One of the maps they share is based on linking data from online media outlets. The team used data from Twitter to characterize the audience mix of different media outlets divided into quintiles: left, center-left, center, center-right, and right. This method revealed that throughout the media ecosystem, conversations about voter fraud, in online news, Twitter, and Facebook, largely followed an agenda set by Donald Trump through tweets, media appearances, and press conferences.įirst, the team created network maps to illustrate the relationships between media outlets across the political spectrum. Using Media Cloud, an open-source tool that provides access to data from online media sources, as well as data from Twitter and public Facebook posts, the team used quantitative and qualitative methods to trace and analyze the discourse surrounding voter fraud in the U.S. This false narrative may have critical implications for the outcome of the 2020 election and democracy at large.” “Surveys are telling us that concerns of voter fraud are disproportionately held by Republican voters, which is reflective of the deeply asymmetric media ecosystem, as we showed in our work on the 2016 election.
“We recognized the narrative that Donald Trump starting spreading earlier this year was going to play a significant role in the turnout and legitimacy of the 2020 election,” said Benkler, the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies and co-director of the Berkman Klein Center. The report also shows that President Donald Trump, the Republican National Committee, Republican officials, and other public figures are central to fueling the dissemination of and attention to voter fraud claims online. presidential election.Ī new report from Harvard Law School Professor Yochai Benkler ’94 and a team of researchers from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society shows that this disinformation campaign - intentionally spreading false information in order to deceive - is largely led by political elites and the mass media. Yet claims of “mail-in voter fraud” are spreading through mainstream media, cable and local television, and on social media sites in the lead up to the 2020 U.S.