a test positivity in a state, that is 5 or 3 and looks like its going in the right direction but if we also have test positivity for the Latino American community that finds the test level totally is at 20 we know that we need much more specific targeting to this particular group or if we know about a particular zip code testing at 20 or 30 in the rest of the state looks fine, but the zip code really needs specific resources, that allows us to target testing for example having mobile testing or partner with churches and Community Groups so we are targeting the resources to those communities that need it the most and not just addressing the population as a whole that the key principle of equity, in addition worker protection, we note the essential workers are people of color, people in Nursing Homes who dont have the right amount of ppp, individuals who are Home Health Workers in meatpacking plants, instituting strict worker pretensions on the federal but also in the state and local level and forcing it is going to be really important for reducing the disproportionate impact in communities of color as well, we also need to look at the other social determinants we know the housing for example is also something that very much influences health and Food Insecurity and if we are telling our patients to isolate if they are home Recording Team if theyre exposed but somebody who lives in a house where theyre unable to do that, what can we as society help provide them with the resources to do so in a people are afraid of losing their jobs if they test positive or exposed, what kind of protection can be put in place to help with that and finally i won a touch upon the issue over educational divide and the educational disparities that we are seeing in this time, its a complex issue to think about reopening schools and i know many schools have reopened, potentially in a way that may contribute to outbreaks among the students, staff, teachers, families, communities around them at the same time we know that keeping schools closed will further the educational divide and contribute to the covid slide that were seen across the country for the most honorable children, the key here is for us as society to reduce the level of Community Spread as much as we can to invest resources into our schools not just wealthy private schools but to all schools in particular schools that already have lots of resources for their students so we can as a society charge schools is the most essential to helping children who are most in need. Can you tell me a bit more about your experiences talking to people on the ground, whether its healthcare workers, patients, members of the community themselves that are being affected, what have you been hearing from people on the ground, how are they reacting and what would you say that they need to hear from us Going Forward. Im hearing from patients, Community Members that they want to do the right thing, i think people are recognizing the area where i live at least, in the communities i speak to that they absolutely understand the covid19 is a pandemic and something that is affecting each of us and i think theres a great deal of frustration, of course quarantine fatigue is something that is very real and there is a great deal of frustration that people can be doing all the right things and mixed messaging and confuse messaging and coming from our elected leaders in making the sacrifices the people are making and thats very difficult to hear and conceptualize because people are giving up so much and people are not seeing their grandchildren, they are older adults and not able to safely gather in Senior Centers that have been there lifeline, kids have not been able to go to school and individuals have lost their livelihoods because the pandemic, im hearing we gave up so much and had this opportunity early on to changes pandemic and were not sober now are sacrificing so much in life continues to be lost, that is one thing, another thing of quarantine fatigue, we cannot be isolated for the foreseeable future, its important for us to figure out which risk we are willing to continue to take on and which are the risks that we need to cut down on, understanding that we need to figure out how to live with the virus in one of the transit we are seeing that many new infections are not so much do to the congregate settings and formal settings and informal settings and they are getting infected and gatherings with their love ones and thats really important for all of us to keep in the need for continuing to be on our guard and 50 are from individuals who do not have symptoms, there is a level of the actual thinking that many account that our love ones dont have coronavirus because we know them and we loved your loved ones but that is somehow not change just for preparing this its truly critical for keeping in mind that if we are doing all these things and physically distance at home and Wearing Masks that were only going to be coming together for play dates or Birthday Celebration after words and abided by these restrictions that were still going to have outbreaks, the outbreaks are going to be schools closed for longer and by the same token if her doing everything we can at the Grocery Stores in network and were still getting people together for dinner parties indoors and also going to be eliminating all the goals that we are doing intimate member to use an abundance of cautious and all those things that are most important to you and remember mask wearing, gathering outdoors rather than indoors, eliminating or avoiding crowds, these are all the things that we can do in order to protect ourselves and loved ones and allows us to get as much back to normal and not be isolated as we can. