Yes.
When we published Friction in 2011, the book’s subtitle, “How Conflict Radicalizes Them and Us” was itself radical.1 Our idea was that not only the bad guys, the terrorists, but also good Americans can become radicalized. That “our people” could be anything like “them” threatened many Americans’ worldview. Seven years later, it is hard to deny radicalization is growing in America.
Consider the facts.
Hate crimes rose 17 percent in 2017, according to the FBI. These data don’t include the jurisdictions that do not report hate crime statistics to the FBI. And this increase is unrelated to general crime: in the same period, general crime declined slightly, by 0.02 percent.2
Mass shootings in the United States claimed more lives in 2017 than in any other year in the past four decades.3 Violent riots averaged 2 per year between 2000 and 2015, but their number increased dramatically to 10 in 2016 and 8 in 2017.4 A company specialized in attire and decals with radical messages was started in 2012; by 2016, it had expanded to a self-reported million customers.5
These statistics lay out radicalization in action. A similar picture emerges when considering radicalization of opinion in the United States. Survey data show that hate for the other party has increased from about 17 percent among both Democrats and Republicans in 2000 to about 50 percent in 2016.6
Radicalization is also evident in social interactions online: 2016 marked a sharp increase in hate speech, including anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric on Twitter and Facebook.7 Although these social platforms have put in place policies and mechanisms to contain radical speech, there are alternative platforms (e.g., Gab) that attract users precisely because they do not try to sanction hateful rhetoric.
Both in opinion and in action, the United States has transformed in the past few years. We are more radical now than we were before. In America, radicalization emerges out of conflict, not between Americans and terrorists but between groups of Americans. Conflicts arise on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, and political party. How is this happening, and why is it happening now?
When we wrote Friction, we searched for mechanisms of radicalization that would reach beyond any particular group of terrorists. We studied case histories of terrorists from different religious, cultural, and historical backgrounds, ranging from anti-tsarist terrorists of the 1890s to Islamist terrorists of today. The 12 mechanisms of radicalization that we identified could be seen at work in the history of every terrorist group studied. This generality led us to expect that the same mechanisms would be found on both sides of escalating political conflicts, both old and new. Thus, Friction described how radicalization could be seen not only in the terrorists but also in Americans responding to the terrorists. Indeed, we see many of the same mechanisms of radicalization that lead to terrorism at work in US politics today.
Status and thrill seeking motivate mass shooters like the Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock,8 just as they motivate Islamist terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarquawi. Personal grievance motivated incel (involuntarily celibate) Scott Paul Beierle, who shot several women at a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida,9 just as it motivated some Palestinian suicide bombers. Group polarization and group isolation and threat are at play on radical social media websites in the United States, leading one individual to attack a synagogue in Pittsburgh,10 just as these mechanisms led 19 al-Qaeda terrorists to the 9/11 attacks.
But it is mass radicalization observed in the United States that is the most striking. In Friction, we laid out three mechanisms of mass radicalization: martyrdom, jujitsu, and hate. In the recent selection of a US Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh was a martyr for some and a monster for others. President Donald Trump attacks immigrants to instigate Democratic counterreaction and distract from his connections with Russia (jujitsu). Hate implies a bad essence. A belief in the other party’s bad essence causes many to want their children to marry within their party: “In 1958, 33 percent of Democrats wanted their daughters to marry a Democrat, and 25 percent of Republicans wanted their daughters to marry a Republican. But by 2016, 60 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans felt that way.”11
Recent proliferation of social media offers an unprecedented window into mass psychology. It’s possible to see a story spreading in real time—through the rate at which it is shared, commented on, or “liked.” It’s possible to see which social media profiles are more influential than others—by the number of their “followers” or “friends.” We can even track the effects a story, a tweet, or an image has on people—by reading their comments. People interacting on Facebook or Twitter don’t know each other personally. They are an imagined community, a part of another imagined community—a country, an ethnic group, or a religion.
It has never been easier to observe mass radicalization in an imagined community. And it has never been easier to produce mass radicalization. The Nazis, the Soviets, and the Chinese used propaganda to mass radicalize their citizens. A traveling theater, a staged street argument, a charismatic speaker, a film, a newspaper article—these could reach crowds, but the size of these crowds fades in comparison to the crowd that can access a viral story on Twitter. The difference between an effective radicalizing story then and now is hundreds versus millions exposed to it, days versus minutes for the exposure, and a handful versus hundreds sharing reactions to it.
