Experts Report: How Disinformation Impacts an Election
Assistant Professor of Information Technology and Management Maurice Dawson: The role that disinformation plays in campaigns as it relates to cybersecurity is to create confusion. It鈥檚 pretty significant. It is a form of active measure, psychological warfare, and it gets individuals to change your decisions, which could ultimately allow a nefarious actor or a nation-state to help the person they want.
The way that disinformation campaigns can be effectively countered is to actually present the truth, fact finding. When you think about what Twitter did in terms of saying, 鈥淗ey this is fact,鈥 of a particular statement that was presented. This is the same thing that needs to be done, and in a continuous basis, because there鈥檚 so much information is being presented to people every day and individuals will not look at this stuff on their own. They will not research this. In the states, what we鈥檝e done is we鈥檝e passed legislation against robocalls, the use of AI. And this is big because you could actually manipulate voters, saying, 鈥淗ey, this particular senator or legislator says this,鈥 and it鈥檚 not them. It鈥檚 actually a speech that was created by someone else to say a message that is harmful to them, and so that really creates disinformation as well, but this is more legitimate because now you鈥檙e hearing a particular voice. They鈥檙e calling you. They鈥檙e leaving a message and you鈥檙e saying maybe this isn鈥檛 the person I want to vote for.
Limiting to the use of these, especially in an election cycle, is important because this would allow for voters who are unfamiliar with these technologies and their capabilities to not be exposed to them.