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today, thank you for all the work that you are doing and please be safe and be well. Thank you very much. We have more from the George Washington university hosted forum on digital politics, up next covid19 affect some political mobilization and digital platforms. Hello and thank you for joining us for this conversation as part of the conference on digital citizenship in a pandemic and political information and action in 2020 i am abrams from the Public Health from the George Washington university and youve heard in the previous session today about Fact Checking political news of Law Enforcement preparing for potential postelection violence and we also discussed the impact of disinformation about covid19 and communities of color, our next panel will focus on covid19 and digital platforms. We have seen the power of information and disinformation and how can people cut through the sea of claims and counterclaims on the internet and social media and make sense of the sheer volume of information out there, and what is the responsibility of those who receive social media platforms to make sure it is actually correct and accurate, today we have a distinguished group joining us, im going to start with you first david, doctor david is an associate professor in the school of engineering and applied sciences at the George Washington university and hes associate director of the data democracy and politics. He shows that states sponsored trolls were responsible for distortion of Public Opinion of vaccines on social media. Hi david. Thank you so much for having me. Can you start by telling us what do you think about the quality of Health Information out there in about what your work and what it says about the presence of Misinformation Campaign on social media. Thank you very much for that, one of the things to keep in mind about what were seen on social media is there is a wide range of hidden agendas in Different Reasons why maybe people seemed like Health Information. We cannot assume that just because we see something online about covid19 or any help or vaccines or whatever the case may be that is not necessarily intended to inform, may just be there so you click on a link and buy a product or in some cases expose yourself to identity theft, one of the things that are own work has shown that people use information about Public Health to essentially try to promote discourse which has geopolitical overtones as we have seen earlier today. One of the more recent findings that we have been tracking is that people are using information about various Public Health issues including an especially covid19 in order to form political movements and to engage in political mobilization so people can express certain ideals such as freedom of choice and social liberties and use coping and particular in the desire to ultimately refuse to Covid Vaccine when it becomes available as a sign of political identity. Thank you. Turning to you nicholas, doctor nicholas is a lector of a International Affairs in the doctoral affair, hello at the institute for data democracy and politics. Nicholas is where focusing on developing tools with coordinated social coordination and online interaction. What my Research Team does is focus on works across Different Social Networks meaning supremacy that coordinate so we werent silent but we were surprised how it was copied but also the Unpopular Health policies enacted by the government to fight against the pandemic and they been doing this by identifies and people of color and minorities, Asian American as the responsible for the covid pandemic or the agents behind those unpopular Public Health. Thank you. Our third panelist is [inaudible]. Tech policy expert leave leading mobile initiatives to pinterest, facebook and google. Health Information Initiative includes pinterest has been lauded by the World Health Organization for leading the way in creating policies that tries to limit this information in a coordinated campaign. Could i turn it to you and could you tell me what you think of those existing policies on social media platforms, Digital Media platforms and whether theyre doing any good in limiting the kinds of coordinated campaign and using social media for political purposes. I will say a few things. First, thanks for having me on the panel but platforms have a responsibility here in the same way they have a response ability to address misinformation around political content, misinformation that has targeted the specific groups. When we address information specifically covid misinformation in the political context it is important to address across all issues because there are the ways that misinformation or people online are often specific to a platform specific to the communities being targeted. On or the efforts that platforms have made i think they do not have a choice when the pandemic blew up in the United States at least and they could no longer pretend that it is an issue elsewhere. Ebola is information and disinformation has existed has existed for years and there was a huge crisis and it was not addressed in any significant way by platforms. It is if you go on youtube and on facebook and on instagram wherever and so because the pandemic hit the United States in the way that it did it was not going to be the sort of leeway from political leaders on both sides of the aisle for not addressing it and many of the efforts that platforms have made have been what i consider a pr move in order to not get in trouble or ignoring it the same way they continue to ignore other Health Information issues. Many platforms have rampant misinformation on reproductive issues, rampant misinformation on the flu which we are in a period of the year where we are dealing with a double issue with both the flu and covid diagnostic is going and so i think yes, we should lauded some of the work that has been attempted and we should laud the attention to the issue but we shouldnt trick ourselves into thinking that this has been addressed in any real way or any lasting way by the platform. What i will say additionally to is that if platforms address