This capacity can be exploited by foreign governments and domestic political players who benefit from fractionating the United States into conflicting groups. Private sector research firms such as Cambridge Analytica can harness the power of social media by collecting personal data of users and target-messaging content most likely to radicalize. Paid internet trolls can instigate group divisions in fake social media posts.
Mass radicalization is a counterintuitive notion in a society where we are taught from a young age to take responsibility for our actions and have our own opinions. The past few years demonstrate that even in our individualistic society, mass identity is at play, and mass radicalization is a real danger.
Mass radicalization is more elusive than either individual or group radicalization.
With individual radicalization, all we need to know whether someone is radicalized are the person’s opinions (from an interview, a questionnaire, or writing) and actions. Like measuring temperature, we can grade these on a scale and derive a relative value of the individual’s radicalization. If a person is stockpiling an arsenal to shoot up a school or posting threats on social media, we know for sure he or she is strongly radicalized.
Similarly, with a face-to-face group, we can collect group members’ opinions, including group discussions, and track actions by group members to decide how radical the group is. If a group is discussing a way to blow up a bus stop, we are looking at a radical group.
With mass radicalization, however, the number of individuals sharing a mass identity is too large to query, their actions too diverse. Suppose 5 percent of a nation are ready to go on barricades to overthrow the government; what does it say about the nation’s radicalization? Is 5 percent high radicalization or low? What about 10 percent? 20 percent?
Mass radicalization is also hard to understand. Mass radicalization often stems from irrational actions and experiential processes. If we ask ourselves why we feel a certain way about some political issue, we are unlikely to recognize the elation we experienced at a mass rally or the feeling of belonging we derived from some online group discussion. Trained to find rational explanations for our behaviors, we ignore things that defy rationality. Believing we are adults with our own opinions, responsible for our own actions, we discount the influence of others on our attitudes and behaviors. Yet it doesn’t make them any less significant.
A man lights himself on fire in protest of government corruption, and within days the entire country erupts in protests, leading to the ousting of the regime and starting a chain reaction of revolutions in neighboring countries. Few people witnessed the self-immolation, few knew the self-immolator, but there was enough mass radicalization in opinion among Arabs at that moment to lead to mass radicalization in action that became the Arab Spring.
Closer to home, the US intelligence community now believes Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential elections, strategically running social media campaigns that targeted voters’ attitudes to increase support for Donald Trump.12 In other words, Russia manipulated mass identity of various groups, playing on racism of some, even as it played on ethnic pride of others, sowing divisions and stoking fears, ultimately increasing mass radicalization. At the same time, these fears were assuaged with promises from the pro-Trump camp. The pundits and political scientists believed Hillary Clinton had the presidency in her pocket,13 yet mass radicalization changed the expected election outcome. Like gravity, mass radicalization is elusive but powerful, a force to be reckoned with.
In the weeks leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, Trump told an average of seven lies per day.14 In August 2018, he tweeted, “Over 90% approval rating for your all time favorite (I hope) President within the Republican Party and 52% overall.” These numbers seemed to come from thin air because no poll on or near this date had put Trump’s overall approval rating above 46 percent.15 In October 2018, Trump tweeted, “New Fox Poll shows a 40% Approval Rating by African Americans for President Trump, a record for Republicans. Thank you, a great honor!” In reality, according to Gallup, Ipsos/Reuters, and YouGov/Economist, Trump’s approval rating among African Americans was closer to 10–15 percent.16 After the government shutdown of 35 days ended in January 2019, Trump remarked to the press that most civil servants supported the shutdown and that most Democrats and Republicans supported the wall.17 But according to polling data, the shutdown was extremely unpopular among federal employees, and most Americans did not support the wall.
Why would the president lie about things that can easily be fact-checked against poll results? Because by misrepresenting poll numbers, he can form meta-opinions.
A meta-opinion is an opinion about the opinions of others.
Public opinion is usually measured by professional polling, which can be complex in practice but depends on a simple idea—that a random and representative sample of a population can describe the whole population. In the United States, national polls use the opinions of hundreds of respondents to describe the opinions of the approximately 200 million citizens over 18 years old.
