 Okay, so welcome to racialized disinformation context. Good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you're tuning in from. I want to welcome you all to the media justice fundamental spring 101 series. As do Lonnie was just saying, it's a workshop produced by media justice. The workshop today is going to be facilitated by me, Erin Shields, I use she and her pronouns, and I'm a national field organizer here. And like do Lonnie was saying, it's a part of a series of workshops that staff are producing this spring. So hope to see you all in future workshops that we have coming up. Over the next 90 minutes or so, I'm hoping that we can have a conversation rooted in our lived experiences about the ways racialized disinformation and misinformation are impacting our communities, our health and our movements. We'll start by doing a bit of storytelling with one another. And then we'll drop into a short presentation I prepared about the history of disinformation in this country, and how it relates to our disordered information systems. And then we'll have if we have enough time, hopefully we will. We'll talk through a power map, which I'll describe more later, a power map breaking down the layers of impact at play and disinformation systems. Before I jump in though, I want to talk about who media justice is put simply media justice is a 15, I guess, probably more than 15 years old now, national advocacy and organizing leader for racial, economic and gender justice and communications fighting for media control, access and power for diverse communities. We also have a really wonderful and powerful network called the media justice network. And you just heard from some of the folks who's helped steer and collaborate with the network frequently. I'm sure a lot of people here today are a part of the network, so that's exciting. But our mission is to boldly advance this racial, economic and gender justice in the digital age by fighting for just and participatory platforms for expression. We harness community power through our network of more than I think it's around actually a hundred local organizations to claim our right to media and technology that keeps us all connected, represented and free. So generally you'll find us fighting for the digital rights of poor people and people of color on most issues where race intersects with technology. And we typically work on issues of equitable access to broadband, platform accountability, surveillance, like dismantling the iron fist program and electronic monitoring and more. And then also before we jump in, I just wanted to give an acknowledgement that I wasn't born knowing all of this. I'm extremely grateful to the researchers like Brandi Collins Dexter and Dr. Joan Donovan whose research has helped weave together our understanding and analysis of disinformation, as well as formations like the Disinformation Defense League, which some folks you should shout yourself out in the chat if you're part of DDO, where partner groups have been really generous with their learning spaces and of course to our movement elders and co-conspirators and our own lived experiences grappling with issues of disinformation. So we're pulling from all of these things when we're building our analysis and I'm just really grateful that I've been able to be in relationship and learn from a lot of these folks. So let's get started. So I was trained as an organizer by other Black organizers and in the School of Ella Baker Organizing and if you're unfamiliar with Ella Baker, think of like any famous Black male civil rights leader that you know and Ella Baker trained him most likely. So like MLK, John Lewis, like a lot of these folks. And a couple of years ago, oh, also was like super instrumental in SNCC, which is important. And a couple of years ago I was actually having dinner with some SNCC elders and they shared that Ms. Baker would often open her meetings with a question and it's a simple but really telling one and it's who are your people? And what she meant by that was who are you accountable to, which is a question I think a lot of people who are in, especially in nonprofit spaces that that's a whole other, we could have a whole other 90 minute session on that, but you know in nonprofit spaces or movement spaces should always be asking ourselves who are we doing this work for? Who are we accountable to? Who are our people? So if I was to answer that question, I would say that my people are Black, they're Southern, they're factory workers, they're church folks. I'm not a church folk person, but I was raised in the church for sure. And they're also young Black people in movement spaces, Black women, girls and non-binary folks. So I would love for us to answer that ourselves. So we're going to break out into smaller groups and answer that question. Plus, how is disinformation impacting your community and your people? What types of disinformation are you prominently dealing with or seeing? So I'm going to ask Dee, the lovely Dee, to break us out. Let's go for about, it's going to be tight because we're a little bit behind, but like eight or nine minutes. And then we'll come back and share a little bit of what we heard. So Dee, if you could help us get into those breakout groups, that would be great. Sure thing. Let's see, I'm going to open them up and everybody's just going to be automatically whisked away like magic. And if you have any questions, feel free to, there's like a help option at the bottom of the screen. And if you... You're muted. One second. Oh my gosh, was I, I think I was muted the whole time. I'm sorry. Okay, so you're going to be magically whisked away. And then if you did not get a chance to add an asterisk to your name and you need either ASL interpretation or Spanish interpretation, just go ahead and leave the room and come back to the main session. And we can have the mini breakout here for you. All right, here we go. And I hope those conversations were fruitful. I definitely heard some people getting cut off. So sorry about that, but we do have time limits for these things. I'm going to go ahead and, I mean, unless people like want to offer to come off of mute and share, I was just going to pick on people. But I would love if folks could talk about, you know, sort of what their conversations were, like, you know, what types of disinformation are you dealing with? What types of disinformation are you prominently seeing? How is it impacting your community? And we'll take a couple, you know, like three or so people to report back and share back and also feel free to share in the chat too, so that other people can see, like, who's in the room? Does