Trump win and dangers of digital media

Donald Trump and his team may argue that the seeds of his victory were sown by the way his message resonated with the American electorate and his superior campaigning skills. Be that as it may, we’re now aware that his victory was ably assisted by an unholy combination of WikiLeaks, fake news and the ‘there-is-smoke-so-there-should-be-fire’ kind of e-mail hacks of the Democratic National Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign, with some help from FBI director, James Comey.

Comey apart, were it not for the emergence of digital technologies as the pre-eminent means of information consumption, Trump would have surely bitten the foul dust of loss. Unfortunately for the world, in its first test of mass influence, digital technology has covered itself with infamy.

Trump’s campaign team used the troika of hacked emails, WikiLeaks and fake news brilliantly to create a totally false narrative, which narrowly sank Clinton’s campaign. The unfortunate part is that all of this could have been avoided had a regulatory legislative and technology framework been in place to prevent this.

Let’s first consider the matter of hacked emails and WikiLeaks. It was apparent quite early that the agents of these two were working together to cause maximum damage to the Clinton campaign. Both, because they were controlled from offshore, limited the ability of the US authorities to take action. In the process, it showed the apparent ease with which motivated third parties can influence and damage domestic institutions and policies.

Countries facing these onslaughts are ill-equipped to fight back in the absence of bilateral and multilateral frameworks to stop these attacks. Had a similar activity been carried out in the analog world, it would have caused a significant diplomatic rift between Ecuador and the UK, as it would have breached existing protocols between those two countries.

The fact that it scarcely caused a blip in the current circumstances is likely owing to the lack of any protocols covering digital activities, since Ecuador could legitimately claim that WikiLeaks was operating out of its jurisdiction, even if its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, was housed in their premises.

Donald Trump and his team may have used these leaks independently as well as worked with others, creating ‘fake’ news which was propagated over social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and others.

Quite obviously, this was never the intended use of these platforms but they have, in recent times, been hijacked by dark forces.

How so? The main attraction of social media is propagation of content posted on the channels. The volume and velocity of the propagation defines the virality of the post.

A constant barrage of posts of fake news generates a virality which reaches large numbers of people, giving truth to the Goebbelsian proposition of a “thousand lies repeated makes the truth”.

A second source of the propagation was the creation of websites that embellished the fake news. These were then actively promoted by taking advantage of the algorithms of the social media channels to feature in search results or the ever-present ‘trending’ news feeds of these channels.

These made a deeper impact on the collective psyches of those who depended on social and digital media for their news and information.

The third impact social media has is in targeting. It is possible today to target messages down to specific individuals by using sophisticated tools. So, for example, a politician can target tailored messages to his opponent’s supporters if he knows their e-mail ids or phone numbers. Thus, fake news can be used to sway committed and uncommitted voters using strategies perfected by click-bait artists.

The ferocious speed of spreading information through digital media is well known. And unlike the days of analog media, where the spread of false information could be controlled and mitigated through legally enforceable means, there is no tool known currently that can lessen the impact of negative stories once they are out in digital domains.

The question that arises is why should we in India be worried about all this? After all, we are not as big as the US, nor is digital media as widespread.

On the contrary, there are a sufficient number of parties who could be interested in sabotaging our elections, both, homegrown and external. With an increasingly fractious political class, it is not inconceivable that, internal warfare can be waged among them with ‘fake’ news as one of the weapons in their arsenal.

With significant elections looming in the next two to three years, it is now time to start the debate on this subject in India and evolve appropriate frameworks, rather than take knee-jerk reactions when struck by an avalanche of digital knavery.

Such frameworks should cover all manner of interventions — legislative, election rules, behaviour of independent arms of the Republic, among others.

At the bare minimum these should include:

1. Means to thwart the publication and propagation of hacked material : This can be done by bringing digital platforms that publish news and fake news under a regulatory ambit similar to the one that other media in the country operate under. Such a move would certainly raise the hackles of digital platforms and liberal commentators.

However, this should be countered assiduously, by pointing out the widespread damage that could be caused in the polity of the nation.

2. Effective preventive action : This could be done by taking speedy and effective action to nip the proliferation of fake news by a concerted effort by the appropriate authorities.

3. Pre-emptive measures : These would be measures to prevent the occurrence of events à la James Comey when our elections are being held.

Admittedly, some of these are going to involve hard decisions. But, the alternative to not taking these decisions is the potential for our national fabric being torn apart by those with malevolent desires.

The writer is the director of Rage Communications, a digital marketing company