For instance, a spring 2018 poll of 750 adult US residents found that 34 percent believed that global warming is real and caused by human activity.18 Political action to reduce or stop global warming depends on this 34 percent who recognize the problem. But political action also depends on public perceptions of US opinions about global warming. These opinions about opinion are meta-opinions.
A 2013 poll of 5,000 Australians shows how meta-opinions can go awry. 19 The topic was global warming; respondents were asked to put themselves into one of four groups: “Climate change is not happening” (6 percent), “It’s happening but natural” (40 percent), “It’s happening and human induced” (50 percent), and “Don’t know” (4 percent). Respondents were then asked to estimate the percentage of Australians in each group. Respondents in the “not happening” group estimated that 40 percent of Australians agreed with them. Those in the “don’t know” group believed that 30 percent agreed with them. So respondents in the smaller groups greatly overestimated agreement with their positions (40 percent estimated vs. 6 percent actual and 30 percent estimated vs. 4 percent actual). In contrast, respondents in the larger groups underestimated agreement with their positions (30 percent estimated vs. 40 percent actual for “natural” respondents, and 40 percent estimated by “human induced” respondents vs. 50 percent actual).
In sum, small minorities greatly overestimated agreement with their positions, whereas those with more popular opinions substantially underestimated agreement with their positions. Perhaps support for measures to fight global warming would be greater in Australia if more Australians knew that half the population believes that global warming is real and human induced.
Political opinions are important, as are meta-opinions. But it’s the difference between the two that can make all the difference for political action.
Many were surprised by the sudden dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Almost overnight, a global superpower was reduced to its constituent states as squabbling nations. One account of this surprise is that mistaken meta-opinions were suddenly corrected. The Soviet Union was a police state that sanctioned dissent. Even though many Soviet citizens came to detest their government, they did not voice their opinions, fearing persecution. Most citizens thought that most citizens supported the government. When President Mikhail Gorbachev started “Glasnost”—a program of democratization that encouraged citizens to express their opinions—mistaken meta-opinions began correcting. An attempted coup by hard-line communists failed when Russians, newly unafraid to express their opinions, poured into the streets to protest the coup.
There is an iconic photograph of Boris Yeltsin speaking to the crowd from atop a tank parked before the Russian parliament.20 Behind Yeltsin is the new three-color Russian flag instead of the red Soviet flag with its hammer and sickle. In the hatch of the tank, a uniformed soldier sits, his head bowed and hidden in his hands. This picture is a MIM, a mass identity manipulation. The Soviet identity is cast down; a new Russian identity is raised up. Seeing thousands of citizens protesting finished off what was remaining of the mistaken meta-opinions about the Soviet Union. No longer afraid to voice their dissatisfaction with the status quo, former Soviet republics declared independence.
They convey social norms that induce bandwagon effects.
Once upon a time, an emperor engaged two weavers to make him new clothes. These charlatans promised the most glorious garment ever made, but warned that stupid or incompetent people would not be able to see it. In fact, the weavers made nothing. They delivered an imaginary suit. Neither the emperor nor his people would admit they could not see the suit, for fear of being seen as stupid. Finally, a child cried out, “But he’s not wearing anything at all!”
The Emperor’s New Clothes, penned by Hans Christian Andersen, is so popular that the phrase “the emperor’s new clothes” has become an idiom referring to a situation in which a (falsely) perceived social norm suppresses belief and action contrary to the norm.
Roger Brown described social norms as having a triple regularity: regularity of action, expectation, and prescription.21 In a particular situation, most people will behave the same way. In that situation, most will expect others to behave in this way. And most will see something wrong with anyone who does not behave in this way, in this situation. For instance, most Americans will stand up as the flag passes by in a Fourth of July parade. Most Americans expect that others will stand. And most will see something wrong with an individual who does not stand.
Research on social norms has emphasized the behavioral and prescriptive regularities that mark a norm, but expectation is an important part of a norm’s power. If we didn’t expect others to stand for the flag, would we stand ourselves? A meta-opinion is a kind of expectation—an expectation about what others believe, want, feel, or will do. The expectations set up by meta-opinions push individuals toward a bandwagon effect. An experiment using internet polling showed how bandwagon effects work.22
Respondents were asked how likely they were to vote for public financing of elections; for reducing US troops in Afghanistan; and for free trade agreements with North, Central, and South American countries. After some distracting questions, respondents received a (bogus) “aggregation of polling results” reporting support for each policy between 20 and 80 percent. Then, they were asked again (in different format) how likely they were to vote for each policy. Averaged across the three policies, a 20-point increase in poll support produced about a 3-point increase in voting for the policy. The bandwagon effect here is small but perhaps enough to sway a close election.
