Digital citizenship pandemic, political information and action in 2020. I am rebekah tromble, director George Washington universitys institute for data, democracy and politics and and i am pleam welcome you to our conference. Today we had the opportunity to speak to a number of renowned experts, academics, journalists, medical and Public Health professionals as well as grassrootsro activists about how the coronavirus pandemic has reshaped digital communication, campaigning and activism in the lead up to what is the most consequential elections in this nations history. We will discuss thehe challengef Fact Checking political claims in real time, the targeting and effects of this information on communities of color, potential postelection violence being organizedol online and much, muh more. However, before we begin our first panel i would like to invite you to watch a few remarks from George Washington universitys president. Good morning. Im thomas leblanc, president of the George Washington university and i am pleased to welcome you toni todays event, hosted by gws institute for data democracy andpo politics. During these past several months the pandemic and president ial election cycle have put digital politics front and center. And our university has been leading research and conversation that shed light on the developments that are definingng our lives and changig the course of history. Our institute for data democracy and politics is dedicated to combating the harms that arise from online spaces in these critical moments, helping the public, journalists and policymakers understand digital medias influence on Public Discourse while developing sound solutions. Perhaps now more than ever this work is n vital. In the short time since its creation, the institute has worked on investigative pieces with journalists, hosted events with policymakers and academic experts, and become a force for factbased information in a sea of misinformation. Most recently our research tap into twitter and facebook data to investigate the many ways that social media platforms circulate harmful, misleading and divisive content. At a time when media manipulation, fake accounts and malicious Online Activity are undermininge democratic ideals and targeting vulnerable and marginalized members of society, events like today cannot misunderstand the rise and role of online disinformation. They also up us consider the impact of Digital Trends on local politics and examine how discourse about covid19 itself is reshaping american politics as we approach a u. S. President ial election that is only weeks away. At gw we are committed to a teaching and Research Mission that creates new knowledge and has a positive impact on the world. Through the efforts of her institute for data, democracy and politics, i am confident that this impact now includes making us all better informed and better engaged digital citizens. Thank you for joining us today for this important event. And now i would like to turn the program over to my colleague at the institute for data, democracy and politics, frank sesno. Thank you, to all who are joining us today as we gather virtually obviously amid a pandemic confronting theob disparities that are made worse, challenged by the reckoning we all know so well, now just days from election that is so divided this country. It is fair to say that our very survival on so many levels depends on credible factbased information. And yet this information is under siege, as never before. We are awash in disinformation, conspiracy theories, threats, demonization, deliberate misstatements of fact. And it comes to us, all of this, from foreign adversaries as well as National Leaders in person, on the air come across social media. Those who seek to inform the public honestly, accurately must compete in this brutal information ecosystem. How do they confront it . What should they cover . What should they ignore . Which is a fact check and how . What works . What gets through . These questions and more will be for this incredible panel of journalists and scholars who are very much on the front lines. But first this is what it has become. What i would love to have as a crawl at the bottom of the screen, Fact Checking. If its off by one when hundreds of her purpose its like i had that getting pinocchios. It took 221 221 days to geto 1000. We are the people who are annoyingly precise and analyzing your every word. Dont even try to say every or always because it usually never ever always. We had an avalanche of line from President Trump. We have af higher deficit wih china now that we did before. That was a case two years ago but not y now. And im okay with electric cars. Im all for electric i get big incentive for electric cars. Hes try to limit programs to encourage their manufacturing and sales. What biden said abouto trump is not quite that cut and dried. Most residents have one big false claim. President trump doesnt just have one. There are more than 400 claims he is repeated more than three times since taking office. Some of those hes made literally hundreds of times. Nearly one in six Small Businesses have closed this year. Thiss is accurate but it nees context. We make that partially true. We rate that is inconclusive. We rate that as false. I have said to the Fact Checking you better fact f check yourself whoac are the Fact Checkers . We dont know. Angie Drobnic Holan is ever in chief of politifact. Hi, angie. I think you are muted so if you unmute yourself there we go. Good