Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on March 21, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: A recent report in The Straits Times (ST) of Singapore warrants attention. It was aptly headlined, “Disinformation in action”. According to the report, foreign and local experts brought up examples of obviously “deliberate falsehoods” and “disinformation” they had come across in their respective countries as well as the region at the Singapore Parliamentary Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods.

ST looked at eight countries mentioned where “disinformation has been and is in action”.  They included Malaysia; hence, the reason the report should draw attention here.

It is alleged that a data firm which uses profiling to send unique messages, which could include disinformation to voters, “might be at play” in Malaysia.

The daily quoted Dr Shashi Jayakumar of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies as saying that “Cambridge Analytica might have been hired by people involved in the upcoming general elections”.

Cambridge Analytica or CA has worked with Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election. The Trump campaign used CA as part of its voter outreach operation.

It is reported that the firm can send targeted ads to users based on survey behaviour and online profiles including content which “might be false or fake”.

And it is said that CA has set up office in Kuala Lumpur. But according to The Malay Mail Online, behavioural research company SCL Group — the parent company of CA — has denied doing election work in Malaysia.

And it has refuted claims that the Barisan Nasional (BN) was using its “big data” services for the upcoming GE14.

SCL’s Southeast Asia head Azrin Zizal is reported as saying that his company — which according to its website uses advanced data analytics to identify voters — has not done any election work in Malaysia before, and that local political parties have yet to engage it for GE14.

While the use of CA (or other foreign firms for that matter) for GE14 remains up to now a “poser” or “allegation”, the “local boys” in IT are very much in the picture already.

A day after Pakatan Harapan launched its manifesto, my daughter received a tweet condemning the coalition’s election pledges.

The tweet was sent by, well, a stranger. Yes, there was a name attached to the tweet but the sender was not someone known to my daughter.

The identity of the person who sent the tweet, whether it’s a he or she or whether the name is real or fictitious (or maybe I should say fake as it’s such a trendy word now) is not the issue. Nor is the content of the tweet. At least not for now.

Here’s the thing. Underneath the caption and anti-Pakatan hashtags comes this word — sponsored. Just who the sponsor(s) are is not revealed. Still by declaring the tweet sponsored, it’s “safe” to say that everything was done “in the open”. It’s not some “clandestine operation”.

I am referring to this particular tweet only because it is no big secret that as far as tweets, blog and Facebook postings involving politics go, “cloak and dagger games” are at play.

And talking about the tweet to my 20-year-old daughter as example, it is stating the obvious: the target audience of political parties is the young. Stating the obvious again — the young love social media. Come to think about it, the not-so-young too.

Local IT experts and so-called “social media managers” have been roped in, or are about to be “employed”, or are pitching to political parties, with services they can provide to ensure that the political campaign reaches its audience via social media platforms and messaging services. For a price of course. And it’s all perfectly legal.

These people are professionals and their job is to disseminate information as required by their pay masters (that is political parties). They do not create the information or content. Content is usually created or provided by the parties themselves — be it party members, activists, sympathisers to the cause, assuming the role of bloggers, cyber troopers and what have you. Some do it voluntarily; some are paid.

But there are people who disseminate campaign materials and they are also the ones that came up with the campaign materials sent out.

Anyway, what are the services on offer?

According to a “social media manager”, his team carries out what is known as “listening”. As the name implies, they “listen” to or monitor what is written in tweets or what is posted in Facebook by people in a particular area — giving attention to grouses and complaints. They then present the findings to the party that hired them for further action. Or they come up with proposals which they feel are best suited to settle the issues raised by those picked by them earlier.

There are many ways of “listening”, says the “social media manager” without going into specifics, save to say they are using the many tools or apps available in the market — “some we need to pay, some are free like TweetDeck”.

And his team can also help boost “ratings” for websites or blogs related to political parties. “The legal way is to use FB ads — which is not free — to boost postings. That is what is known as the white hat. For black hat it’s a bit complicated to explain as it involves breaking twitter or Facebook regulations”.

Another source tells me that his associates who are IT experts use digital advertising where “they blast campaign messages through all social media platforms — be it Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. It’s a good strategy to get immediate audiences, but the fee can be hefty ”.

In 2013, during GE13, they were engaged by a coalition ruling a state. Their “employers” then were successful in keeping their reign on the state.

Now they are quite confident their clients will re-engage them for GE14.

It is said that there are at least 17 million Internet users in Malaysia. At least 10 million of them use broadband, while around four or five million use 3G.

And IT experts say users between the ages of 20 to 24 are on the Net for long hours each day.

Needless to say, the content available on the Internet is “a lot” — to put it mildly. People are attracted to it because the content is entertaining, useful to the users and their friends, relevant to their interests and newsworthy.

The big question though is: How do Internet users decide what materials to absorb from the millions they they see.

Here’s where the expertise comes in.

IT experts can “help” users decide. One example is by creating a buzz, initially, to trigger their interest. Then “tease” them with bits of information sporadically before finally unveiling the main story or the full picture. Campaign messages in the case of political purposes. Propaganda, if you like.

Does this mean, as posed by a top journalist, that all the ceramahs, and what not, would in the end come to nought as opposed to what voters received on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram?

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