(2022-05-18) How The Biden Administration Let Rightwing Attacks Derail Its Disinformation Efforts

Taylor Lorenz: How the Biden administration let right-wing attacks derail its disinformation efforts. On the morning of April 27, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the first Disinformation Governance Board.

The Biden administration tapped Nina Jankowicz... The author of the books “How to Be a Woman Online” and “How to Lose the Information War,” her career also featured stints at multiple nonpartisan think tanks and nonprofits and included work that focused on strengthening democratic institutions. Within the small community of disinformation researchers, her work was well-regarded.

She has been subject to an unrelenting barrage of harassment and abuse while unchecked misrepresentations of her work continue to go viral

Now, just three weeks after its announcement, the Disinformation Governance Board is being “paused,”

Those familiar with the board’s inner workings, including DHS employees and Capitol Hill staffers, along with experts on disinformation, say Jankowicz was set up to fail by an administration that was unsure of its messaging and unprepared to counteract a coordinated online campaign against her.

Just hours after Jankowicz tweeted about her new job, far-right influencer Jack Posobiec posted tweets accusing the Biden administration of creating a “Ministry of Truth.”

The board was created to study best practices in combating the harmful effects of disinformation and to help DHS counter viral lies and propaganda that could threaten domestic security.

the board itself had no power or authority to make any operational decisions.

As this online campaign played out, DHS and the Biden administration struggled to counter the repeated attacks.

The weekend after her hiring was announced, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas attempted to clarify the board’s mission and defended Jankowicz’s credentials. He did a round of TV news interviews and testified about the board during House and Senate committee hearings

As she endured the attacks, Jankowicz herself was told to stay silent. After attempting to defend herself on Twitter April 27, she was told by DHS officials to not issue any further public statements, according to multiple people close to her.

Administration officials did not brief the relevant congressional staff and committees ahead of the board’s launch, and members of Congress who had expressed interest in disinformation weren’t given a detailed explanation about how it would operate.

DHS staffers have also grown frustrated. With the department’s suspension of intra-departmental working groups focused on mis-, dis- and mal-information, some officials said it was an overreaction that gave too much credence to bad-faith actors

The campaigns invariably start with identifying a person to characterize as a villain. Attacking faceless institutions is difficult, so a figurehead (almost always a woman or person of color) is found to serve as its face

Harassment and reputational harm is core to the attack strategy. Institutions often treat reputational harm and online attacks as a personnel matter, one that unlucky employees should simply endure quietly.

The worst thing any institution can do in the face of such attacks is remain quiet, several disinformation researchers said.

said Mark Jacobson, assistant dean at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, who has researched propaganda, political warfare and disinformation for over 30 years. “You need to have a factual and equally emotional counternarrative. A fact sheet is not a narrative.”