There is another way in which bandwagon effects occur. Meta-opinions can affect not only voter opinions but also donations to political candidates. The candidate perceived as more popular is likely to draw more and bigger donations and more volunteer workers. These in turn feed into bigger and better campaigns, increasing poll numbers, and multiplied bandwagon effects.23
The internet has become a battleground of efforts to control meta-opinions to advance e-commerce. Reviews and star ratings can make or break sales of internet products and services. Some reviews are fakes posted by those with financial interest in the product; there are now apps designed to identify fake reviews.24 The number of Twitter followers or Facebook friends signals popularity and approval. During the 2012 presidential campaign, tens of thousands of @mittromney followers were found to be fake accounts, and—here is the kicker—no one could determine who had paid for them. Social media sharing buttons—with counters—give the impression that everyone who has shared approves of or uses the product or service shown on the page. Facebook users are twice as likely to “like” an update when three unknown users like the update than when one unknown user likes the update.25 Online as in life, we jump on the bandwagon.
If meta-opinions’ norm power is a key to e-commerce success, governments have recognized the power of meta-opinions in attempts to control them. These attempts have been going on for years; the examples that follow are from a 2015 review.26
The most famous example of meta-opinion manipulation is China’s army of internet commentators, known also as the 50 Cent Party, a reference to how members are paid a small fee per post. These posts are designed to uphold the party line by attacking critics and defending government policies. The hundreds of thousands of individuals who contribute to the work of the 50 Cent Party can create a sense that the party’s narrative is everywhere, and everywhere dominant. Undesirable ideas are not just deleted (although this also may happen); they are responded to and argued against wherever they may be—chat rooms, forums, or comment pages.
Showing the broad appeal of the 50 Cent Party’s methods, the Chinese government has been forced to investigate internet commentators for abuse of position. With appropriate bribes, a corporation in China can get its own concerns and public relations goals added to a commentator’s duties. For those corporations that do not need the powerful (and government-restricted) tools of the 50 Cent Party, the private “Water Armies” offer similar capabilities. The Water Armies train and pay their own commentators in much the same way as does the 50 Cent Party, putting the same rapid and distributed response methods at the disposal of anyone willing to buy their services.
Other countries have shown interest in the methods of the 50 Cent Party. In the fall of 2013, Israel announced a program that Prime Minister Netanyahu described as an element of the public diplomacy front. Students from Israeli universities are given partial scholarships in return for countering critics of Israeli policy. This program is in addition to the previously organized Interactive Media division of the Israeli military, in which dozens of soldiers are similarly tasked.
Also in 2013, Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey unveiled a program of “social media representatives.” Unlike the Chinese and Israeli programs, Erdogan’s is meant to work on behalf of his party rather than for the government as a whole. Everything else about the program is familiar; 6,000 young members of Erdogan’s party are to be trained to respond to criticism and share the party line across multiple social media platforms.
In South Korea, a team in the National Intelligence Service attempted to influence public opinion before an election with over 1 million blog posts and Twitter messages. South Korean courts did not look kindly on the spy agency involving itself in domestic affairs and convicted the intelligence chief involved.
All of these programs demonstrate a need to counter unwanted opinions informally and at their point of origin—individual internet users. None of them involves massive media campaigns and slick presentations, just patient individuals with a keyboard and an internet connection. The goal is to control perceptions of the distribution of opinions—meta-opinions.
The US Constitution’s First Amendment, freedom of speech, prevents the government from suppressing true poll numbers or silencing fact-checkers. But bogus poll numbers can still form meta-opinions. Many won’t bother to check the numbers’ authenticity, and many will take the high office’s word over the media, whom President Trump calls “fake news” and “enemy of the people.” With meta-opinions formed in his favor, President Trump can boost his supporters’ confidence in him, fueling mass radicalization of opinion.
It can do so through group polarization and false consensus.