misinformation seriously and actually remove it and if they take the sort of efforts that have been taken recently by facebook and youtube against twitter and against remove a large portion of the information unlike with conspiracy theories which help information what we will be left with is a void if Public Health communicators dont add contact and that content cant be in the form of journal reviews or can be in the form of one pagers but really has to be tailored to the ways in which people consume the content on the different platforms and needs to be an engaging video and its the same in twitter short form Public Health communicators need to step in so that Something Else doesnt happen by misinformation. You think what has been done so far is more in the vein of a pr effort rather than effective and is there any part that is effective that you mentioned for quanon and anything for coronavirus like Health Information . What has been effective and is very will need to look at it Going Forward because it has been just in the last week that there has been a huge sweeping effort to remove quanon groups what has been effective there is in removing actual groups and removing that count that is spreading and the miss information and if the same does not happen with covid content and specifically as we move closer to a vaccine being on the market or multiple vaccines if we dont address roots where the misinformation is proliferating then it is not really effective in my mind particularly on a platform like facebook and so they are asked has to be more of an effort to just address that content itself and its individual pieces but the actual purveyors of the this information. Great. Thank you. That brings up the question of coordinated campaigns. Youve done a lot of work in this area in the dark corners of the internet where racism exists and how they are coordinating and using this information as a weapon and what can you tell us about that work and what it might say for how we could do better in the future at limiting this content . Niclas you are muted. What we saw in the Previous Panel we [inaudible] some of them regulated and and what we are seeing is the coordination by communities to profit from that have a wide audience that are not properly or not easily addressable so Facebook Groups are the source of the situation most of which come from [inaudible] which is a way to describe influence are much more prone by facebook or other platforms. The problem is that we need an approach that these Companies Might have regulators from policymakers in order to suddenly what can be contribut contributed. Their Business Model is not an approach to collaborate especially because many of these platforms do not reside in the United States. Could you jump in there to Say Something about, perhaps a nation across the network . I was going to add nuance using an example of spam networks so when spam first proliferated platforms did Work Together. Platforms do not exist in the way they exist now where at least in this conversation will gain mostly speaking about platforms but Online Companies Work Together and email Companies Work together to address them and i think there is a model they are although it is not the exact same where companies can Work Together and that happens without government regulation. We may be at a point where there is no longer the desires to cooperate because maybe there is a sense that there is a Competitive Edge here and i dont personally see it having worked at different platforms but i do think that we should remind the platforms and then also remind policymakers and anyone else part of this conversation that this is not the first time platforms Work Together on an issue that fundamentally harms consumers and we need to see this is a good consumer harm issue as we well. Thank you. Turning to you david, youve also studied hate speech and misinformation and what you know from your research about how misinformation spreads from the dark corners and then even offline behavior. Absolutely. One of the first things to keep in mind that the social media performs in particular are very much accessible to researchers in some things and there is another sense in which they are not. In order to be consistent with standards of research one cant look into a private venue, for example, private groups or other private chats where there is an expectation that people are not simply putting their information out there and i think its important for us to realize that what we are were observing is really just the tip of the iceberg and if we see Something Like explicit hate speech and for example a Facebook Group or even a twitter thread or telegram a chat and in those situations in many cases those public groups point to private groups and those private groups point to all platforms venues of some kind and a lot of these actors gain a lot of their power from a process of artificial amplification in a small number relatively consecrated number of entities that are making it appear as if there is a wide and thats what weve seen in our own fireworks. For example, the use of [inaudible] on twitter is one technique that people use in order to artificially amplify their perspective and make it seem as if a small number of what is generated by a small number of large number of accounts and that theres only one technique that several of these malicious actors might use when you consider that some of these actors have the backing of a nationstate behind them not only do they have simply a few social media accounts but they have propaganda sources and techniques in which they could spread rumors through the traditional media or third person to person rumor and so we have to utilize digital platforms and social media platforms of these smaller subset are not a ecosystem in and of themselves but this is the tip of a much, much larger discussion going on and to address your final question does any of