Evaluating contradictory foreign interference allegations in the 2020 U.S. election
Tags: Social Media, USA, Disinformation, Government, Journalism

This article uses the dataset compiled for the DFRLab’s Foreign Interference Attribution Tracker (FIAT), an interactive, open-source database that captures allegations of foreign interference relevant to the 2020 election. The tool consists of six elements that work together in order to tell the complete story of foreign interference allegations in the 2020 U.S. elections and assesses the credibility, bias, evidence, transparency, and impact of each claim. Readers can explore the project by visiting Interference2020.org.

The DFRLab has catalogued 80 allegations of foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, a sharp increase from 2016. The volume of foreign interference claims has made it challenging for journalists to summarize and contextualize every instance of foreign interference. It has also more difficult for policymakers to respond and harder for citizens to grasp the scale of the problem. The problem is compounded as these claims vary widely in their evidence and objectivity; sometimes, they even contradict each other. Instances where there are multiple, contradictory claims of foreign interference from traditionally credible actors can be the toughest to assess, as it is more difficult to determine which reporting to treat as more credible.

In our dataset, the DFRLab’s Foreign Interference Attribution Tracker team considered events with contradicting claims or “counter-claims” to be instances where multiple government agencies, technology companies, influential individuals, and media outlets issued diverging allegations of foreign interference to explain the same event. To analyze how each distinct characterization spread through social media, the team sorted media used to determine the total impact score into meta-narratives, and calculated an independent impact score for each contradicting allegation.

The objective of this research is to evaluate the similarities and differences in how each meta-narrative propagated, and to understand which allegations spread further at times when there was a great deal of information sharing but few verifiable facts.

Among the highlights of our analysis:

· Traditional media plays an agenda-setting role on foreign interference allegations, with claims that were endorsed by institutional outlets receiving higher impact scores.

· Contradictory claims between government agencies and social media companies and/or influential individuals arose from conflicting standards and definitions on allegations of foreign interference.

· Disinformant nations utilized foreign interference allegations that lacked strong evidence to highlight social divisions in the United States and the supposed failure of democracy, as well as to garner positive attention at home.

· Allegations lacking in both evidence and transparency resulted in contradictory narratives because they were interpreted based on pre-existing biases, both editorial and political.

Seven case studies: competing claims of foreign interference

Claim: Foreign actors will print and cast millions of mails in ballots in the 2020 election.

On June 22, 2020, President Donald Trump tweeted that unspecified foreign actors would print millions of ballots to rig the election, calling it the “scandal of our times.” Neither the president nor the White House substantiated the allegation. Coverage endorsing the claim accounted for 121,700 engagements with the tweet and largely originated from far-right commentators and blogs, which cited the tweet as evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. The tweet was woven into the QAnon conspiracy theory when Q, the anonymous leader of the conspiratorial movement, built upon the tweet by implying that China would coordinate with select states to print and distribute the ballots. Further, outlets such as MintPress News and RT published the claim to highlight internal division in the U.S. and sow doubt in the 2020 election.

While the original tweet spread virally and with little refutation through online spaces favorable to the president, mainstream coverage offered a credible counter-claim, noting a lack of evidence and disregard for safeguards intended to guarantee the security of the election. Reporting on the counter-claim, which stressed the potential for such unfounded claims to create unnecessary fears, outweighed the coverage that validated it, accounting for 210,759 of the engagements with the allegation.