to see you. Ethan is an assistant professor George Washingtons University School of needy public school. Thanks for joining, ethan. Great to be here, frank. And mara liasson, Award WinningNational Correspondent for npr him. When the most respected voices in viticulture listen. Welcomel to you. Lets go to the questions now. Angie id like to start with you. You. You are editorinchief of politifact. Your report on the Politifact Team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting so you know this well. You do it incredibly well and you have been doing it for a while. Question for you. Pandemic and politics have collided in really unprecedented way. What kinds of things are you find yourselves confronting at politifact as result of that collision . Well, its been the busiest and most frenetic Campaign Season that i can remember. There is so much conversation of whats going on, so much misinformation online. We basically a Fact Checking wholesale everyday and in addition to Fact Checking the normal policy disputes that would happen, we also Fact Checking misinformation about a pandemic that is spread online. And then we have the unusual situation where the president is sometimes the source of misinformation with his tweets are what he says. So lots of Fact Checking going on, and facts are really in dispute right now not always i havent seen in the past. That video we were going to see which we didnt see was going to be an in academy of the things that are out there, said byof them being the president of the United States in terms of a flood of Fact Checking. Angie,e, question, what are you focused on in your Fact Checking especially with covid collision covid and politics come what are examples of the types of thing ship in fact, of late . Some of the examples weve seen from President Trump, he says were of the best country fighting covid and he will fight the statistics, but were not. Were kind of in the middle. Were not the worst but were not the best either. Es suggested the vaccine is imminent when there are clearly still going through testing. And then we see things not repeated by trump budgets online, a lot of misinformation about health. Things like mask wearing can be harmful. Thats not true. Theres no evidence to suggest that. Some things weve seen young people are immune. They are not immune. Being older is definitely more of a risk factor again people get sick and sometimes die as well. And then we have seen just a plethora of claims about fake cures, things like bleach or vitamin c or warm water which is really weird, that t are just nt true but they seem to gain traction and travel throughout the internet. Ive also heard from doctors directly, angie, about which stuff thats out there come segments i had one doctor told had a patient, in who told him that hed seen online literally had seen online africanamericans cant get covid, which of course is not only hardly not true treatment contrary to the paint fact that african americans, people of color getting sick and dying and disproportionate numbers. Are you Fact Checking that stuff, that joke that is out there . Yes, were basically Fact Checking everything we can fact check. What happens is this is a new disease and so scientists, the best science and evidence has been building up since we started. There are questions about who is the most affected, and the we run into like the things we always dealt with is the where the Healthcare System that is Racial Disparities and income disparities. People are not always getting the best care and then we are trying to figure out like what is going on with this disease, it has a lot of strange symptoms that can be different for every person. We have noticed people a very Different Health outcomes acceptable get over it quickly and some people die and then you have the range of outcomes in between. But it does seem to be a disease that is impacting communities that of only been under stress. So the africanamerican community, the latino community. Its like, to wrap up, its a new disease and its coming into an American Society that already has a lot of health care disparitiesad. Your research on public understanding of your next book also love the truth about political mistruths in the trumpcare. We will cut to the chase on all that. As angie was pointing out we had this infodemic of covid misinformation and disinformation. At the same time as we have a president of the United States who himself is actively spreading it. My question for you, you just contributed to debunking handbook which describes itself as a quick guide responding for misinformation. So let me ask you to kind of weight in first on the kind of work that angie is doing and that the efficacy of Fact Checking in and an apartment ss this . Theresen no doubt were livg in a world worrisome amount of misinformation. The good news is groups like angies group are really effective at what they do. Fact checking insofar as we are talkings about reducing the release of misinformation can be really effective. Ea so if you go into the politifact website at any given day youll see exactly what angie is talkg about. They are Fact Checking everything, viral facebook post, Fact Checking statements by donald trump. My research has shown an research ive done with my collaborators as shown in fact, checking makes people more accurate, that people who are fact checked come to believe the truth. Thats thed good news. The worrisome news, sort of the flipside of that is maybe not enough people are