Social platforms become key figures in post-election coverage
Candidate platforms weren’t the only platforms being scrutinized during the 2018 midterm elections.
By Crystal Garner
The Nov. 6 midterm elections are over and traditional news coverage that followed has centered primarily on victories, losses and what they mean for people throughout the country, from city to state.
Television, newspaper, radio and notable digital-first news organizations have typically lead the news cycle, but there’s an increasing space for social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to be go-to voices, and even subjects, in post-election narratives.
Sharing news vs. being news
Facebook was closely being watched during the midterm elections and the days that followed. Facebook and its leaders have been the subject of public scrutiny after foreign influence infiltrated the platform during the 2016 presidential election.
Facebook stood up a “War Room” this election cycle to defend their space from foreign interference and last-minute misinformation campaigns, according to The New York Times:
“Election Day in the United States was indeed a spectacle for Facebook, but for different reasons than we thought. Save for one episode, the day went off without much of a hitch. We’re still holding our breath, but according to Facebook, there were no enormous reveals, no last-minute election night disasters, nothing that seemed to throw the electoral process completely off the rails.”
On Nov. 4, Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher said the company was alerted to accounts that were involved in “inauthentic behavior.” In a blog post, Gleicher said they removed 36 Facebook accounts, six pages and 99 Instagram accounts.
“We found a total of about 1.25 million people who followed of at least one of these Instagram accounts, with just over 600,000 located in the U.S.,” Gleicher said. “By comparison, the recent set of accounts that we removed which originated from Iran had around 1 million followers.”
Despite Facebook’s notice, its multi-billion users continued to flock to the site to consume and share news, from election firsts to possible runoffs. When logging in, users were greeted by a banner encouraging them to take action and vote during the midterms.
Shooting down misinformation
The blue birds at Twitter faced a similar challenge this election cycle. It’s unclear if leaders at the company had a “War Room” of their own to combat misinformation.
A video allegedly showing votes being tampered with at a polling station in Ohio went viral on Twitter, according to a CNN report:
“Except it turned out the video was fake. Election officials in Ohio, where the video was taken, quickly pointed out that the timestamps on the receipts shown in the clip made clear that no votes were inaccurately recorded.”
Facebook removed the video from its platform and Instagram, however the video continued to take flight on Twitter.
According to Buzzfeed, election officials debunked the video and asked Twitter to remove the post, but it still remains on the platform.
Twitter has not released a statement on the issue.
An uphill battle
Social media companies will continue to face unique challenges when it comes to combating misinformation and foreign tactics to infiltrate elections. As technology advances, so must the ways in which companies approach these issues.
Facebook and Twitter leaders said their platforms play an important role in democracy and they are making progress on fake news, during testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Sept. 5.
Senators on the committee challenged witnesses Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive officer, to act now on solutions and transparency.
Sandberg said Facebook could have done better during the 2016 election with Russian and Iranian interference on the platform.
“We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act,” Sandberg said. “That is on us.”