Russian Bots

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BY JED JALECO DEL ROSARIO
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Sunday, February 25, 2018
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TWITTER is not a platform that many people would associate with serious political discourse, but apparently that isn’t the case anymore. In the United States, there seems to be an ongoing hysteria over “Russian Bots.”

For those who are not familiar with the story, various sources in the United States have claimed that Russia had created numerous fake and automated Twitter accounts to help Donald Trump become US President. Although most of the evidence behind such claims are tenuous, many in the US continue to insist that the story is true, prompting many policymakers in the United States to consider new censorship laws, at least with regards to Russian affiliated groups and individuals.

The main issue behind the Russian collusion narrative is to de-legitimize the Trump victory during the 2016 election, and thus, de-legitimize the Trump administration. If the US mainstream media, which is very opposed to Trump, can prove that he did win the election due to Russian interference then they can de-legitimate the Trump presidency.

However, the Russian collusion narrative has yet to produce any dividends for the US mainstream media, and this is partly because most of the evidences about Russian collusion are quite mundane. The latest evidence is the “Russian Bots” narrative, which claims that Russian paid shills went on Twitter to trick voters into voting for Trump instead of Clinton in the 2016 elections.

The problem with this narrative is that the vast majority of the pro-Trump, anti-Clinton tweets that were posted during the 2016 American election, tweets that were said to have originated in Russia, came from within the United States, not Russia.

Yes, a lot of people do get their information from social media, but to claim that random people on Twitter could alter an election’s results are quite frankly ridiculous. US elections have been influenced by foreign interests for decades, and they did it through special lobbies, not social media. So for the United States to start complaining about Russian interference (assuming any of it is true or pertinent) is not only hypocritical, but hysterical as well.

The whole drama over Russian bots and Russian interference in US elections is a complex one because it bound up with other issues, including foreign interference, free speech, truthful speech, special interest groups and media narratives.

And, of course, these issues aren’t confined to the United States either. Here, in the Philippines, we are also dealing with so-called “Fake News,” but the truth behind such issues may not be as nefarious as many in the media think.

With the rise of the internet and social media, people no longer need to read or look at mass media to form opinions. They can go to Google at any time, find information according to their biases, and form their own opinions according to similar biases. So when the US (and Philippine) media hysterically cries out about Fake News or Russian bots, one can’t help but think that they are being a little disingenuous.

What’s really happening here is that the mainstream media cannot control the internet-based media, and it’s causing the former to dismiss and disqualify the latter./PN
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