consuming fact checks, that sometimes the people who spread most of the misinformation, people who believe the most of the misinformation dont go on the Fact Checking sites on their own accord. Thats the challenge. When people see fact checks come people become more accurate. What journalists, what media leaders and political leaders need to do is focus on getting the fact checks to the people who need d them. Could you back backup just e people really are clearm. About this. In your research when you say Fact Checking works, what have you found is the effect on people . Does it corrector impression, change your opinion, alter their behavior . Sure. There are many different possible effects of Fact Checking. The first effect, the first order fact has to do with whether or not people believe the fact check, or do they believe in this truth . Early research was skeptical the people leave the fact check. Working with the team of coauthors for years what ive shown that people believe the fact check more than they believe that misstatement which is to say that i checking pushes people factual beliefs in the accurate direction. Thats true on average, not true for everybody. You should do what i tell companyor they say that i know somebody who does respond to fact checks. That may be true, but on average people respond to fact checks by becoming more factual accurate. Thats exciting news. As for the other possible effects of Fact Checking, such as political beliefs, changing peoples voting preferences, the evidence for that is less definitive. It seems oftentimes fact checks dont change peoples political attitudes, but it does seem to change the factual veracity of peoples beliefs. Let me go over to mara liasson. You covered i think by my count eight president ial elections now come Something Like that . You are muted. Can you undo yourself . I am needed. It feels like 800 come just. Im sure it does especially now. Youu are nprs White House Correspondent during the Clinton Presidency so you covered wideouts in the belly of the beast. What we are seeing is nothing weve experienced before. How would you say the kind of misinformation around this pandemic which provides this kind of very unstable floor of Everything Else we are experiencing right now is overlapping politics, affectig the way you are covering politics this election cycle . The pandemic is a a number e issue. Itsco been completely politicid to say it overlaps i think isnt even strong enough. Its completely melded and merged with the pandemic and the election are one thing. The pandemic is a metaphor. Masks are a metaphor. Donald trump, his experience with getting covid is to show how strong he is and how he feels 200 years younger. Oresteia is as good as he did 20 years ago if you could say thats a piece of misinformation. That come would make you feel better. So to me its completely merged. Having the pandemic and what politicians say about the pandemic is the same thing. Its one and the same. It inseparable from covering the election campaign. How do you decide, mara, how to balance your coverage and how to frame the coverage . Is the president of the United States said something that is incorrect or highly disputed by experts, angie at politifact fact checks and says its wrong, how do you decide how to cover that . Well it depends. There are a lot of different ways. I used to make a joke that back in 2016 when the president did something come said something that was outrageous or broken norm, like and what to punch the protest into phase come what was i supposed do as an objective journalist . Go out and interview someone who is antipunching protested and face . Thats ridiculous. Now what we do is we try to get the fact check as close to this statement of ms. Of it as possible. You see when you Fact Checking the person as hes speaking. You can do that on tv writing radio we often do a true sandwich. I dont never came up with a true sandwich originally. The ideas you dont just let the president Say Something in the sake but experts say this is not true. He said it b by saying the president falsely claim or claims without evidence, you have insight because hes a president , whatever he says is by definition is and you come out of this and you explain why thats not accurate. Thats one way we do it. The other thing is, and this is something i wanted to ask ethan and maybe we can get back to this later, the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Even talked about how people are fact check become more accurate. That sounds like they made a mistake or they gave misinformation. But theres a whole universe of people including the the presit of the United States and many, many parts of the republican universe that dont, but do not respond to being fact fact chek because they dont care because they are pushing disinformation. In other words, intentional falsehoods for a political purpose. Its like when the president gives a shout out to qanon and praises him for being against pedophilia. Thats not a mistake that he made that can be fact checked. Thats on purpose. But in terms of what we do, editors at npr have this challenge every single day. The New York Post story comes that we can talk about the latest but Hunter Bidens computer. Doha we cover the fact that loo, the New York Post says that theres this and this on Hunter Bidens computer or do we say whoa, heres a story that some experts say is s a classic casef russian disinformation. What did you do . We had many News Organizations hav