this reflect realworld behavior and i think the question to ask is not does social media change peoples behaviors but rather its the opposite question and to what extent do social media reflect the realworld behaviors . If we are looking at it from the perspective of just social media we are missing the broader point here which is that social media is only one of the multitude of influencers that are out there and malicious actors are especially involved in all sorts of encroachments and techniques in order to get there a tent across. To be clear about this is not only statesponsored actors but in some case they are private individuals with a lot of resources in some cases their political movements and there are really a wide range. Thank you. Could i follow up and ask, what do you think then, given that this idea of social Media Companies come together and having coordinated policies that address some of these things with this address some of these, for example, statesponsored initiatives to amplify a messa message . Is it just hopeless . It is certainly not hopeless. First keep in mind, speaking i do think the technology has a lot to do with the changes in what we have seen today versus 20 years ago. One of the key things to keep in mind about social Media Application is not so much that the social media allows amplification but that is neutral because but rather that people expect social media to be democratic. Social media has had a story and there is a narrative around the social media that is been sold for the last 20 years now where weve been basically saying that anybody who generates contact and therefore will somehow allow the best information to bubble to the top and the loose solution to bad speech is more speech is a phrase weve heard a lot and in fact, that is only true and everybody has equal access to speech but what were saying is that it is if you are standing in a crowd when there are millions upon millions of people and they are all talking at the same time but five people have really loud megaphones. Then they get to drown out everyone else. I think the key thing to keep in mind here is that yes, the toddy does make a difference. Yes, there are millions of people and interacting in all sorts of ways and people are motivated to do so and at the same time were at the new technological environment and so just as in the past those who had access to the tv airwaves were able to, in many ways, control the narrative and discourse and those who are now able to use the technology to their advantage are much more able to control the discourse. If you really want to realize the democratic potential that means in large part of ensuring equal access, not necessarily shutting down things for or getting rid of the platforms entirely or trying to move back to the past but we have to learn how to adjust to these technologies and this goes straight to what happens when we get rid of all the conspiracy theorists from social media platforms. At that point if our Public Health officials are not trained and sufficiently wellinformed and using these new ways the platform allow us to come indicate in such a way that they can take full advantage of the potential than somebody else will. They will do it in a much more sophisticated way because they will have seen their own predecessors get blocked. Thank you. Lets build on that point. You and david have both mentioned that there is somehow a void if you take away these some of these conspiracy point of view and left with Public Health not really using and if all of you could talk and medication styles that are out there thinking about science like anti factors versus science trustee and or science roots what are some of those differences and strengths and weaknesses of those different approaches for communication. Would you take it first . Sure, the thing i think about often is the ways in which niclas and david have done the Actual Research on this and ive seen it more from being at the platforms but the ways in which Public Health experts communicate with the public versus the ways conspiracy theorists of the folks that are making money so i would consider them broad sisters are community with their adherence or possible and the difference is in using a peer to peer style of communication so that it does not exist as much so some Public Health communicators that do an excellent job of that but that is seen at the large organizational level and social media as david said has been sold to everyone as a democratic way of committee gating and butter put on a level Playing Field but the communication from Public Health organization is very much topdown and we have the information we are giving it to you and there will be no backandforth and we are sharing information on the topic and there is not the opportunity to talk about other things that are top of mind for you but there will always be a gap in effectiveness because when you go to groups that are pushing parents not to vaccinate their kids for measles and some of those groups have been starting to spread lies about the Covid Vaccine and when parents raise issues theyre not just raising issues about covid or about measles but talking about their kids in general. All of the issues they have and if you forget that people dont experience anything in a vacuum then thick medication is always going to be lacking from Public Health. That said look Health Committee caterers dont have all day to spend on social media and they dont have all day to be answering questions and so i think there has to be some sort of sorting of prioritizing certain platforms and setting aside some time at least to answer peoples questions questions and meet them where they are. Thank you. Niclas, i will turn it to you. Any observations from your work . Two things. First, the result of the good news is that interviews that we have traditional stay cold and the stakeholders and the vaccination like the who [inaudible] that reaches into communicate not just on the Community Point from an equal to equal and to address the sound Public Health and sound advice in terms of people can relate from the perspective and mothers to mothers and owners to owners because of the second. 