RECOMMENDED READING: “Foreign Influence Operations and the 2020 Election: Framing the Debate”

The Law­fare Project has pub­lished a series of arti­cles address­ing both sides of the ques­tion “Is the threat of inter­state influ­ence oper­a­tions overblown?” Accord­ing to the announce­ment:

..in part­ner­ship with Law­fare, the Stan­ford Inter­net Obser­va­to­ry asked lead­ing researchers of infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions and online manip­u­la­tion to do just that. Each con­trib­u­tor was asked to write a short piece answer­ing the ques­tion: “Is the threat of inter­state influ­ence oper­a­tions overblown?” Draw­ing on their diverse method­olog­i­cal and dis­ci­pli­nary back­grounds, the con­trib­u­tors take dif­fer­ent approach­es to their ulti­mate con­clu­sions. Their argu­ments touch on top­ics includ­ing the rel­a­tive effect of domes­tic ver­sus for­eign dis­in­for­ma­tion, how to think about the impact of an influ­ence oper­a­tion, and Russia’s social media efforts in 2016. We hope this series will add ana­lyt­i­cal rig­or to the pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion and allow read­ers to assess well-rea­soned argu­ments incor­po­rat­ing the best avail­able evi­dence to ulti­mate­ly draw their own conclusions.

Links to the arti­cles and infor­ma­tion about an asso­ci­at­ed pod­cast can be found on the Law­fare web­site.