| CYBERWAR How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President Kathleen Hall Jamieson Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, October 2018 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-19-091581-0 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-19-091581-0 | 314pp. | HC/BWI | $24.95 | |
There was no Russian alteration of the vote counts in our 2016 presidential election1 — this despite the documented facts that Russian actors tried to effect this, and that they did penetrate election systems in some states.
However, that says nothing about the traditional way of altering an election's outcome: by altering voters' perceptions of the candidates. There is abundant documentation of their success in this area. By purchasing ads on Facebook, interacting with legitimate users through trolls and bots on that social medium and others, and creating bogus groups — as well as through stories on propaganda channels like RT (formerly Russia Today) and by timely release of materials hacked from Democratic Party staff emails — they had profound effects.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a scholar with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, here provides a detailed analysis of the evidence showing what the Russians did and how they did it. Her analysis is based on her experience with the National Annenberg Election Surveys of 2000 and 2008, and it examines both election statistics and records from social media.
In some cases our own media professionals were complicit: as when, for example, they quoted Hillary Clinton's remarks out of context, making it seem that she had unequivocally endorsed "open borders" (see e.g. pp. 165-170.) The Trump campaign, unconcerned as it was about lying, readily embraced such distortions. The net result was to misleadingly raise voters' view of Trump and lower their views of Mrs. Clinton. Even so, she won almost 3 million more popular votes than Trump; only by carrying three crucial states in the electoral college did Trump eke out a victory.
The former FBI director figures in the 2016 campaign in two major ways: in July 2016, he announced that although her use of a personal email server had been careless, it did not warrant charges; second, on 28 October 2016 he announced the reopening of the investigation into her emails — a six-day effort that turned up nothing significant, but did make headlines unfavorable to Mrs. Clinton.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson's analysis suggests that Comey was influenced by Russian claims that AG Loretta Lynch's impromptu meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac at Phoenix airport was aimed at stifling the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server. This triggered concern on his part over the reputation of the FBI — and also, since he assumed Hillary Clinton would win the presidency, concern that it would taint her administration.
The conclusion that Russian content was the undisclosed factor in Comey's July decision can be drawn from accounts in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN. "During Russia's hacking campaign against the United States," reported the Times in April 2017, "intelligence agencies could peer, at times, into Russian networks and see what had been taken. Early last year, F.B.I. agents received a bunch of hacked documents, and one caught their attention. The document, which as been described as both a memo and an email, was written by a Democratic operative who expressed confidence that Ms. Lynch would keep the Clinton investigation from going too far, according to former officials familiar with the document." – Page 193 |
The Washington Post account calls it a Russian intelligence document. Thus, it is still unclear whether the document claiming this collusion was genuine or a Russian fabrication.
If the same sorts of effects that scholars have documented in past elections occurred in 2016, particularly those produced by agenda setting, framing, two-step flow, weighting and peer influence, then the trolls' messaging helped Trump and hurt Clinton as well. We do not know whether it was well enough targeted to change the outcome. But the likelihood exists. The notion that they contributed to his win is fortified by the fact that their theory of his electoral needs was sound, their messaging was sufficiently adept and extensive enough to matter, and their themes aligned with those of his campaign. Like Trump's message, the trolls' appeal tapped into the economic frustrations as well as the related threat their target audience attributed to the multiracial, multinational, ecumenical culture championed by the Clinton campaign and the Obama White House. Unease about cultural change not only predicted a Republican vote but also played a more significant role in a Trump ballot in 2016 than a Romney one in 2012. As I noted earlier, negative attitudes toward immigration, black Americans, and Muslims were more central to support for Trump than for the Republican standard-bearer in 2012. At the same time, evidence that the trolls' messaging was not simply cacaphonous comes from the fact that they tried to mobilize, demobilize, and shift the sorts of voters that Trump needed to win. Consistent with Russian-created appeals, the percentages of white evangelicals and those in military households who supported Trump increased after the summer, and a combination of Sanders's supporters and blacks avoided the ballot box in numbers that would have been great enough to put Clinton over the top had they instead cast ballots for her in key states. Moreover, had the 2016-over-2012 increase in the Green Party vote gone instead to Clinton, the Democrat would have carried Michigan and Wisconsin. Additionally, black turnout was down from years past and white turnout was up. With all of these pro-Trump elements at play simultaneously, and being reinforced by troll and hacked content, the number of combinations that produce the votes he needed to win multiplies and with it the likelihood that Russian interventions designed to affect those factors altered the election's outcome. – Page 211 |
An Afterword looks at the responsibility of five groups.
"Every major publication, including the Times, published multiple stories citing the D.N.C. and Podesta emails posted by Wikileaks, becoming a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence," concluded Lipton and his colleagues, whose assessment I share. – Page 216 |
Although there was not a Russian behind every tree in 2016, there was one behind some high-volume social media accounts and sites. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr were among the tech giants that unwittingly became conduits for Russian propaganda. – Page 218 |
"Those who retweeted troll content or unwittingly assisted St. Petersburg operatives in populating rallies are testaments to the blinders that ideology can place on one's critical faculties. So too are those who shared bogus stories that did not originate with the trolls. – Page 220 |
The two major party nominees increased our collective vulnerability to Russian machinations in very different ways. Trump did so by what he said and did, and Clinton by what she failed to do. – Page 221 |
"Gone in 2016 was the assumption that those in the leadership of the other political party were persons of goodwill and integrity. Instead of being philosophical, disagreements were personal. Motives were routinely impugned. Distrust was the norm. Were the climate not so polarized and were there still some modicum of trust on both sides, the Republican congressional leadership, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in particular, might have joined the Democrats in condemning the Russian hacking. – Page 222 |
There's been extensive criticism of the mainstream media since Trump started his 2016 run on the presidency. Much of this criticism is deserved: for example, the Shorenstein Center has documented how much more air time was given to Trump's faux scandals than to substantive policy issues. Many are prepared to write off the mainstream media as totally unreliable; but I never thought Kathleen Hall Jamieson would come to even consider doubting their worth.
My critique assumes that the mainstream press still matters. It does. But for how much longer is an open question. Although it is not a topic I have treated in the book, it is worth noting that the Russian operatives both exploited and magnified distrust of the press. In troll world, the mainstream media were covering up such supposed "scandals" as Clinton's terminal illness and the Democrats' complicity in the death of a young Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer.2 This blurring of the lines between credible and bogus sources further erodes the ability of the press to serve as a credible watchdog. – Page 218 |
Cyberwar is a long read, full of details about misleading tweets and Facebook ads and who took a candidate statement out of context and when. Its findings are very well supported by Endnotes and indexing. Four Appendices present statistical analysis of campaign results. Because of this depth, I do not recommend it for general readers. However, I give the book full marks.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.