1 of the ways here at gw we have [inaudible] rich social movement, which are being targeted by the anti factors and this gives you a map and with that map it is clear that mothers are the prime target of the anti factors. The Community Country in the Community Neighborhood [inaudible] but is also should be the similar level of targeting that Public Health community should choose. Yes, thank you. Thats interesting. If we could stay on top of what anti factors or roots groups are targeting as Public Health officials we could be targeting what were not doing now. David, turning to you. Im wondering what you can tell us based on your work and understand youve done a lot of work . Medication styles between pro vaccination and anti vaccination groups. Yes, thank you for that. I will say two things that are controversial and first is that i have come to believe that there is no such thing as a modal antivaxxers which is to say that we cant take everybody who is skeptical about or hesitant about vaccination and lump them into some single organized group as if they are all playing from the same playbook. In fact, some of the work that niclas was talking about has shown quite clearly that the massive diversity among different types of antivaxxers as well as our own work. One of the things we see is that people oppose vaccination for a wide variety of Different Reasons, either because they believe in Natural Health and they are skeptical of western medicine or because they have misinformed beliefs about vaccines causing harm or because dont trust the government to actually ensure the safety of vaccines and what we seen more and more is that these different groups are starting to agree on a framing that does not require them to agree so what i mean to say by that is more and more we seen a rise in discourse around vaccine refusal that is framed as civil rights or individual choice or right to choose. The thing about this particular framing is that if it is your right to choose then you can decide for a few vaccines for whatever you want but if you are free to refuse vaccines then you can do it because you believe Natural Health is better or you can do it because you believe that the government isnt trustworthy or because you believe the science isnt trustworthy and all these Different Reasons become encompassed within this broader discussion about the values of the right to choose. That is something we started to see adopted by a wide range of statelevel political movements. This dovetails with several other sorts of discourses that emphasize the freedom of the individual or individualism which is associated with in the u. S. More as a libertarian philosophy and has been more and more coopted by specific Political Parties around the world. We are seen this focus on a right to choose really around the world and again keep takehome message is not that all of the anti factors are agreeing rather that they are focusing in the leaves among them are focusing on the discourse that doesnt require so that is provides a risk and an opportunity. One of the things that is an opportunity is that if they dont necessarily have to agree then that means there is not actually a unified argument. That means that divide and conquer may actually work. This is where we get to the second controversial thing that i will say which is that if you want to convince people who oppose vaccines that they should take vaccines then you have to be willing to at least entertain the possibility that you may be wrong, not that you are wrong about the science because the science has a very strong solid base but you have to be willing when there is uncertainty you have to have a conversation about that uncertainty and willing to knowledge that people dont necessarily all share the same value and then there has to be an ongoing conversation and not just one and done. There has to be an ongoing conversation where if somebody is going to take up a vaccine they have to see why that is complicit with the values they hold. For example, maybe somebody believes very strongly in the value of individualism but they also believe that it is their response ability rather than the right to protect their families and protect their loved ones and if we focus on a discussion about how wrong they are to be focused on themselves that has the framing of making them a villain of sorts which nobody wants to see themselves in that way. I think when it comes to communication i absolutely agree that horizontal and vertical communication approaches both have their place. I would go one step beyond that and i would say we have to directly engage with peoples values. We have to be willing to have the conversation that is not i had the facts and i am right and you dont have the facts and you are wrong but it has to be these are the facts for the stock about what they mean and what do they mean for you and lets have a conversation that builds community because once we build community then we can Start Talking about change like why is this the right thing for the community. Without a community there is no conversation to be had. Thank you. Thank you for that. It brings up so many topics. It brings up the issue of, given that this is really one solution is a horizontal conversation over time Building Community about values like these are long indepth conversations and resource intensive so what realistically with the Public Health agencies get by this and can the Public Health community do and what kind of social Media Companies due to also kind of wait for the Public Health voice is louder. Yeah, it is a longterm conversation but it doesnt have to be effective just in the long term. Again, the ebola work that