The news offers a variety of topics to be angry about. Here is one: “The Red Hen restaurant refused to serve Sarah Huckabee Sanders.” Chances are, you have used social media to inform your opinion about that story. As it turns out, whether you sided with Sanders or the Red Hen, the social media likely radicalized your opinion, fueling your anger.
For radicalization researchers, social media offer an interesting observational study. Research on face-to-face groups discovered that discussion among like-minded people radicalizes their average opinion. A group that starts out slightly pro-life ends up more pro-life; a group that starts out anti-guns ends up more so.
Two forces radicalize opinions in group discussion. One is informational: People learn new arguments to support the opinions they already hold. The second radicalizing force in group discussion is social: People admire and want to emulate those expressing the most extreme opinions.
Social media discussions carry both informational and social aspects of group polarization. In news-related Twitter threads, tweets that offer new arguments supporting a particular attitude (useful facts, catchy metaphors, moral judgments) get more “likes” and retweets. Twitter users learn relevant arguments to reinforce their own opinions. Users with more radical opinions get larger followings precisely because their tweets use expletives and polarizing rhetoric. More radical individuals have more social influence.
Social media are more radicalizing than face-to-face groups because they are larger collectives (more sources of information) and because in these large collectives there is more likelihood of encountering radical individuals. There is a third reason social media groups are more radicalizing. In a face-to-face group, dissenters can be ignored or expelled—but only with some unpleasantness. On a social media platform, selection has no downside; just press the mute button or the block button.
Some cases of social media radicalization have already come to light. The Arab Spring, the Ukrainian revolution of 2014, and the Armenian revolution of 2018 evolved on social media, where opinions radicalized first and then action was planned and coordinated. ISIS’ use of social media to recruit fighters, wives, and supporters around the globe resulted in thousands of Western youths traveling to Syria and Iraq. Russia used Facebook and Twitter to try to twist the US electorate with radicalizing posts. Perhaps the most amazing example is the incel movement, which unites men unable to seduce women and upgrades their personal grievances of sexual failure to the level of a political movement worthy of editorials in The New York Times.
More people every day rely on social media for their news, entertainment, and social interactions. What we need is independent research to investigate their potential political effects. Like a Trojan horse, we let these vehicles into our daily lives. We should not close our collective eyes to the danger that they carry.
Yes.
If you are an American, in all likelihood you have been targeted online by Russian propaganda. Facebook estimates that in the months before the 2016 presidential election, 126 million US users saw posts, stories, or other content created by Russian government-backed accounts,27 and an additional 20 million were exposed to this Russian content on Facebook-owned Instagram.28 A similar picture emerges from Twitter and YouTube.29 Russia has weaponized the social media to spread rumors, conspiracy theories, and emotion-stirring images in a coordinated effort to radicalize the United States from within.30
Americans were not their only target: former Soviet republics (Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia, Lithuania), as well as countries of the European Union (Poland, France, Germany) have been subjected to the same treatment. In different languages, Russian trolls used the same tactics, planting and amplifying divisive messages, posting fake or doctored photos and made-up stories to stoke fear (vaccinations are killing your kids31) and anger (immigrants are coming for your jobs32).
But Americans fell for the Russian lies at a much higher rate. Researchers found an average of 1.73 likes, retweets or replies for Russian trolls’ posts in Russian or any language other than English, but for English-language posts, the rate was nine times higher (15.25).33 Americans, it turned out, were easy targets for the Russian propaganda.
American social media giants scramble to defend against the onslaught of Russian troll attacks. One result of their efforts makes it possible now to check if you personally were exposed to the Russian propaganda.34
An answer proposed by the authors of the above study was that the former Soviets were “immunized” against the Russian propaganda. Because of their history with Russia, they expect to be lied to and so are generally more cynical than Americans. This is an explanation that cultural psychologists would agree with. There may be some truth to it.
But cynicism can’t be the whole answer.
If cultural exposure to propaganda were enough to immunize against it, then we should expect Russians to be laughing at the Kremlin’s recent portrayals of supposed Ukrainian aggression against Russia or of supposed NATO plans to attack Moscow. Instead, cynical as they are, most Russians seem to believe the Kremlin-directed propaganda that targets them.35 The cynicism, therefore, is not enough to understand what makes Europeans less susceptible than Americans to Russian propaganda.
