There are a multitude of ways to make sure you are election ready. This November holds so much power and potential for a difference in our livelihood as Americans. Of course there are the commonly known ways to prep for this election, such as making sure your registration information is updated and active and knowing who will be on your ballot, but do you know if the information you take in on a daily basis is legitimate? Can you confidently discern fact from fiction online? Programs like the MediaWise Voter Project have been dedicated to guiding thousands of first time voters to make informed decisions at the polls, with simple yet critical tips and tricks. There are a few things to look out for this election and beyond. Bots and spam accounts lurk the internet and pass around misinformation and disinformation. One of the first steps for election readiness is knowing how to combat bots. 

To start with the basics, it is important to know the difference between misinformation and disinformation. While disinformation is malicious and has the set goal of misleading and misinformation does not have a set intent, both can be harmful to an individual who as a result spreads this further. It goes without saying, but election readiness and a well maintained news feed go hand in hand. A major source of misinformation on the internet is bots and spam accounts. There are a few things to look out for in a bot such as the frequency they post at, and whether their username has a string of random numbers. There is also a great web tool called Hoaxy, where with the search of any topic, like “coronavirus”, it visualizes what on the web is human-generated or created by a bot. The tool works for Twitter as well as published articles. According to their website, in terms of articles, “The Hoaxy corpus tracks the social sharing of links to stories published by two types of websites: (1) Low-credibility sources that often publish inaccurate, unverified, or satirical claims according to lists compiled and published by reputable news and fact-checking organizations. (2) Independent fact-checking organizations, such as snopes.com, politifact.com, and factcheck.org, that routinely fact check unverified claims,” (Hoaxy). It is vital to know that the information you receive is from an actual user and is a reliable source. Distinguishing between bots and humans is the best way to do this.

In the age of rapidly growing technology, it is easy to manipulate information and even easier to be fooled by this. The other ways in which to brace yourself against misinformation online is knowing how to investigate potentially altered pictures, which are often spread by bots, and being on the lookout for deep fakes, or manipulated video footage mostly of politicians and celebrities. These threats and how to protect against them will be discussed further on the following blog post on combating misinformation.

This post was written by Elif Onay