anybody feel compelled to come off mute? I can. Sure. Hello, everyone. My name is Adriana. I live in Seattle, Washington. I'm here with New Currents Collective and the DeSenseful Defense League. And I was sharing with Carmen and with Sally that my people are immigrant people. They're black and brown, and they're workers. And this information that is, I was sharing a story of the time during the weekend. I was at the beach hanging out with some peeps. And the conversations are happening. Like, people are talking about this, like, casually. And what I was struck with is, like, you know, oftentimes we talk about, like, vaccine disinformation or misinformation. That's like, people just don't know the right information. But the truth is that, like, our systems of government and, like, civil society has done nothing to acknowledge how, like, government has failed our communities through this entire pandemic. And it's so, it makes me so sad to think that, like, there are places folks were making decisions about the type of communication that people need to get, as if, like, our people have no sense of rationality. But, like, the truth is that they've experienced a system that hasn't worked. And it's so easy, right, that, like, to be able to look for answers elsewhere, that it's just so much more believable, the other things that you see. And so, yeah, I mean, I wasn't trying to, like, correct them. I was really more like, well, I took the vaccine. I know your pain is real, right? And I want to make sure that you have all the information you need to make the decision that's right for you. And I think that's the dignity and the respect that our people deserve and not to be talked down to. Absolutely. Thank you, Adrienne. Really appreciate that offering. And I'm sure that that's, I mean, I can't see the chat, but I'm sure that resonates with a lot of people in my conversations with my friends, like, that's my jumping off point for a lot of this, right, is my, like, my own community, my own family. And just hearing some of these narratives and sometimes I'm like, where are you even like, where do you see this? And, you know, just, yeah, holding people with dignity and the fact that they're trying to do the best for themselves and their family. And we're just in a really overloaded information system is really important to hold, hold that nuance. Let's have one more person share. And then we're going to hop into a little spectrum activity. So does anybody else feel compelled to share about, you know, some of the conversations they were having? I would like to share. Of course. My name is Solana C.C. Stewart. And right now I'm learning the remote learning up here in Urbana, Champaign. Can you guys hear me? So for me personally, it's certainly working with the students, some of the comments and concerns that they have for students with, especially with disability or special learning needs, minority students who don't have, you know, access to certain things like other students and sort of just this, this overwhelming sort of, they're not trying hard enough for, they're not getting it, but I don't see the teachers and, you know, the schools going out of their way to help them. I think that in this community, what we're trying to do is reconnect those connections. Also just help the teachers like to see that teaching one way doesn't serve everyone. And it's a lie to say, you know, they didn't get it because it's their job to teach. I think, especially for the Black and Brown kids that I work with, it's very difficult for them to hear those lies because to them, they did try their hardest and they did work their hardest, but they aren't getting the support that they need. And I just want to point that out. But I am here working very hard to mend those bridges and, you know, correct those lies. Absolutely. And we appreciate you for that. I want to thank you all for these responses. And I, now that we've sort of talked about the individuals and what people have got going on individually, I wanted to dig into the attitudes of the group through spectrum activity. And I don't know if folks are familiar with spectrum activities, but they're used to visually represent the views on a particular topic among participants. So if everyone could familiarize yourself with the chat, I'm going to share some declarative statements. And then I'm going to prompt you to type in the chat using emojis or words and share your agreement level with the statements. You can strongly agree. You can agree. You can be neutral. You can disagree. You can strongly disagree. And I also just want to emphasize again, I appreciate people sharing their thoughts through emojis as well. So let's try this with the first statement. Typically when you're doing a spectrum activity, it's visual, but there's far too many people in here, which is a good problem to have to do something like this. So I figured that we would try it during the chat. So we'll see how this goes. Disinformation is the most pressing issue of our time. Thoughts in the chat. Oh, and I may call on people to explain why. So we have a very fast yes from Spencer. Love that. Strongly agree. Agree. Don't see any neutrals right now. Agree, but not strongly. All right. As people continue to type in Spencer, since you were first, I'm going to pick on you. Can you share why that was such a quick yes for you? If you can agree on what the terms of the conversation mean, you cannot have a conversation. To me, my background in college, I was a debater and stuff. If you can't agree on the reality in which you are having this conversation and what the underlying forces at play are and what these terms and words mean, then you just can't have any meaningful movement. It's like two ships passing in the night. There's no tension. There's no clash. There's no conflicts in resolution. It's just people talking past one another. Absolutely. Katie, I saw that you put agree, but not strongly. Can you share your thinking? I feel like the prior speaker just like maybe swayed me some more strongly, though, because I was like, that's a really good point. But I was just thinking that it is a really harmful issue that we absolutely need to combat. But I was like, there are things that feel like more urgently pressing to people's immediate physical safety, health, well-being, ability to survive. That just felt harder to say. That's the most important. But then I guess I think the last person just made a really good point that it's like, if you can't even have a conversation about those issues and agree on what the facts are, then yeah, you can't ever get anywhere with it if it's people coming from completely