What if we try another explanation, not from cultural psychology but from mass psychology?
Jon Haidt calls the human ability to forsake individual interests in the name of group interests the hive mind.36 We have a kind of hive switch built-in, Haidt suggests, that can be flipped, turning us from rational individualists into selfless group players. This ability, he argues, has evolved through natural selection because humans live in groups, and groups can persist only when some members are willing to give up their interests, and even their lives, for the benefit of others.
When the hive switch is turned on, we turn away from our individual identity toward a mass identity—ethnic, religious, or national. When the hive switch is turned on, we can become radicalized—more accepting of violence in the name of the large impersonal collective that is our mass identity.
That’s what the Russian trolls attempted: to set our mass identities at odds, radicalizing Blacks against Whites, Caucasians against Latinos, WASPs against Jews, and Democrats against Republicans. Then the question becomes, Why was American mass identity more easily radicalized through social media than, say, Ukrainian or Estonian mass identity?
Mass identities are social constructs. We need to know what our fellow X (e.g., Americans, Jews, and Ukrainians) are up to and up against. We need information to maintain and nurture our mass identities. One big difference between the United States and European countries is availability of this kind of information. For Americans, mass identity inputs are less likely to come from personal interactions.
Physically, Americans are more isolated than Europeans. The average population density in the United States is 92 residents per square mile,37 versus about 143 residents per square mile in Europe.38 Most US residents (70 percent) live in detached houses39 in small towns and suburbs where they have to drive to get to work, school, or the grocery store.40 Compare this with only one-third of Europeans living in detached homes.41 Also, more Europeans ride public transport or bike or walk to work, school, or the grocery store.42
Americans work more hours and take fewer vacation days than do Europeans.43 Europeans are more willing to give up money for leisure than are Americans.44 American preferences for personal cars, detached homes, and more income result in long and lonely commutes from home to work, with less time to socialize and fewer venues for socialization. Taken together, these factors contribute to the stark difference in reported loneliness between Americans (46 percent)45 and Europeans (6 percent).46
When real-life social interactions are fewer, virtual interactions have more scope to define and radicalize mass identity. Seventy-one percent of American internet users report using social media, compared with 58 percent in France, Italy, and Spain and 46 percent in Germany and Poland.47 Three-fourths of American Facebook users say they visit the platform at least once a day.48
Russian propaganda masters pounced on the opportunity to use social media to define and mobilize American mass identities. Because Americans are more dependent on social media, they succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. Social isolation made Americans vulnerable to social media manipulation.
Physical isolation is a simple demographic explanation for a complex psychological phenomenon, but the link is not hard to see. The number of people we run into predicts how many social connections we form. Researchers studying undergraduate friendships discovered that the physical location of one’s dormitory room determined how many friends one had at the end of the year.49 Propinquity, or the degree of exposure to people, predicted popularity.
Because we interact with fewer people, we have fewer friends. Americans’ number of close confidants decreased from three to two50 during the past 25 years, nearly tripling the degree of social isolation. With fewer friends and fewer social interactions, we become lonelier, seeking virtual substitutes through the internet.51 And that is where Russian trolls dwell.
American vulnerability to social media propaganda points to a need for countermeasures. One is increasing public awareness about social media’s radicalizing potential. Building up healthy cynicism about online political content can help immunize Americans against Russian ruses and against others trying the same techniques. Cynicism should be easier in a time when new investigations of political malfeasance are announced weekly.
Another countermeasure might be government oversight of the social media. The reach and speed of the internet allowed hostile foreign actors to spread radical ideas far and wide among us. Russian propaganda attacks may help bring an end to the Wild West era online. Algorithms and safeguards to detect and avert similar attacks in the future may be required, although preserving freedom of speech will not be easy.
Finally, we should all get out more. Loneliness is a dangerous condition, with health consequences as dire as 15 cigarettes per day.52 Until recently, we could dismiss loneliness as a personal problem. But the success of the Russian mass identity manipulations shows that loneliness can be a political problem as well.
It would serve our national interests to spend more tax dollars on events that bring people together. During sports events such as soccer World Cup, football playoffs, or Rugby World Cup, suicide rates decline by as much as 10 percent, with the greatest decline among men aged 30–44 years.53,54 Especially for sports fans, these spectator events create social exposure and opportunities for socialization even after the games are over.
