The Center for an Informed Public’s Election Rumor Research in 2024
Bringing “rapid research” about rumors regarding 2024 U.S. election processes and procedures to your inbox
Welcome to Our Substack
The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) will be using Substack as part of its broader communication strategy for sharing the outputs of our “Election Rumor Research.” This iteration of our “rapid research” project focuses on 2024 U.S. elections, specifically on rumors pertaining to election administration and election integrity.
We will write our rapid research analyses in “posts” here, while also cross posting to our website, where you can see the rest of the 2024 U.S. Election Rumor Research. The “notes” function of Substack will allow us to quickly share and send observations about election rumors that may not merit a full article, so please keep an eye on Substack notes. Our Substack is free to all who subscribe and the fastest way to stay up to date with our research.
This first post covers the background of the CIP, our approach to election rumor research, and some of the anticipated outputs for this cycle. It is an updated version of an earlier article and reflects some changes due to evolving data access, methods of analysis and communication, and personnel. Please subscribe to get immediate alerts of our posts and notes when they are published.
Background
The CIP seeks to understand and help mitigate the spread of harmful falsehoods, promote an informed society, and strengthen democratic discourse while shortening the cycle between research and implementation. We have aligned world-class researchers and practitioners to translate research about online rumors and disinformation into policy, technology design, education, public engagement, and community impact. Our nonpartisan Center brings together diverse voices from across industry, government, nonprofits, other academic institutions, as well as those from communities and populations typically underrepresented in research and practice.
Following our path-breaking work in 2020 and 2022 with the Election Integrity Partnership, CIP researchers continue in 2024 to support both information and election integrity through “rapid research” identifying and analyzing rumors about U.S. election administration. Specifically, we focus on understanding, communicating about, and helping to mitigate the spread of false, misleading, and unsubstantiated claims — or rumors — about election processes and results. Our work directly supports journalists, elections officials, and non-profit organizations, including those working with underserved communities, in quickly resolving rumors and helping people get accurate information about election processes.
Approach
Our 2024 election effort adapts innovative research methods — integrating qualitative, quantitative, digital ethnographic, visual, and generative AI approaches — for analyzing the spread of information across social media and other online platforms to the challenge of rapidly discovering, analyzing, and reporting on election-related rumors and disinformation campaigns.
We operationalize our work around the term “rumors” for three reasons:
Rumors can be false, but they can also turn out to be true, or partially true. Using the term allows us to begin working on and communicating about a story, claim, or set of claims while there is still uncertainty.
Even when false, rumors often contain important signals for communicators such as election officials and journalists. For example, they can reveal genuine confusions about election processes or real fears among a population about being disenfranchised. Identifying and helping to resolve rumors can improve trust in election processes.
There is a long history of research on rumoring that our researchers can draw upon as we conceptualize and communicate about our work. For example, this literature theorizes that uncertainty, ambiguity, and anxiety drive the rumor mill.
Rumors can be detrimental to democratic processes in multiple ways.
False information about when and where to vote or about violence at polling locations can lead to disenfranchisement, impeding voters from successfully casting their votes.
False rumors about election integrity can diminish willingness to participate and erode trust in election results, undermining the foundations of democracy. In 2024, we’re also likely to see false rumors that undermine trust in U.S. courts (which adjudicate election disputes and challenges).
False rumors about election integrity can also motivate changes to election processes that reduce election integrity, resulting in an “unvirtuous cycle.” For example, false conspiracy theories about ERIC, a system that helps states communicate and keep their voter rolls updated, are motivating some states to exit the system, which could create vulnerabilities for exploitation. Similarly, false claims about vote-counting processes are leading some counties to institute hand-counting procedures, which slow down the reporting of results, increase uncertainty, and likely drive more rumoring.
Pervasive rumors about election fraud provide opportunities for foreign information operations to sow further doubt in democratic processes. They also create a “boy who cried wolf” situation that may make it difficult to detect and address real concerns with election integrity.
Rumors can also be signals for influence operations and disinformation campaigns that seek to manipulate public discourse for strategic gain — often by intentionally seeding, cultivating, and/or amplifying rumors. With the help of online platforms, disinformation campaigns are increasingly “participatory” — taking shape as collaborations between witting agents (both foreign and domestic) and unwitting crowds. Unwinding these efforts and identifying intentional actors is vital for mitigating their impact.