different realities. So I don't know. Good point. That's what this exercise is all about. And when you do it in person, people are like moving around as you're talking. And just one more person, Gabriella from NARAL, you said you agree to a certain extent. Was it similar to what's been said or did you have something else? Yeah, I was going to say kind of what Katie said, which is I totally agree that it's an issue that people aren't living in the same reality. But I also just worry about saying it is the most pressing issue given that people's actual physical safety is being threatened in so many different ways right now. Absolutely. I feel that. So we're going to move on to the next statement. Keep things chugging along. Next statement is, I feel empowered to intervene when people in my community share myths and disinformation. Drop those thoughts in the chat. Not really, really appreciate the honesty here. Yes, but people are stubborn. Yes, but people are stubborn. Can you say more about that? Just that people are very solid in their beliefs and it's hard to change them when through just the conversation sometimes people are so easy to stay in their place of belief that they don't want to take another perspective sometimes and it's hard to convince them when they don't even want to step out of their beliefs. Yeah, I agree. I feel like I approach like correcting disinformation with my friends and family as like a long term struggle, right? So it's like part relationship. So you have to have the relationship where you feel like you can intervene and that they'll trust what you're saying and also that you're respecting that, they're a person and trying their best, etc. But then also like I don't want you out here thinking that like vaccines is going to make you a zombie, right? So like we need to like correct some things. Can somebody who strongly agree share their thinking and like some of the stuff that they do? I can pick on somebody, but if you're feeling talkative. I can. Oh, I was going to call on you. That's great. Some of the things that I have definitely, I grew up in the South and Georgia. So a lot of my cousins and family members, they kind of spread disinformation on their like social media profiles, or they'll come to me about certain things and spread like rhetoric that can somehow or in some way be hateful. Like so for example, when Zaya Wade came out as trans, a lot of people in my family were saying, well, you know, children shouldn't be able to do this and do that have sex changes and things in that nature. And I was telling them that they literally cannot. It's illegal. And then I tried to explain to them how hormone blockers can be reversed and things like that. Like it's, it's, you know, somehow some, it's somebody trying to come to terms and figure out their identity and we should be supporting them because literally these years are so fundamental in growth. So things like that. I always post things on my Instagram, trying to inform people. Now it's more with the vaccine because we're getting a lot of people, especially in my community that do not want to take the vaccine, who are spreading certain rhetoric that can be hurtful, especially because COVID is killing black and brown people disproportionately. So just trying to get people like, no, that's not true. Please don't say that on your page where a whole bunch of people follow you. So that's, I always intervene because it can always hurt somebody and I'm not a big fan. I'm not a fan of that. So yeah. Absolutely. And what you brought up actually made me think because like both my family, both my parents are from the South Kentucky and Georgia, but in Southern places and I guess in black and brown communities broadly, like elders are afforded a certain level of respect. And so it can be very difficult to sort of like broach these topics in a way that's respectful, but also you don't want to be spreading to other like community members that can potentially have you make a decision that impacts your health or your ability to participate in elections or anything like that. So it just made me think a lot about that because I definitely had to get my grandmother together on some of this, but I had to approach it in a very respectful and like tiptoe manner. Okay. So there is one more, but I don't think we have time to get to it, but I do want to show it to you. And that is communities of color are more susceptible to mis and disinformation. It is a juicy question. Drop your thoughts in the chat. 107%. Great. So drop your thoughts in the chat. Feel free to argue and debate there, but we're going to have to move on, unfortunately. So we're going to dig right into the meat of the content today, which is a presentation on misinformation, disinformation, and specifically racialized disinformation. And so I wanted to start by talking about what our stake is in this. So disinformation from right wing and government actors aided by the negligence of social media platforms has served to erode our community's trust and information and broader investment in liberation movements. And while the broader tech and media space has focused largely on international interventions in our media and information systems, media justice has really been laser focused on homegrown aspects of disinformation campaigners who really been emboldened by this rise of fascism right wing authoritarianism in the U.S. and whose efforts specifically target black and brown communities. And I think it's our analysis at media justice that due to the heightened political activity of black and brown people, our communities are often targeted with wedge issues and disinformation campaigns intending to undermine intra and inter community solidarity and generally erode trust and information in its totality. I feel like I'm talking very quickly, so I'm going to slow down for our translators. This eroded trust serves to ease the slide into that right wing authoritarianism rate. And so these campaigns have disproportionate access to our folks because our folks over index on social sites and social media and our reliance on apps as tools of communication information access in other parts of our work. We talk about how social media has acted as a way to break the gatekeeping model of media. And I think that has its positive aspects, but it also has its negative aspects, some of which we're going to get into today. So as black communities continue to advance the fight for liberation, nefarious actors will continue to attempt to erode our communities access to information and to promote inaccurate narratives that derail movements. And so for us, it became clear that three