was done in the brc and in other countries in central and western africa is groundbreaking and has been lauded as such because the conversations happening on the ground and via Radio Communication and a little bit on social was very much around communities and their needs. They will go to Community Leaders and working with Community Organizations and having folks who are already respected as Authority Figures in each community then share the facts but then also talk about peoples values and why it was important for them to include the facts in their decisionmaking. That exact same sort of approach can be happening and it is happening in some communities here in the United States. I live in santa fe new mexico in northwest new mexico and the largest outbreak we had in the states was in Navajo Nation which spans across new mexico and arizona. Those same sorts of efforts were made and that is what is made that outbreak under control in a way that we are not seen in other places where there isnt as much as a focus on community and Community Leaders working to convince people that accepting the facts and learning what they need to address is part of Public Health. They cant just tell someone go wash her hands when they dont have access to water. We have to address the water issues as well. There is an opportunity to do that resources and thats where i think platforms come in. They are practically printing money right now and i think their money needs to be where their mouth is and if this is an issue important to them they need to be financially supporting post Community Organizations and Public Health organizations that are doing this work both online and offline. Great, thank you. When you say platforms can step in and certainly they have resources that they could donate to communities but are there things they could also do that go back to that issue of platform policies and Platform Design and platform architecture that would give smaller communities and Public Health agencies a louder voice . Would you talk to that again to . Niclas raised his i will turn it to nicolas and then we can come back to you. What the platforms do i think provide resources but they can provide resources into first, Political Science and data in the answer again in the social networks can tell you who are the key leaders and key special movements that you as a Public Health want to get with your Political Parties and also in the internet that are global. Plugging you into those communities and with those influencers affect the social network of your own so build social capital between [inaudible] more social networks have content based on your behavior and one thing you could do is redirect and the basis of sound and Public Health policy. If you are looking into information about Covid Vaccines [inaudible] one thing or another only your north american, european or doing something but essentially theyre not doing this for the content but you scroll down through their feeds so that is something they could leverage. Thank you. Thank you. David, do you want to add anything to this . What can Public Health groups do better to improve the study and what social companies can offer as a resource in this shared mission. Absolutely. Its important to realize that the different platforms has different designs and those designs have a strong impact on the ways in which people interact. We spoken about facebook and Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages and facebook has as one of its stated missions Building Community and the very structure of facebook allows for Building Community but unfortunately we are now an environment where people have built communities around a set of beliefs that are quite dangerous for society and so there is an opportunity to take advantage of the structure of facebook to be able to address that. For example, in facebook there are administrators and as niclas pointed out those are much more policed by administrators in our groups. Facebook has a policies about what is allowed to be posted in groups so to a large extent some of those policies are not important but if administrators will hold responsible for what is posted inside the groups that would solve two problems for facebook and one is it solves a problem of accountability because its clear who is responsible for the content and technically it solves the product of scale because facebook does not have to stay on top of every single message but simply have to delegate to some degree some authority to that administrator who stays on top of the messages in that space or group. That being said, there has to be more of a process for selecting administrators and that may be something the governors could provide and that is one possibility. That approach will not work for twitter because we dont have [inaudible]. Weve essentially broadcast medications and is prone to things like artificial amplification because that is simply what the platform allowed. People do use direct messages but they are much more private and that middle layer of groups is not except to the extent that you take account of hashtags and things like that. You will need a different strategy for twitter then he would for facebook and of course its different entirely. Tiktok is primarily a video based platform and different as well. What is the role of the Public Health officials can take in . First of all, theres the question of Public Health policy. But the level of policy we have to be what we call Systems Engineering solutions neutral. We cant stay that a particular algorithm or particular approach is going to cut across platforms and we have to specify highlevel functional objectiv objectives, functional objectives may be for example that specific topic and will not be allowed to go past a certain threshold. Each platform has to figure out for itself how does it achieve that objective given this technology that platform intimates and that is something