A low-key, behind-the-scenes networked response to mis- and disinformation about the 2020 U.S. Census serves as a model for future multi-stakeholder collaborations.

Mis- and disinformation is a networked problem, yet there are few demonstrations of a networked response at scale. Two years ahead of the 2020 U.S. Census, the Disinformation Action Lab at Data & Society supported the Census Counts Campaign, a campaign of The Leadership Conference Education Fund, which include members like Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, National Congress of American Indians, NALEO Educational Fund, the National LGBTQ Task Force, and United We Dream, among others. In this work, DAL supported national civil rights groups, local civil society groups, state and city government officials, and worked with social media companies, journalists, and the Census Bureau itself — all to protect a complete and fair count from mis- and disinformation. 

But very few people outside these stakeholders working on the 2020 Census knew about the vital work being done, when there were other concerns regarding the decennial count, including the COVID-19 pandemic — which was starting to surge in the U.S. by the time the census officially started that April — and possible unforeseen technical challenges in rolling out the bureau’s first digital census. 

The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public is pleased to announce that Data & Society’s Disinformation Action Lab as the winner of the inaugural CIP Award for Excellence, a $5,000 award that honors an individual or organization making outstanding contributions, achievements, or bodies of work that significantly resist strategic misinformation, promote an informed society and strengthen democratic discourse. 

The award

In the two years leading up to the 2020 U.S. Census, the DAL, led by Data & Society’s Charley Johnson and supported by Cristina Lopez, Emma Margolin, Will Partin, and danah boyd, demonstrated a networked response to census-specific mis- and disinformation at scale supporting numerous stakeholder organizations with the aim to understand the challenges and constraints one another faced, align their respective goals and determine where they could support each other in achieving a complete and accurate count.

“As the former Chief Innovation Officer of the U.S. Census Bureau, I can say with certainty that if it weren’t for the DAL team, the U.S. Census Bureau would not have prioritized the problem of disinformation in the way that we did in the lead up to and during the Decennial Census,” Kyla Fullenwider, now a fellow at Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, wrote in a CIP Award for Excellence nomination letter in support of the DAL’s work. “The DAL team raised the profile of the problem within the Bureau but also provided ongoing strategic advice on how to address it, and helped broker relationships with the key stakeholders in the tech community.”

The CIP’s selection committee consisted of six leaders in the field of mis- and disinformation research and policy: Camille François, chief innovation officer, Graphika; Kate Klonick, St. John’s University School of Law assistant professor; Steven Livingston, George Washington University professor of media and public affairs and Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics founding director; Ifeoma Ozoma, founder and principal at Earthseed; Jevin West, UW Information School associate professor and Center for an Informed Public director; and Brandy Zadrozny, investigative reporter, NBC News.

“The Disinformation Action Lab not only developed a research-based response to potential disruption of the 2020 Census, a crucial survey that overwhelmingly impacts historically marginalized communities, they also managed to support hundreds of diverse stakeholders in a collective and tactical fight against mis- and disinformation,” Zadrozny said.

The committee chose the DAL among a crowded and robust pool of nominations submitted from the U.S., Canada and elsewhere around the world representing individuals and organizations doing work both locally and at greater scale across a broad range of fields, from journalism to education, climate change to government service. 

“The breadth of work being done gives me hope that society is making progress on this issue of misinformation,” West said. “Highlighting and celebrating this work hopefully inspires others.” 

The CIP will spotlight the work of some other nominees in the coming weeks and invite the winners to Seattle to speak this fall at the University of Washington and discuss their work in greater detail, key insights from their multi-stakeholder collaboration and how their work provides a model for future networked responses to mis- and disinformation.

Impactful work

The DAL team started their initial work in early 2018, building relationships across the network of census stakeholders, and ultimately partnering with the Census Counts Campaign. In the lead up to the Census, DAL created 15 different practical guidance documents, including a threat matrix to classify threats and frame appropriate responses, a tip-sheet for journalists on how to report on disinformation, a checklist for verifying content, a guide to reporting problematic content, and a number of case studies. When the Decennial Census began in April 2020, the team monitored mis- and disinformation in parallel to the Census Bureau’s own monitoring efforts, allowing the Bureau and DAL to see what one another was seeing and inform a strategic response.

But what constitutes a strategic response isn’t necessarily obvious when it comes to addressing disinformation. As Whitney Phillips and other scholars have shown, calling attention to a problem gives it oxygen and, thus, helps it flourish. The DAL team supported Census stakeholders in determining whether and how to respond to a potential threat, while minimizing the likelihood of amplification.

When there was a problematic incident involving census-related mis- and disinformation, 

“Census stakeholders, myself included, understandably wanted to call out the threat to protect hard to count communities,” National Conference on Citizenship senior fellow Denice Ross wrote in a nomination letter.

Ross, who chaired Georgetown University’s Census Quality Reinforcement group, continued: “The DAL team — by developing practical materials and running interactive learning exercises — helped stakeholders make strategic decisions about whether to engage having internalized the problem of amplification.” 

Over the course of their two-year program, the DAL team organized 46 learning events — including webinars, workshops, scenario planning exercises — across the U.S. 

DAL created four different analog tabletop simulations so that different stakeholders could practice responding in the context of an evolving disinformation campaign. DAL then ran this simulation six times, putting different stakeholders in conversation with each other — city officials, journalists, local community groups, tech platforms, the Census Bureau, civil rights and other civil society organizations. 

“DAL’s approach to ongoing engagement and capacity building was among the best examples I’ve ever seen of a technical team serving a larger people-based movement toward the betterment of society,” Ross wrote.

While the DAL’s behind-the-scenes work ahead of and during the 2020 Census had incredible impact, it also provides a model for future multi-stakeholder collaborations to organize and respond to mis- and disinformation at scale, especially for trying to address bigger and more complex challenges like climate change.

“Their work is so worthy of recognition and should serve as a model for government officials, journalists, activists, and platforms for years to come,” Zadrozny said.