things were really at stake here are our democratic institutions. And that's with the understanding that like democracy in America is very tenuous for people of color. And so there's rampant voter suppression, but still these attacks are happening that really try to compromise our ability to participate in our democratic institutions. Our health and well-being, which I think as this vaccine rollout chugs along, that probably resonates with a lot of people. And then our political voices and movements. And I see that as distinct from like this more democratic establishment, but more the movements that really have been pushing back against right wing authoritarianism. And I think it's the view of media justice that our freedom movements are the largest organized defense in the United States from a slide into that right wing authoritarianism. And so that's why they're attacked and undermined so often. And then also all of this is like swirling, colliding with each other and impacting. So we really took an interest in like resourcing our members around this and really taking on disinformation as like an issue area. So with that being said, I want to make sure that we're all talking about the same thing when we're discussing misinformation and disinformation and racialized disinformation. So can anybody tell me what misinformation is? And please don't be shy. Come on off of mute and just share your thoughts on what misinformation is to you. I think misinformation is when the information isn't purposely wrong. I think it's when the person or whoever's giving out the information thinks that they're right. And they are convinced of such, but it is false. Right. Information who's in accuracy is unintentional and spread unknowingly. How about disinformation? Any takers? I can go. I'm assuming it's when someone spreads information that they know is wrong, but it's to further along or push their agenda. That's absolutely correct. Information that's deliberately false and misleading often spread for political gain, profit, or to discredit a target individual, group or movement or political party. And I think like the intention behind it is also really important. Like disinformation serves something, right? Like it serves an agenda or a person or whatever it may be, right? So it's important to keep that in mind. And then racialized disinformation. Does anybody have an idea of what that is? You can take a swing even if you don't think it's like, you know, the perfect thing. Yeah, I was like, I'm not sure exactly what the definition is going to say, but suddenly targeted towards a certain race, you know, to sway them, to confuse them as a whole and to get some sort of result out of it, you know, some sort of confusion or even so to keep them in the dark, you know what I mean? To keep them from gaining that knowledge about the truth of the matter. So it's just targeted for that race. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Extremely target. So racialized disinformation campaigns employ the strategic use of falsified race or ethnic identities or focus on race as a wedge issue. And so some of you all might be familiar with the term like digital blackface, or when people are like pretending to be blind, that happens a lot on Twitter, but I guess on other social media platforms, but when people are pretending to be black and are doing it to like confer authority or to like, you know, slide into communities to so discord. Sometimes it's just to like monitor things very creepy. But these types of things are racialized disinformation. Any questions about any of these things? And also like, again, I can't see the like, you know, everything. So feel free to like come off of me if you have questions, but any questions here before I keep us moving along. This is Adrianne. I just want to highlight that Juanita shared that racialized disinformation and the way that we're talking about it is to create trust within those communities. Can you say more? Juanita? Yeah, I was specifically when you were trying to say like, why do people pretend to be black on social media, right? The idea is that they will create trust and people will just absorb that misinformation without really questioning assuming like this person is a part of my community. Absolutely. Okay, so if there are no more questions, I'm going to move us along. So a little context ingratting. So as we dive into disinformation more deeply, I think it's important to keep our minds keeping our minds the ways that our media systems are designed to promote sensationalized media. And I think as I'll show here in a second, it reaches back to like the early ages of even like newspaper. But also I feel like it's a little more easier to recognize when we're talking about social media platforms, but that through line, in my opinion, reaches all the way through. So our predominant media systems like most other institutions in America are rooted in capitalism, meaning that profits are primary. And the concern like, you know, there's this need for more and more consumption, always more, right? Over accurate or useful or whatever. So when we're thinking about this, what immediately like when we're talking about the origins of it, what immediately hops to mind for me. And when I was doing research was how babies get baked sensationalism in media. And this is an origin story, right? For our struggle to limit the impacts of what we know as misinformation or racialized disinformation. And so what we're talking about here is yellow journalism. So the term sort of or like the concept of it, based on my research started, because two newspapers based in New York, the New York Journal and the New York World, were sort of battling back and forth in an effort to drive up their circulation numbers and keep publishing more and more sensationalist media. And as an example of this and what the title of this slide represents is, you know, during a heat wave in 1883 in New York reporters were sent to Manhattan projects, writing stories about sort of the so called appalling living conditions of immigrants and the toll that the heat took on their children. And they start headline stories, how babies are baked and little lines of purses to drive up the circulation, right? And so I would might describe this as sort of the original clickbait. So the elements of this are it's sensational and emotional, emotional, emotion provoking headlines in accurate and inflammatory or misleading drawings. And I should say also that this presentation, I originally put it together to talk about visual disinformation. So you'll see a lot of like call outs to how visual misinformation in the past has