Sports are not for everyone, but the variety of mass social gatherings is broader than sports. In addition to their already more connected home and work lives, Europeans encounter a wealth of socializing events: regular street fairs, free music performances, open-air art exhibits, and even impromptu yoga and dance sessions. Nations that play together stay together against mass identity manipulations.
Research, oversight, and infrastructure.
After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US government sponsored research initiatives linking academics with security practitioners. Government grants produced research centers and interdisciplinary groups focused on understanding, predicting, and reducing terrorism. Their work resulted in scientific articles, books, and training programs. We now know much more about terrorists than we knew on 9/11. This knowledge helps the FBI and the police to track potential perpetrators and thwart most terrorist attacks before they endanger people’s lives.
Mass radicalization inside the United States is a new threat to the country’s stability, security, and prosperity. Foreign governments and private research firms are capitalizing on American vulnerability to social media propaganda, directing coordinated attacks designed to divide and radicalize Americans against their fellow Americans. As we write this in January 2019, Facebook has refused to turn over the data it obtains from users or even the user data it has already shared with those using the data against Americans.
It makes no sense that Cambridge Analytica and the Russian internet search engine Yandex have Facebook user data but the US government and researchers in the United States do not.55 To understand how Americans were targeted, we need access to Facebook data and the data acquired by other social media such as Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. We need to know how social media messages, including emotion-stirring images, rumors, slogans, and symbols, affect users’ attention, opinions, and action. For that, we need research. Initiatives similar to those dedicated to terrorism research need to be dedicated to research on radicalization through social media.
As data accumulate and we understand better what content is particularly dangerous, a system of warnings, similar to the Federal Communications Commission’s ratings of movies and computer games, could be applied to social media messages. The warning system can support parental and personal controls to filter particularly dangerous propaganda and block fraudulent accounts and bots. Without this, we are sitting ducks, wide open to manipulation and radicalization on the internet platforms we have come to depend on.
Internet social media have proven to be powerful vehicles for mass radicalization. Paid trolls or internet bots (computer programs designed to impersonate an individual, amplifying a particular political message by retweeting, “liking,” or reposting corresponding content) can aid a political campaign, help incite a rally, or popularize a political position. This power to interfere in our political system requires oversight.
Political candidates in the United States are not allowed to accept campaign donations from foreign sources, and Americans lobbying for foreign governments must register with the US government. But through social media, foreign governments can interfere in US politics, including US elections. Even among US political players, social media open doors to voters’ minds in a new form of influence that is not subject to campaign limitations or reporting requirements. Existing laws are not enough to control foreign or domestic political manipulation in the age of the internet. We must write new laws that would reduce the public’s vulnerability to manipulation through the social media, especially foreign-origin politicking disguised as American voices.
As noted previously, Americans are especially vulnerable to Russian propaganda delivered via social media because they are lonelier and more isolated than, for example, Europeans. Social media offer many Americans what they lack: social connection and a sense of larger community. Infrastructure to increase opportunity for socializing, including social spaces like parks, pedestrian boulevards, and mass attractions like festivals and performances, can increase quality of life at the same time as they will reduce Americans’ dependence on social media. Similarly, mass transit offers more opportunity for connection than commuting by private vehicle, and better mass transit might increase quality of life by reducing toxic emissions. Many cities have begun to ban motor vehicles and encourage walking and biking.56
As demonstrated by Russian efforts on social media, Americans are vulnerable to radicalization along existing fault lines. The gist of the Russian propaganda emphasized our internal conflicts, inflaming passions of Whites against Blacks, immigrants against native-born, gays against straights, Christians against Muslims, and Democrats against Republicans. Russian internet interventions aimed to exploit these divisions.
This is a new form of warfare. Other countries will try to do what the Russians tried to do. We should work toward reducing the divisions that give enemies an opening. One way to achieve this goal is for the government to sponsor large-scale projects that bring different factions together for the common good. The challenges looming on our collective horizon are serious—climate change, increasing inequality, mass migrations driven by poverty and crime, an aging population, and health care crises. These issues require collective action. Government-led initiatives to address these major challenges could bring us together as a nation and fortify us against hybrid warfare whose battlefield is the internet and whose trophies are our hearts and minds.