Our work also strives to take into consideration the unique historical and cultural contexts of how election processes and procedures are understood and discussed by traditionally marginalized groups, such as those who are members of immigrant, diasporic, minority, and multilingual communities. Their contextual and lived experiences often generate deep narratives that frame discussions of election integrity and the democratic process that result in different rumoring and sensemaking dynamics, oftentimes in ways that have been under- and misrepresented in the historical record. Certain tropes and rumors may take on different meanings and priorities within those communities that are not represented by the opinions in mainstream information ecosystems.
Additionally, many communities seek and receive information across transnational boundaries traversing diverse geopolitical contexts, requiring different kinds of research methodologies when encountering rumors in these communities. When engaging rumors that impact these communities, we have adapted and broadened our methodologies as part of an iterative and collaborative exchange with those impacted. In particular, we have Spanish and Vietnamese language research capacity, as well as collaborations with non-profits organizations serving those linguistic communities.
In this presidential election, with a presumptive female of color Democratic nominee who was born to immigrant parents, we take into consideration how discussions of identity intersect with rumors about the eligibility or legality of candidates. This includes special attention paid to how these rumors may impact the information ecosystems and democratic participation of traditionally marginalized communities.
Outputs
The CIP’s work in 2024 continues along a similar trajectory as our work with the Election Integrity Partnership in 2020 and 2022, though navigating different realities in data access and, consequently, methods of analysis. We help address informational threats to election integrity through “rapid research” of election-related rumors, education, development and dissemination of conceptual tools, and tailored support for local journalists.
Our core research focuses on rapidly discovering, resolving, analyzing the spread of, and broadly communicating about rumors pertaining to election processes and results. The project integrates state-of-the-art data collection and analysis techniques with journalistic communication to help identify and meet informational needs around election administration.
A core contribution of the CIP’s Election Rumor Research involves understanding the sociotechnical dimensions of online rumoring. Our research unpacks how rumors move across social media platforms and around the Internet, reveals underlying structures and roles played by networks of online influencers, and investigates how different platform features and policies shape rumor spread. This analysis considers cultural, social, and historical contexts within which a given rumor is unfolding. We also explore the impact of new features and technologies such as generative AI.
Our intended audiences include journalists, election officials, and the broader public. Examples of recent research are available on our website.
Our core “rapid research” activities will focus on producing outputs around a 2-2-2 timeline:
2 hours: Short Substack “notes,” cross-posted to other social media platforms, calling attention to emerging rumors, explaining what is currently known and what remains uncertain, linking to relevant resources such as fact checks from other organizations and websites from local election officials, and providing cursory analysis of where rumors are spreading.
2 days: Medium-length articles (for example) posted on Substack unpacking a specific rumor’s content (including if and how it was misleading) and analyzing its spread across platforms.
2 weeks: Longer articles (for example, here and here) more deeply analyzing specific rumors and/or investigating patterns of rumor spread across platforms.
We help educate journalists, election officials, and the broader public about informational threats to election integrity. Leveraging insights from our ongoing research, we generate public-facing articles and presentations for stakeholders (e.g., election officials and journalists) to help educate around patterns in the tactics, tropes, and social media dynamics that fuel election-related rumors. We also integrate recommendations for these different audiences into our rapid research outputs.
We collaborate with journalists to help them investigate and report on online rumors, providing education (about the intersections of online systems and election rumors) as well as methodological support for conducting cross-platform social media analysis. We have a team dedicated to scaffolding and studying these collaborations and we are especially focused on working with and supporting local journalists in this cycle.
We generate conceptual tools to help other researchers, journalists, and election officials anticipate, understand, and respond to election-related rumors. These efforts draw upon both our traditional and rapid research. Examples include a “what to expect on election day” checklist (published in 2020) and a “rumor threat framework” for assessing the potential virality of election-related rumors (published in 2022).
We work within a collaborative network of researchers and nonprofit organizations. Ensuring information and election integrity is going to be a team effort. We position our work within a broad, informal network of academic researchers, nonprofit organizations, and others who are working with a shared mission. We are directly collaborating with other academic institutions such as the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law and with non-profit organizations serving different ethnic and cultural communities in non-English languages, such as Viet Fact Check and Factchequeado. We plan to put more collaborations in place as we progress towards Election Day in November and also to informally make our resources available to others doing work aligned with our mission.