sort of led us to where we are today and how it has impacted movements. So keeping those two things in mind as well. And then also the primary goal was to increase circulation of papers for profit and influence. Does this ring a bell for folks that seem familiar, probably feels familiar to what we experience when we're engaging with social media? You know, how many people have retweeted something just by looking at the headline? Drag yourself in the comments here. I know I'm just kidding. But and like, you know, an accurate inflammatory and then it's all about numbers for a lot of these platforms. So like, you know, it's never it's like the policy around misinformation, disinformation is like what comes later, right? Right now, we just want to make sure that people are on the platform, they're clicking their sharing, we're getting their data, etc, etc. Any questions about this? Or additions, I feel like everyone here has like a wealth of knowledge. So if there's things you want to add, feel free. Keeping it moving. Newspapers doing things for profit. Wow, this is like really shocking information. But the impacts of sensationalism extend far beyond just, you know, simply lining the pockets of paper owners. Newspapers were looking not only to increase their bottom lines, but also to influence federal and public federal policy and public opinion. And so, you know, the title of this slide comes from a pretty well known story that is in some spaces contested, but it talks about the conflict between Spain and Cuba. And there, you know, there were conflicts brewing in the Caribbean. And so the same paper editors were sending actually illustrators, which I think is really interesting illustrators down there to really capture what was happening. And the most famous anecdote is that, you know, this paper's editor and owner sent his illustrator, Frederick Rimmington, and her Frederick Rimmington down to Cuba, sorry, to draw pictures about what was happening. And Rimmington called his editor and was like, like nothing, like not a lot is really happening down here. And that's when he said supposedly, you furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war. And that's really, I think, a testament to how I guess if you're talking specifically about visual disinformation, even, you know, as far back as this time, people were really grappling or like understood the power of how misinformation, visual misinformation and disinformation can really impact and sway public opinion. And so the USS Maine was stationed in Cuba. And it exploded. And along with it exploded illustrations and misinformation claiming that this was an act of the Spanish, which it might have been, but they didn't know that people have papers into that. But there was certainly no evidence, yeah, at the time to claim that. But it didn't stop papers from sort of leading with this, right. So many credit this sensationalism with swaying the US to engage in that arena, which obviously had impacts that ripple even until today. So as we, you know, see more as we dig deeper into what makes disinformation and visual misinformation so persuasive and effective, I think we'll see some of this pop up more and more. So this type of sensationalism actually became so bad that in the early 20th century papers attempted to establish ethics around publishing. So in 1910, the Kansas State editorial association try adopted these sorts of these ethics standards, right. And to me, this is interesting for a number of reasons. One, the very first thing is about illustrations. And it makes me think about the research that talks about how misinformation that's paired misinformation or disinformation information in general that's paired with a photo people are more likely to believe it, whether the photo has anything to do with what the piece of writing is or not, they're just more likely to think that that's true. And then also sort of this like point number three here, or actually, yeah, point number, well, all these points are really interesting to me, but the fake interviews and also the issuance of fake news dispatches that influence stock quotations, elections, like they were calling this out, you know, in the early 1900s, the power of misinformation and, you know, trying to grapple with how to, you know, manage the impacts from this. So I'll pause there before we zoom forward 60 years. Any questions about any of this? I can't see, so. Delaney sharing that the perception of photos as evidence makes sense. I wanted to share a quick thing, which is to show just how deep the disinformation goes. It's been about 50 years now, and it's still not in history books. The last investigation done on the explosion on the main said it was almost entirely certainly an internal explosion. But we're still not taught that in school. When I went to school in 80s and the 90s, I was still taught, oh, Spain could have done it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As I was doing research on this, I saw that as well. Yeah, like the lies really are able to run around the world and through time and space much quicker than any sort of, you know, truth or skepticism around the things that were taught. Anybody else have any comments? Because we're going to zoom forward about like 60 years or so to start talking about more racialized disinformation. But I want to give space. Okay. All right. So like I said, we're zooming forward to the middle of the 1950s. So what I would argue is not the beginning, but definitely could be contended as the height of racialized disinformation being wielded by the government. And of course, I'm talking about COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO, which stands for Counterintelligence Program. It was a program run by the FBI under Hoover. Obviously, in between what we just talked about, and this moment we have blossoming tropes of black people being lazy, inherently violent, Native Americans and Indigenous folks as being savage, like all of these different tropes really coming together and supported and perpetuated through media systems in order to maintain racial order, which I actually think that Stephen talked about in the Media Justice 101 series. So if you want to take a peek at that, I think it's recorded and will be shared with folks. But a lot of people think of COINTELPRO as a surveillance program and it was, but it also had very specific aims outside of surveilling. So this text comes directly from FBI files that were stolen from an FBI office by activists. And as you can see, the specific goals are quite meaty. I'm not going to read all of them to you. But you can distill the graphic into five main thrusts