Former head of election integrity at Meta shares strategy to protect our democracy in an age of social media and AI CHICAGO, Ill.– Diane Chang, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia Journalism School and the former head of Election Integrity and Product Strategy at Meta, shared ways to protect and secure our democracy in an age of threats from social media and artificial intelligence during a virtual presentation on April 17. Organized by the League of Women Voters of Illinois’ Misinformation and Disinformation Task Force, the event was the second in a series of meetings where noted authorities discuss topics to inform and educate voters leading up to the 2024 General Election on Tuesday, November 5. Watch a recording of Chang’s talk at bit.ly/mdtf417. Here are a few highlights: Be aware of false and harmful election tactics. Foreign and domestic actors use mis- and disinformation to deliberately tamper with election results and, more recently, to sow division and polarization in the electoral process. Fake websites and social media accounts, biased newspapers and candidates’ websites may appear to be authentic but are actually fabricated. Another tactic is called “typo squatting,” or “URL high jacking,” where what appears to be a legitimate URL deliberately has one letter changed. The user is then unsuspectedly tricked into entering another website and may offer sensitive information that can do significant reputational damage. Know that AI tools can be a significant election disruptor. New, powerful artificial intelligence tools are free and widely available to anyone. Users can easily tailor text and images to make their messages more compelling. Media literacy training can help people identify false stories and unreliable news sources, but often more is needed. To counter false information before it goes viral, Chang suggested a pre-bunking process to deliver correct, factual information before mis- or disinformation can take hold in the mind of a consumer of social media. If you can’t pre-empt, you must de-bunk, she affirmed. For debunking to be effective, a person must provide a clear explanation of how the information is false and then deliver the truth. It’s only when detailed refutations are provided—often and properly—that disinformation can be unstuck. The next LWVIL Mis/Disinformation Task Force program on media literacy will be presented by Dr. Michael Spikes, director of the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism’s Teach for the Chicago Journalism program, who notes that “the need for media literacy skills has never been more urgent as we struggle to distinguish fact from fiction.” The presentation date is Wednesday, May 22, at 6:30 p.m. Visit bit.ly/lwvil522 to register. | 