Disinformation, Racist Thinking, and Conspiracy Theories

Why All Parents Should Talk With Their Kids About Social Identity

A majority of parents rarely, if ever, discuss race/ethnicity, gender, class or other categories of social identity with their kids, according to a new, nationally representative survey of more than 6,000 parents conducted by Sesame Workshop and NORC at the University of Chicago. The researchers behind Sesame Street say the fact that so many families aren't talking about these issues is a problem because children are hard-wired to notice differences at a young age — and they're asking questions. . . .

And there's nothing wrong, Haider says, with a child's natural curiosity. What's risky is when kids are left alone to make sense of the differences they see, with little more than stereotypes, television and guesswork to guide them. . . .

With so many communities still deeply segregated, parents often look around and see only families that share their social categories. Even when parents do talk about identity, according to the survey, they often wait until their kids are 10, 11 or even 12 years old. Jennifer Kotler Clarke, who oversaw the Sesame survey, says parents seem to think younger kids don't notice these differences, though "there's all sorts of research that suggest that children very early on notice definitely physical differences between different people and they make meaning of those differences. And there's discrimination very early on."

How early on? Try six months old. . . .

Differences like class, skin color, gender and religion don't have to divide us, but ignoring them won't unite us either. Conversation is key, Sesame Workshop argues in this new report, to building your child's own positive sense of identity — along with a healthy respect for everyone else's.

What's risky is when kids are left alone to make sense of the differences they see, with little more than stereotypes, television and guesswork to guide them.

Senate Report: Russians Used Social Media Mostly To Target Race In 2016

The Russian government's interference in the 2016 U.S. elections singled out African Americans, a new Senate committee report concludes.

Using Facebook pages, Instagram content and Twitter posts, Russian information operatives working for the Internet Research Agency had an "overwhelming operational emphasis on race ... no single group of Americans was targeted ... more than African Americans."

That was evident throughout the IRA's Facebook content, the report said, citing the fact that over 66 percent of that content contained a term related to race. . . .

The Senate committee found that the Internet Research Agency sought to harm Democrat Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump "at the direction of the Kremlin."

And the study also concluded that the IRA sought to focus on socially divisive issues like race to pit Americans against one another.

An "overwhelming operational emphasis on race ... no single group of Americans was targeted ... more than African Americans."

Whistleblower Explains How Cambridge Analytica Helped Fuel U.S. 'Insurgency'

"They targeted people who were more prone to conspiratorial thinking," Wylie says. "They used that data, and they used social media more broadly, to first identify those people, and then engage those people, and really begin to craft what, in my view, was an insurgency in the United States." . . .

Wylie's new book, Mindf*ck, explains how Cambridge Analytica harvested the information of tens of millions of Facebook users, then used the data to target people susceptible to disinformation, racist thinking and conspiracy theories. Though Cambridge Analytica no longer exists, Wylie warns that the company's tactics continue to be a threat to democracy. He notes that some of its former employees are currently working on the next Trump campaign. . . .

When Steve Bannon got introduced to the company, he realized that a lot of that work could be inverted. And rather than trying to mitigate an extremist insurgency in certain parts of the world, he wanted to essentially catalyze one in the United States. . . . rather than discouraging them from joining ISIS, it would be to encourage them to join the alt-right. . . .

One of the things that I remember is seeing videos of people from focus groups and events that Cambridge Analytica was doing who had been targeted and sort of massaged online into believing certain kinds of conspiracies. And just to see like the rage in their eyes — how angry these people were, how they started engaging in highly racialized thinking. ... To see their faces and what that looks like, what a manipulated person looks like, for me, it was really eye-opening.

Then used the data to target people susceptible to disinformation, racist thinking and conspiracy theories.

Russian Secret Weapon Against U.S. 2020 Election Revealed In New Cyberwarfare Report

What is new, though, is Check Point’s unveiling of the sheer scale of Russia’s cyberattack machine, the way it is organised, the staggering investment required. And the most chilling finding is that Russia has built its ecosystem to ensure resilience, with cost no object. It has formed a fire-walled structure designed to attack in waves. Check Point believes this has been a decade or more in the making and now makes concerted Russian attacks on the U.S. “almost impossible” to defend against. . . .

The research has been angled as an advisory ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections. Russia has the capability to mount waves of concerted attacks. It’s known and accepted within the U.S. security community that the elections will almost certainly come under some level of attack. But the findings actually point to something much more sinister. A cyber warfare platform that does carry implications for the election—but also for power grids, transportation networks, financial services.

“That’s the alarming part,” Check Point’s Ekram Ahmed tells me. “The absence of relationships. The sheer volume and resource requirements leads us to speculate that it’s leading up to something big. We’re researchers— if it’s alarming to us, it should definitely be alarming to the rest of the world.”

If it’s alarming to us, it should definitely be alarming to the rest of the world.

How White Liberals Became Woke, Radically Changing Their Outlook On Race

Beginning around 2012, polls show an increasing number of white liberals began adopting more progressive positions on a range of cultural issues. These days, white Democrats (and, in particular, white liberals) are more likely than in decades past to support more liberal immigration policies, embrace racial diversity and uphold affirmative action.

Researchers say this shift among white liberals indicates a seismic transformation in the last five to seven years and not just a blip on one or two survey questions. . . .

Engelhardt says these recent flips suggests there's something about being white in America that white liberals are trying to distance themselves from — something that could be accelerated by the rhetoric and tone of Trump and some of his supporters.

When white liberals adopt some of these progressive positions, Goldberg said, they're "virtue signaling" — they want to prove that they're allies of minority groups and feel they need to do that more assertively and openly in the Trump era.

Although Trump did not create the current conditions, both Goldberg and Engelhardt agree the president has accelerated the change in white voter attitudes. . . .

"[White liberals'] exposure to injustice inequality has been heightened because of the internet," said Goldberg. "The moral buttons of white liberals are being more frequently pressed."

Engelhardt agrees, and pointed to one specific incident as a potential catalyst — when a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.

"This kind of renewed attention to discrimination is new and novel for white liberals," he said, explaining why there has not been as large of a shift among people of color on these survey questions, in part because they didn't need social media videos to know what was already happening in their communities.

More likely than in decades past to support more liberal immigration policies, embrace racial diversity and uphold affirmative action.