that i feel like weve not seen very often and this specification of the way in which the technology in the policy interact. I think we need to do a lot more we need to have a lot more conversation about that. The individual Public Health to mitigate or has to be trained to use that platform and the technique will not be the same and will not be effective if you use them on facebook or tiktok. We have two people that are trained in this of course requires training and requires resources. Those same people have to be trained not only in using the platforms of technology but in figuring out how to communicate the bottom line message that the person on the other end on the recipient and should be concluding so we need a new Cognitive Group of people that are trained on one hand and the use of specific platforms and on the other hand in being able to instill Public Health messages into something that people can easily understand on that platform. This is not a technological problem alone and not a policy problem alone. It is something that requires knowledge and focus. I think we will start to see the rise of essentially a new profession that if it is sufficiently resourced will have to take on this role. Thank you. Interesting. I know were coming to the close overtime so i want to come back to you, fiona. Anything you would like to add to the topic of a social Media Companies can do as well as how we can train our next generation of Public Health practitioners with social media . I think a good first step would be sharing more of what they are seen. Twitter is easily studied by researchers in this area because most does every thing on twitter other than messages in public and i dont know that we have enough data on the actual, the actual causation relationship between what people are seen and the different forms of misinformation and their actual behaviors to then build programs around disinformation. Im not saying theyre not harmful there and its misinformation and disinformation about health is harmful but i think platforms is a very first step means it shares more of the data of what they are seen both the content and the reach on the information they are seeing and the reach of the group that are prolific with researchers that then more work can be done around where resources should be directed. Great, thank you. On that note of sharing data i would say that one other area where there seems to be a lot of where we really are facing knowledge because of lack of sharing data is how the different policies are implementing and you mentioned earlier in some ways pr efforts but in some ways may be genuine initiatives and how well are they working . Are they limiting disinformation, are they limiting misinformation on are they changing the actual ecosystem of social media i think we just dont know enough because we dont have the full data. On that note, i will close. Thank you for all your wisdom and your great perspectives today. Again, im at George Washington university and before we wrap up i will turn it over to the institute for data democracy and politics director, rebecca. We close todays conference just two weeks before one of the most consequential elections in our nations history. In the midst of a pandemic the coronavirus cases are rising rapidly around the country we are experiencing this historic moment largely online and are political words and actions are filtered through web cameras, zoom rooms, Text Messages and of course, social media platforms such as youtube, twitter and facebook. From Fact Checking, online campaigns to assessing the potential for postelection violence todays discussion to provide greater insight into what it means to be digital citizens in 2020. And incredibly grateful to all our panelists for sharing their thoughts and expertise. To my fellow moderators for facility these conversations and for members of our audience taking time out of their busy day to contemplate these important topic. Im especially grateful to all the behindthescenes staff who have worked nearly nonstop for the last two months to bring this event together. I sincerely hope the next year i will be able to greet all of you at the institute for data democracy and politics in a person. Its welcoming you to George Washington universitys campus with a handshake or a hug. Until then, please be safe. Be well. Do i let my people run it really well or badly . If i run it badly they will probably blame him but theyll blame me and more portly i want to help people. He is cost 10 Million People their health care that they had from their employers because of his recession. With less than two weeks before the 2020 election watch the second president ial debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President joe biden. Thursday from Belmont University in nashville, tennessee. Live coverage begins at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan with us and live on the brief cspan radio app and go to cspan. Org debates for live on line streaming for debates coverage. Tonight on the communicators republican fcc commissioner brendan carr talks about 5g infrastructure, free speech on the internet and regulation of big tech companies. I think we should bring a light touch approach to regulating big tech but up until now theres been a no touch approach and we never had a gap between the size, scale and power of an institution like big tech in the absence or near absence of regulation. Watch the communicators with replicant fcc commissioner brendan carr tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2 area. Now remarks by defense secretary mark esper on military readiness on all branches but he talks about his long goals for the armed forces and competing with china. This is hosted by the Heritage Foundation. Hello. Welcome to the Heritage Foundation for conversation with secretary of defense mark esper on the critical topic
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