of the program. Preventing coalition, stopping the rise of a quote unquote Messiah, preventing quote unquote violence, and you know, keep in mind that the state has a monopoly on violence and what is considered like appropriate violence, right? Destroying respectability and preventing the growth of organizations. They were particularly bothered by MLK and Stokely Carmichael or Kwame Torre. And they also mentioned specifically Elijah Muhammad, who was the leader of the nation of Islam, but they discounted him because he was older, which is like spicy. Remember that, yeah, so, you know, you can see, you can actually also see a fictionalized Jagger Hoover talking about these goals in Judas and the Black Messiah. I don't know if people caught that, but there's a scene where he's in like an auditorium and he's sort of like going through what they're trying to do to the Black Panthers. And they sort of talk through all of these things. The two that are specifically interesting to me and I think could be interesting to you based on disinformation was preventing coalition and destroying respectability. So they really used misinformation and disinformation to drive these two points, and I'll show you some examples of that as we continue. So Cointel Pro or the FBI had a number of methods to achieve these goals. They used infiltration, legal system, harassment, undermining public opinion. Again, a lot of times that happened through misinformation, specifically racialized disinformation. And, yeah, it became the, you know, undermining public opinion became the driving force of these campaigns to derail these freedom movements. They were really trying to stop coalitions between a number of these different groups. So like everything from, they used everything from forged correspondence, straight up false media stories, deceitful leaflets, bogus documentaries, entirely fake newspapers in order to spread disinformation so that groups wouldn't collaborate or they would be disorganized in their work. So some specific things. So SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, if you all aren't familiar, that's the organizing group that MLK Jr. actually came out of. And they were, you know, planting disinformation stories about the SCLC, which is actually quite reformist and not even radical in the sense of like the Panthers or the Students for a Democratic Society. I should also say for folks who don't know, Cointel Pro, like this was one of their arms was like derailing the Black Freedom Movement, but they were also going after like student movement, anti-war. They were disrupting Puerto Rican independence, like all these different sort of movements basically have many arms to it. They would put news articles and editorials written to discredit the Puerto Rican independence movement via their sex lives and finances. They would use something called malinformation. They would take information that was potentially true and use it in ways to discredit these leaders. Or, you know, try to pull people away and demobilize people from these movements. And they would also attack the reputations of prominent white supporters. I'm going to do a quick content warning here that this will, I'm going to talk about self-harm just really quickly to sort of highlight the extent to which disinformation disrupts and can actually harm people in real life. When I move away from this slide is when I'll stop talking about it, so you can mute me if that bothers you. But just wanted to, you know, quickly talk about Jean Sieberg, who was an American actress who supported the Black Panther Party. And she didn't, it was Black Panther Party wasn't her only like patronage. She also supported other causes like NAACP and also Native American groups fighting for sovereignty. The FBI created false stories about the child that Sieberg was carrying, said it wasn't fathered by her husband, but instead a Black Panther. And the story was actually, they fed the story to the LA Times and the LA Times and Newsweek ran the story explicitly naming her. And she attempted, because of this, attempted to take her own life leading to the loss of her pregnancy. And every year on the anniversary of the loss of her pregnancy, she would continue to attempt to take her own life until she was eventually successful. And like I said, like these are not, you know, it's not like these are like one-off things, like this is the type of business that the FBI was engaging in, right, to try to peel away supporters from Black freedom movements. Erin. Yes. Sorry to interrupt. The reporters have asked if you could slow down just a teeny bit. Yes, I'm sorry. I apologize. I like speed talk when I'm presenting. Sorry about that. Yeah, no. Let me pause here. Any questions about this? No questions. I wanted to show an example of some of the visual disinformation that the FBI was putting out. So this was a piece of media that was created by the FBI. And it depicts Ron Caranga, who was the leader of the U.S. org, which was a like a socialist organization that was organizing on the campus of UCLA. And they were sort of the U.S. org and the Black Panthers were sort of contending for space on the campus. And they were also fighting over who was going to run the Black Studies program, just like internal conflict. And so the FBI, a couple of Black Panthers had been killed. And the FBI wanted to sort of instigate and imply that that was the doing of Ron Caranga in the U.S. org. So they created these pamphlets and shared them amongst the Black UCLA and LA communities to instigate more infighting and warfare amongst the groups. Any questions about this? Because we're about to jump forward again. Not hearing anything, so I'm just going to keep going. Also just going to do a quick time check. Great. Okay. So we're going to jump forward to the age of social media, where you'll see tactics like impersonation, kind of like what we were talking about before, and disinformation being used to attempt to disorganize movements. Black feminists online have a strong presence, particularly on Twitter. And obviously, our opponents, the people who are enemies to our movements see that and try to infiltrate and also disorganize those movements. So the heightened visibility of Black feminists online led to right-wing actors to develop Operation Lollipop, where they try to impersonate Black feminists online, use wedge issues and inflammatory slogans like hashtag in Father's Day or hashtag white feminists be like. And the goal was to demobilize and discredit online activist communities and the broader public. And I also think to, yeah, to situate themselves in places of power, right? And to