Where’s the outrage (about disinformation)?

Greetings from Washington, where the problem of disinformation is generating heightened alarm on the part of U.S. politicians and policy experts as the 2020 campaign approaches.

The question is whether and how that alarm could translate into action by Congress or the agencies to prevent a repeat of the Russian disinformation campaign that affected the 2016 presidential election.

When this issue comes up, people often point to the polarization and paralysis plaguing the current Congress. Forty bills, they note, have been proposed to deal with election security and disinformation surrounding elections, and none of them have seen any action.

But here’s another way of looking at it. Congress often needs a crisis to act. What if lawmakers aren’t motivated to do something about this problem because the people who elect them just aren’t very motivated? What if Americans aren’t outraged enough about the disinformation problem to put pressure on elected officials to take action?

Some experts even say there needs to be a new patriotism around the disinformation threat, given its threat to democracy.

This lack of outrage was a theme that came to the surface during a symposium hosted this week by the Federal Election Commission, which is charged with enforcing campaign finance laws, and whose chairwoman, Ellen Weintraub, expressed concern about the integrity of the 2020 election.

While participants in the event, which you can watch here (if you have five hours to spare), explored a range of potential solutions to deal with the disinformation threat, underneath the policy options and proposed government actions was an almost plaintive concern that the American people aren’t involved enough.

“The animating energy for us today was our shared sense that there has been an inadequate level of public outrage or official response to the foreign disinformation threat,” said Eileen Donahoe, executive director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University, which along with PEN America co-sponsored the event. She and other participants said a “society-wide” approach is needed.

Why aren’t people outraged enough about the problem? Is it possible that people trust tech platforms too much? Or do they trust themselves too much, to be able to discern the true from the false? An issue cited by Donahoe is the “bizarre ways that foreign disinformation mixes with authentic civic discourse, domestic media, political commentary and with the speech of our own elected officials.”

Another reason, one cited by Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), is that people who live in a polarized society see the issue through a partisan lens.

“A significant percentage of Republican voters don’t believe Russia interfered at all, but of those who do, some don’t seem particularly upset about it,” she said. “The U.S. will never muster a whole-of-society approach if the whole of society doesn’t first acknowledge the problem.”

She said the issue has to be reframed as a nonpartisan one.