In Search of a Playbook for Winning Elections in the Disinformation Age
January 22, 2024
The Democratic Party’s fight against right-wing memes is limned in this overwrought study of election propaganda. Journalist Issenberg (The Engagement) surveys the new breed of political operatives who advise Democratic politicians on how to respond to conservative lies and conspiracy theories. These specialists use interns and AI to suss out disinformation and its sources on social media, deploy analytic protocols to vet its peril to Democratic campaigns, convene focus groups to test counternarratives, and sometimes spread their own disinformation (as when strategist Matt Osborne concocted a Dry Alabama campaign insinuating that Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore wanted to ban alcohol in the state). Issenberg profiles leaders of the anti-disinformation consulting industry, who warn of an “‘existential threat to democracy’ ” while spinning reams of “threat assessments,” “Harm Indexes,” grid quadrants, and nine-cell matrices. The book’s most illuminating chapter covers Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, which saw the country’s Supreme Electoral Court grant itself sweeping powers to censor political speech; this section reveals the anti-disinformation crusade’s potential to reach an anti-democratic endpoint. Elsewhere, though, Issenberg’s embrace of the hysteria over disinformation undermines his reporting—he does not pierce the consultants’ lingo, which smacks at times of faddism and technocratic grift, with its fee-enhancing veneer of expertise. This is a tantalizing yet overly credulous glimpse of a shadowy industry.