Fighting Temptations Choir

[Stefanie Mordaunt]

AsI explain in a recent article published in the European Journal of International Security, there are three broad reasons to doubt that disinformation substantially influences political outcomes, either in how people vote or in how foreign and defence policy is formed.

The first reason is that, by the very nature of international politics, any rhetoric broadcast by Russia cannot be taken at face value. Like any other great power, Russia has every incentive to craft self-serving narratives about its foreign relations and to convey that it has good intentions when it really has revisionist ones. In peacetime, when relations are warm and friendly, this uncertainty may matter little. However, since 2014, Russia has been fighting with Ukraine while engaging in adversarial policies toward NATO countries.

Canadians may not necessarily regard Russia as an enemy, at least not to the same degree as people do in many parts of Europe, but they have no reason to be trusting of Russia either in light of its behaviour. Indeed, a 2017 poll conducted by Pew Research finds that 59 percent of Canadians have unfavourable views of Russia, well above the global median of 40 percent. The Liberal Party of Canada, the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party have all made statements condemning Russian aggression. Since Russia suffers a deficit of trust already with Canadian voters, any information conveyed by Russia may be considered deliberately false and therefore would be dismissed. Messages that are obviously pro-Kremlin would be immediately suspect.

Any foreign purveyor of disinformation will find that members of a target audience are largely decided in their beliefs. This is especially true of more sticky beliefs that relate to polarizing social and political issues. If there are people who are susceptible to disinformation from foreign sources, even amid intense political polarization within their society, then they are probably susceptible to disinformation from domestic sources, too. Indeed, the growing evidence about disinformation is that its effects have largely been limited to a small segment of voters who probably would have supported extremist parties anyway.

The disinforming state thus faces a conundrum. It cannot broadcast disinformation that is obvious in its intent and political leanings. However, in order to find a message that resonates with a target society, it risks broadcasting the sort of information that audiences would already have accepted: a disinforming state might find itself preaching to the proverbial choir. It must somehow calibrate a moderate piece of disinformation so that it is neither obvious enough to be discounted nor redundant enough to be lost in the popular discourse.

These reasons for why disinformation should be largely ineffective leave unchallenged the assumption that opinion polls or electoral outcomes directly affect policies that matter for the disinforming state. Presumably, the disinforming state is trying to shift opinion so as to affect in turn those policies that govern how a target aligns itself geopolitically and the foreign and defence policies regarding the disinforming state itself. After all, it is not spreading disinformation for its own sake. Unless the disinforming state is truly nihilistic, polluting the discourse in a society serves a higher end.

None of this discussion suggests that we can be complacent about disinformation. Civil discourse grounded in evidence and reasonable interpretations thereof is valuable in its own right. We should take whatever active measures we can to limit the effectiveness of disinformation campaigns.

Still, what political parties and candidates should also do is to avoid the temptation of blaming their defeats at the ballot box on foreign disinformation campaigns when their own performance is more likely to blame. This temptation may be especially powerful this year since the upcoming federal election promises to be highly competitive. The Canadian political system would survive the defeat of any one party or leader, but losers might continue to strike out politically if they avoid confronting the hard questions that come with self-examination.

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