The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a nonpartisan coalition of researchers that identified, tracked and responded to voting-related mis- and disinformation during the 2020 U.S. elections, released its final report, “The Long Fuse: Misinformation and the 2020 Election” on Tuesday. The final report is the culmination of months of collaboration among approximately 120 people working across four organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP), Graphika and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).
A handful of EIP researchers will discuss key findings, insights and recommendations from the final report during a virtual event hosted by The Atlantic Council scheduled for Wednesday, March 3 from 12 noon-1:30 p.m. PST. The event will be open to the public and journalists will have an opportunity to ask questions. Those interested in attending should register here.
Over the course of its work, EIP focused on voting-related misinformation and the delegitimization of election results. Its primary goals were to: (1) identify mis- and disinformation before it went viral and during viral outbreaks; (2) share clear, accurate counter messaging; and (3) increase understanding of the dynamics shaping the information space during the 2020 election and its aftermath.
The EIP’s “Long Fuse” final report expands upon the coalition’s rapid-response research and policy analysis surrounding the November 2020 U.S. election and details how misleading narratives and false claims about voting coalesced into the metanarrative of a “stolen election,” which propelled the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The EIP’s final report also includes a set of policy recommendations and insights about how the coalition of researchers carried out their work and how this model may be expanded to combat future large-scale misinformation events.
Among key findings:
- Misleading and false claims and narratives coalesced into the metanarrative of a “stolen election,” which later propelled the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.
- Narrative spread was cross-platform: repeat spreaders leveraged the specific features of each platform for maximum amplification.
- The primary repeat spreaders of false and misleading narratives were verified, blue-check accounts belonging to partisan media outlets, social media influencers, and political figures, including President Trump and his family.
- Many platforms expanded their election-related policies during the 2020 election cycle. However, application of moderation policies was inconsistent or unclear.
The report includes chapters that examine how mis- and disinformation shaped social media narratives around mail-dumping incidents in Glendale and Sonoma County, California andGreenville, Wisconsin, as well ascloser looks at #Sharpiegate and #StopTheSteal narratives, non-English mis- and disinformation, and election-related violence.
Other chapters explore the structure and dynamics of how voting-related mis- and disinformation spread and the actors and networks that amplified narratives, including “repeat spreaders” of election-related misinformation and most-engaged incidents of false or misleading information from the EIP’s datasets; an assessment of social media platform policies on and responses to voting- and election-related misinformation; and recommendations for government, media organizations, social media platforms and civil society organizations.
The 2020 election demonstrated that actors—both foreign and domestic—remain committed to weaponizing viral false and misleading narratives to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system and erode Americans’ faith in our democracy. Mis- and disinformation were pervasive throughout the campaign, the election, and its aftermath, spreading across all social platforms. The EIP was formed out of a recognition that the vulnerabilities in the current information environment require urgent collective action.
While the EIP was intended to meet an immediate need, the conditions that necessitated its creation have not abated, and in fact may have worsened. Academia, platforms, civil society, and all levels of government must be committed, in their own ways, to truth in the service of a free and open society. All stakeholders must focus on predicting and pre-bunking false narratives, detecting mis- and disinformation as it occurs, and countering it whenever appropriate.
Scheduled to join the virtual presentation of the EIP’s final report on Wednesday are:
- Graham Brookie, director, Atlantic Council’s DFRLab
- Emerson Brooking, resident senior fellow, Atlantic Council’s DFRLab
- Isabella Garcia-Camargo, project manager, Election Integrity Partnership
- Renée DiResta, research manager, Stanford Internet Observatory
- Camille François, chief innovation officer, Graphika
- Alex Stamos, director, Stanford Internet Observatory
- Kate Starbird, cofounder, University of Washington Center for an Informed Public and associate professor, UW Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering
- Nicole Buckley, research analyst, University of Washington School of Law
- Joe Bak-Coleman, postdoctoral fellow, UW Center for an Informed Public
- Andrew Beers, graduate student, UW Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering
- Alyssa Kann, research assistant, DFRLab
- Ian Kennedy, graduate student, UW Department of Sociology
- Carly Miller, research analyst, Stanford Internet Observatory
- Kyle Weiss, research analyst, Graphika
The virtual event will also feature a conversation with Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
About the Election Integrity Partnership
- The EIP is a nonpartisan coalition of misinformation researchers from four organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (UW CIP), Graphika, and The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab (DFRLab).
- Due to the decentralized nature of elections administration in the United States and a limited federal role regarding responding to election-related misinformation originating from domestic sources within the U.S., there was a critical gap for non-governmental organizations to fill to facilitate collaboration across government, civil society, media, and social media platforms.
- SIO, UW CIP, Graphika and DFRLab came together in July 2020, 100 days before Election Day, to help enable real-time information exchange between election officials, government agencies, civil society organizations, social media platforms, the media, and the research community.
- The EIP, comprising organizations that specialize in understanding those information dynamics, aimed to create a model for whole-of-society collaboration and facilitate cooperation among partners dedicated to a free and fair election. With the narrow aim of defending the 2020 election against voting-related mis- and disinformation, it bridged the gap between government and civil society, helped to strengthen platform standards for combating election-related misinformation, and shared its findings with its stakeholders, media, and the American public.