monitor what folks were doing. And I think that we sort of see the same themes again and again when it comes to racialized disinformation, where they depend on methods of stoking and manipulating emotions. And it also makes me think about, you know, one of the like key factors to like good misinformation, good disinformation is that it has like a kernel of truth, right? So when I think about hashtag white feminists be like or whatever, because sometimes white feminists do be like, you know, whatever. But those conversations need to happen with it amongst our communities and not because like right-wing people from 4chan are like trying to disturb, you know, our movements, right? And so it can be really difficult, I think, to pinpoint like where the conversations are authentic and when they become inauthentic. But it also makes me really proud because a number of people of black feminists actually like were directly organizing to call out these imposters, essentially. And it makes me think about like something that we say at media justice, like black people who are on these platforms act as first responders for disinformation. Platforms do not move quickly enough, at least currently, do not move quickly enough to really limit impacts of disinformation in the ways that we need to. And so oftentimes when you see these sorts of disinformation campaigns or attacks, you'll see actual black people on the ground or people of color more broadly, like on the ground right, pushing back and trying to keep our community safe online and trying to hold space where people can, you know, feel like the conversations that they're having are authentic and not manipulative in some way. Any questions about this? I feel like I saw maybe Shareen, I don't know if it's the Shareen I'm thinking on here. I don't know if Shareen wants to say more or if she's still here, but any questions about this generally? No questions in the chat. Okay, great. So then we'll go to a quick case study about blacksets. And I got this case study, Harvard has this really great website on media manipulation where they have a ton of case studies and sort of break down the different components to this. One that I thought was interesting was blackset, which is different from blackset, but they sort of intertwined and collided with each other in this particular instance. So over the course of three years, it's similar to your slipper showing. But the over the course of three years, a mix of pranksters and right wing extremists launched an impersonation campaign to muddy the waters of organic Black Twitter hashtag that was talking about it was essentially like just like a cultural ha ha moment where people were talking about if Trump gets elected, we're going to leave we're going to institute like a blackset and leave essentially. And it was sort of not sort of it was absolutely co-opted by these right wing actors to they did a lot of things to fundraise, they propped up their own websites, they propped up, you know, they made like branding for it. And these are just like, you know, people on 4chan who are just trying to really like infiltrate, disorganize, make people feel unsafe online. The first organic use of blackset was actually, yeah, it was like a blog post from this black guy who was like, if we're leaving here, the things we're taking with us, we're taking Beyonce, we're taking, I don't know, other black like cookouts, like I'm trying to think like other black things that would take with us, right. But they saw an opportunity to sort of, I think, exercise and practice this idea of digital blackface and of trying to sort of manipulate people who were engaging in the content. I believe they actually like put out their own, like they would put out their own stuff on Twitter and Instagram, and tried to get people to engage with it. And again, I love us, but black people were savvy and like peeped what was going on and really tried not to engage with sort of these like fake Trojan horse type of accounts. So yeah, like I said, social media users did identify that the campaign was being manipulated. One notable example was BLMDC's Twitter account. They quickly shut down attempts to retweet fake blackset content. And it recognized that they're being targeted and accurately accept, assess the campaign participants as trolls and pranksters. So I like to include this in here. It's just like, you know, sometimes the issue isn't necessarily high stakes, but it is, you know, all of these in attempts, I think, chip away at like what I was talking about earlier, like our trust and information in its totality, our ability to communicate and commune with one another online, which has been so important for our movements the last 10 years or so, since people started getting online in heavy numbers. And so I really wanted to share this as a possible jumping off point for how we assess these sorts of tactics. And I really encourage people to go to the media manipulation casebook that Dr. Joan Donovan and Harvard put together worked a lot on. So I'm gonna, I'm very behind in the timing, but I want to pause and again, share my acknowledgments here. The Ron Caranga graphic is from the Freedom Archives. I got a lot of information from the Center for Study of Political Graphics and of course, first draft for their analysis around disinformation and also their definitions. Any questions about this? No questions about what I shared. I can't see what's in the chat or what people have been talking about. No, we have Delaney talking about the speed of racialized info in the social media ages hard, fears of taking Beyonce, and a quote from Toni Morrison, the function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. Oh, I love that quote. Okay, so we don't have a lot of time. I was going to try and walk us through a quick power map, but I'll just show it. And maybe if we do part two, we can dig into this more deeply. But one of our network members actually put, stop LAPD spying is the network member, which is fantastic organization, put together a power map that was sort of mapping the sites of power around algorithms and algorithms and policing. And like amongst media justice, we like love that power map. We talk about it a lot and thought it would be a useful tool to sort of map on to disinformation. I'm going to show you what it looks like. This is what it looks like. It very intentionally has four layers, the community impact to how you know who is impacted by this, how operational, institutional and ideological. And we felt like it would be great to be able to also break down in a similar way, the way disinformation impacts our communities, so like a