How AI, QAnon and falsehoods are reshaping the presidential race

This year’s presidential election has been polluted with rumors, conspiracy theories and a wave of artificial intelligence imagery. Former President Donald Trump has continued to sow doubts about election integrity as his allies across the country have taken steps to make election denial a fixture of the balloting process.

How worried should voters be?

To better understand the role that misinformation and conspiracy theories are playing this year, The New York Times asked three authors of new books about disinformation and social media to share their views and predictions.

The risk that violence could spring from election denialism seems as pressing as in the weeks after the 2020 election, when Trump supporters — incensed by false claims of voter fraud — stormed the Capitol building, they argue. But the day-to-day churn of falsehoods and rumors that spread online may be getting largely drowned out by the billions spent on political advertising.

In a series of emails with the Times, the authors laid out their predictions for the year. These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Let’s jump right in: How concerned are you that conspiracy theories and misinformation will influence the outcome of this year’s presidential election?

Jesselyn Cook: I’m more concerned about false information inspiring acts of violence than I am about it swaying voters. I don’t think we’ll see another large-scale event like the insurrection at the Capitol; what seems more likely is a bunch of scattered vigilante attacks targeting local election workers all over the country. There’s polling that shows more than 1 in 3 have already experienced threats, harassment or abuse, from being doxxed and swatted to physically assaulted. It’s really quite scary.

Sasha Issenberg: Because our parties are so well-defined and the electorate so polarized, there are simply very few minds up for grabs. Billions of dollars are already being spent trying to win them over, and against that volume, it is difficult for any one piece of content or storyline to carry the day.

Q: Conspiracy theories — like QAnon and the anti-vaccine movement — have gripped a large part of the electorate for years, raising fears that the movements would gain real political power. Did that happen?

Cook: Look no further than X, YouTube or Facebook. There’s now a long lineup of disinformation-peddling social media stars whose endorsements hold serious weight for their millions of followers — and the politicians trying to court them.

Renée DiResta: Polls from 2023 suggest that a majority of Republican voters, and in the neighborhood of 30% of Americans overall, still believe the 2020 election was stolen. Dozens of bills that nod to election denialism have been introduced in at least 25 states, and this issue is continuing to shape politics in places like Arizona and within Congress.

Issenberg: Maybe not governing power, but they have all dramatically shaped the way the Republican Party works. A general willingness to entertain conspiracy theories has become one of the party’s core commitments.

Q: After the assassination attempt on Trump in July, we saw an explosion of conspiracy theories and misinformation from progressives. How concerned should we be?

Cook: What we’re seeing across the political divide is healthy skepticism too easily giving way to reflexive suspicion. Instead of waiting for the facts and then drawing conclusions from there, people are leaping to conclusions and then cobbling together selective “evidence” to hold them up.

Issenberg: Sure, it’s concerning. The left’s information ecosystem is far more centered around news organizations that aspire to practice journalism rather than just advocacy or entertainment, and Democratic leaders don’t currently face the same set of political incentives that Republicans do to indulge some of their coalition’s looniest figures.

Q: What do you think about the people who believe conspiracy theories and misinformation? Are they victims? Or are they agents of chaos?

Cook: Despite the tinfoil hat stereotypes, there are plenty of intelligent and decent people who stumble down QAnon-type rabbit holes during vulnerable periods of their lives. One retiree I profiled, an elderly woman with limited mobility, simply wanted to feel like she mattered again. When she would log onto Facebook and rant about conspiracy theories, she wasn’t just an “old lady” alone at home anymore; she was one of the good guys fighting the good fight. She found a community that really embraced her for it.

DiResta: People find conspiracy theories appealing because they offer simple explanations and convenient villains that can be blamed for complex challenges. What we saw in our studies was that influencers have far more potential to shape and reinforce narratives. However, people’s roles can shift: An audience can nudge an influencer in increasingly extreme directions or call on them to be far more toxic toward perceived enemies — a phenomenon called “audience capture.”

Q: Are fears about AI manipulation in the presidential election overblown?

Cook: I think there’s some good that has come from the panic: widespread awareness. If an October surprise deepfake of Trump or Harris saying something scandalous goes viral, a lot of people will probably be skeptical right off the bat because they already know that the technology exists, and they know what it’s capable of.

Issenberg: Yes, overblown to an extent it now distracts from what really matters. None of the enduring conspiracy theories we’ve discussed here required high-tech deceptions. QAnon was just text on an online bulletin board.

Q: How do you see the problem with misinformation and conspiracy theories changing if Trump loses his reelection bid?

Cook: Trump losing would only reinvigorate the conspiracy-theorist wing of the GOP, which would continue to carry on just fine in his absence. Conspiracy theories really demand a victim mentality, which is much easier to have when you’re on the losing side.

DiResta: Influencers won’t lose traction or income as long as they maintain the trust and interest of their audience, and they can refocus their audience on other things. As a 2022 Washington Post investigation documented, many 2020 election-denial influencers pivoted to being culture war influencers as interest in elections temporarily waned.

Issenberg: Trump has been the more effective community organizer, showing respect for his supporters by engaging with them and sharing their posts. The real question is whether any politician or cause can rally that community in the same way.

Q: Imagine you have no obstacles to solving this problem. What would you do to finally fix digital misinformation?

Cook: I’d focus more on policing the platforms. To start, solving the problem will require breaking the cycle by removing the incentives that drive it.

DiResta: I think bridging algorithms, which surface challenging conversations on social media without rewarding rage, harassment and division, are something that platforms should be actively incorporating.

Issenberg: We probably need schools to provide media-literacy education that teaches people to prioritize information from some sources over others while still cultivating a healthy skepticism of authority.

Q: Considering the trajectory of online misinformation over the past decade or so, can you describe what the internet will be like in five or 10 years?

Cook: My hope is that social media companies are also monitoring these trends and will make algorithmic adjustments to improve the user experience on their platforms — prioritizing connection over division and quality over clickbait garbage — if only to protect their bottom lines. After all, their most prized commodity is our engagement, and who wants to hang out in a dumpster fire forever?

DiResta: The big companies will still be there in the future, though perhaps more geared toward entertainment than socialization. Content moderation will likely be heavily AI-driven. And, finally, we will be sharing space with more autonomous AI agents, and there will be a push to differentiate between them and “real” humans in some way.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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