disinformation ecology, right? So when you're thinking about community impact as it relates to disinformation, they offered these guiding thoughts about how to sort of start to build out this power map. So who is the community that is targeted? Are we understanding the extent of the harm by engaging and listening to them? What kinds of harm does this disinformation create or intensify? And then you go up a level to the operational. So what is the function of this disinformation? How is it spread? Who is interacting with it? What did they do with it and why, right? And feel free to drop. So again, we don't have time to actually get into this, unfortunately, but feel free to sort of drop answers to this in the chat. And again, if we end up doing another one of this a part two, perhaps we can dig deeply into some of these questions. I feel like that would be useful and build out some sort of disinfo power map as well. So yes, the operational. Then we go to the institutional. So who funds this stuff? Who does it benefit? And what interests came together to create the disinformation? I feel like when we're talking to network members, a lot of the questions I think, or at least in my experience have centered around this as like a question, especially like who's funding it. And I think that there are definitely people you can directly point to. Obviously, the like as I've shared the government has put out disinformation, but also there are private actors, folks who have like political interests and are being funded by billionaires to prop up like media outfits that can really pump out some of this information. And then I also think about like the people on Instagram and others sharing misinformation through stories. So there's a lot to dig into here. And then finally, what ideas motivate the actors within these systems? So we talked about capitalism earlier, but what other things, you know, prop up these systems. I think about a lot about tech chauvinism as an idea, the concept of Silicon Valley, as an idea that like props up these, you know, basically platforms with their like themes or their, you know, slogans of move fast break things literally move fast and broke a whole lot of things. And now we're struggling and dealing with the impacts of that. And like, these are ideas that motivate how these platforms get made, what policies are made, et cetera, et cetera, what belief systems are upheld intentionally or unintentionally by actors and institutions and what we would call a disinformation ecology. So I'm going to leave that here. And we're at the end of the presentation, I believe. Yes. Thank you for listening. I do want to, oh, I think we have time. Yeah, we have like quite a bit of time for questions or reflections. And then I am also going to ask people to share their feedback of this. There's a document where you can type in, you should be able to type in sort of, you know, things that you appreciated things that you would like to see different. If we did a part two, what would you like to see would love to have that feedback. So we know where to like move with these sorts of things. But I do want to open it up and just, you know, make space for people who have questions or want to add something to anything that I've shared. So thoughts. In the chat, we got a big thank you so much from Benjamin Stone, Gabriela, this was great. Thanks so much, Erin, and media justice. Shireen, thank you so, so much. This is really great, y'all. Super informative. Thank you. Can we drop that? Oh, thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much, Duane. If you could just pop in there and like leave your thoughts. Thank you, Zoe. Yeah. And if we could answer that question, that would be great too. Where will we be able to watch this again? I don't actually know. Teresa or Duane or Adrienne. Adrienne is saying that it's recorded and we'll share with folks who are registered. So look out for that. And with that, I will stop sharing my screen. And I guess I'll pass it back to Teresa. Do you want to close this out? I don't know how you all typically in these things, but I do know that we have another one coming up next week that's on electronic monitoring. So I don't know if folks want to say more about that. But yeah, we have a workshop next week on Ecarceration 101. It's led by media fellow James Kilgore. And it's based on our work with directly impacted folks and talking about how electric monitoring and other forms of Ecarceration are how they impact us and how we can organize around those issues. And Adrienne is sharing the info to register for that. But yeah, we do have a little bit of time. So if folks have things that are coming up around, like there's so much here around racialized this info and what's impacting our communities, if folks have any thoughts or questions that they're leaving with today, like what's top of mind would love to hear in the few minutes we have? I really have a question, but I have a comment, which I really appreciated the second part as well of your training, where we talked about like the power mapping or the different levels of questionings that we should have. And I thought it would be really interesting maybe for like a second section or a deeper dive to be able to look into like an example of how going through that power mapping can help us to design strategies for combating racialized this info. And so those last slides really left me thinking about like how do we make this a practice for all of us? Absolutely. I would love to do something like that, honestly. I don't know if it will be in a part two or if it'll just be something a standalone, but definitely want to dig into some of those juicy questions. And I think Doulani dropped the link earlier. I'm going to try and find it for the free. It's a collaboration between Stop LAPD Spying. Let's see if this allows media to do it. Yes, it did. A collaboration between Stop LAPD Spying and Free Radicals put together that. And if you dig into the blog posts they have, it's like so much information. And I just really felt like it could map on perfectly to something like this. Thank you, Anita. That's super helpful. Yeah, I mean the power mapping there's so many. It's like it's so systemic the way that this information is being put out on all these different levels. And then it almost like gives us a way to think about all the different levels on which we want to be organizing to to confront this information. Yeah, so part two. All right, should we close out? That's good. And feel free. We'll keep that link going. It's a Google Doc so you can continue to add feedback in there. And yeah, thank you everyone for joining.