Abstract
The elections in the US in 2016, in France in 2017, and in Germany in 2017 indicate an emerging practice whereby autocracies can and do meddle in democratic elections by hacking data, scandalizing it through leaks, and amplifying the effect by creating intense cognitive flows of disinformation and distrust across social media. Election meddling can have a recognizable five-stage pattern although not all election meddling operations are based on the full use of this hack and leak pattern. Furthermore, the basic meddling toolbox is reusable in other democracies. However, growing awareness, deterrence factors, increased immunity, and regression dynamics can mitigate the impact in subsequent democratic elections. Successful meddling is more likely if democracies regress and produce societal, economic, or political cleavages that can be wedged further open by external actors. Democracies where all stages of election meddling can be carried out are close to the Thucydidean brink—i.e., their internal bonds have weakened to the point that they can be counteracted by foreign appeal.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
On social media’s impact on trust, see, e.g., Klein and Robinson (2020).
- 2.
Secureworks (2016).
- 3.
See, e.g., Pomerantsev (2014).
- 4.
See, e.g., ThreatConnect (2016).
- 5.
The confusion can run deep and make it difficult for the law-enforcement officials to discern disinformation from real evidence, as the case of the probe concerning the so-called Clinton emails proves (see, e.g., Demirjian et al. [2017]).
- 6.
See, e.g., Howard et al. (2017).
- 7.
- 8.
See, e.g., Fisher et al. (2016).
- 9.
e.g., De Haldevang, Max (2017).
- 10.
See, e.g., Schwirtz (2017).
- 11.
Reuters (2020).
- 12.
see also Conley and Vilmer (2018).
References
Associated Press. (2017). Hackers Have Targeted Election Campaign of Macron, Says Cyber Firm. The Guardian, 25 April. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/25/hackers-have-targeted-election-campaign-of-macron-says-cyber-firm. Accessed 27 April 2020.
Bjola, C., & Papadakis, K. (2020). Digital Propaganda, Counterpublics and the Disruption of the Public Sphere: The Finnish Approach to Building Digital Resilience. Cambridge Review of International Affairs. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2019.1704221.
Brattberg, E., & Maurer. (2018). Russian Election Interference. Washington, DC: Carnagie Endowment for International Peace.
Byers, D. (2017). Russian-Bought Black Lives Matter Ad on Facebook Targeted Baltimore and Ferguson. CNN Business. Available at: http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/media/facebook-black-lives-matter-targeting/index.html. Accessed 27 April 2020.
Confessore, N., & Wakabayashi, D. (2017). How Russia Harvested American Rage to Reshape U.S. Politics. The New York Times, 9 October. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/technology/russia-election-facebook-ads-rage.html. Accessed 27 April 2020.
Conley, H., & Vilmer, J.-B. (2018). Successfully Countering Russian Electoral Interference. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies.
De Haldevang, M. (2017). Russia Is Really Doing Its Damnedest to Defeat Macron and Make Le Pen President of France. Quartz.com. Available at: https://qz.com/977028/russia-is-doing-its-damnedest-to-defeat-emmanuel-macron-and-make-marine-le-pen-president-of-france/. Accessed 27 April 2020.
Demirjian, K., & Barrett, D. (2017). How a Dubious Russian Document Influenced the FBI’s Handling of the Clinton Probe. The Washington Post, 24 May. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-a-dubious-russian-document-influenced-the-fbis-handling-of-the-clinton-probe/2017/05/24/f375c07c-3a95-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html?utm_term=.ed0b12479bd3. Accessed 1 January 2020.
Fisher, M., Cox, J. W., & Hermann, P. (2016). Pizzagate: From Rumor, to Hashtag, to Gunfire in D.C. The Washington Post, 6 December. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/pizzagate-from-rumor-to-hashtag-to-gunfire-in-dc/2016/12/06/4c7def50-bbd4-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.e07de6ed88e1. Accessed 27 April 2020.
Friedman, U. (2016). Trust in Government Is Collapsing around the World. The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/trust-institutions-trump-brexit/489554/. Accessed 1 January 2020.
Howard, P., Kollanyi, B., Bradshaw, S., & Neudert, L. (2017). Social Media, News and Political Information during the US Election: Was Polarizing Content Concentrated in Swing States? Available at: http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2017/09/Polarizing-Content-and-Swing-States.pdf. Accessed 27 April 2020.
Kaloudi, N., & Li, J. (2020). The AI-Based Cyber Threat Landscape. ACM Computing Surveys, 53(1), 1–34.
Kim, Y., Hsu, J., Neiman, D., Kou, C., Bankston, L., & Kim, Soo. (2018). The Stealth Media? Groups and Targets Behind Divisive Issue Campaigns on Facebook, Political Communication, 35(3), 515–541.
Klein, E., & Robison, Joshua. (2020). Like, Post, and Distrust? How Social Media Use Affects Trust in Government. Political Communication, 37(1), 46–64.
Kreiss, D., & Shannon, M. (2019). The “Arbiters of What Our Voters See”: Facebook and Google’s Struggle with Policy, Process, and Enforcement around Political Advertising. Political Communication, 36(4), 499–522.
Li, Jianing. (2020). Toward a Research Agenda on Political Misinformation and Corrective Information. Political Communication, 37(1), 125–135.
Media Insight Project. (2016). A New Understanding: What Makes People Trust and Rely on News. Available at: http://www.mediainsight.org/PDFs/Trust/TrustFinal.pdf. Accessed 27 April 2020.
Mueller, R. (2019). Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
OECD. (2015). Trust in Government. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/gov/trust-in-government.htm. Accessed 1 January 2020.
Pomerantsev, P. (2014). Russia and the Menace of Unreality: How Vladimir Putin Is Revolutionizing Information Warfare. The Atlantic. Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/russia-putin-revolutionizing-information-warfare/379880/?_ga=1.43497893.1830189129.1474006576. Accessed 13 May 2018.
Pew Research Center. (2019). Public Trust in Government: 1958–2017. Available at: http://www.people-press.org/2017/05/03/public-trust-in-government-1958-2017/. Accessed 30 January 2019.
Reuters. (2017). Germany Challenges Russia Over Cyberattacks, 4 May. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security-cyber-russia/germany-challeng-es-russia-over-alleged-cyberattacks-idUSKBN1801CA. Accessed 12 October 2017.
Reuters. (2020). Germany Issues Arrest Warrant for Russian Suspect in Parliament Hack: Newspaper, May 5. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-germany-warrant/germany-issues-arrest-warrant-for-russian-suspect-in-parliament-hack-newspaper-idUSKBN22H0TB. Accessed May 6, 2020.
Schrage, E. (2017). Hard Questions: Russian Ads Delivered to Congress. Facebook.com. Available at: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/10/hard-questions-russian-ads-delivered-to-congress. Accessed 27 April 2020.
Schwirtz, M. (2017) “German Election Mystery: Why No Russian Meddling?” The New York Times, 21 September. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/world/europe/german-election-russia.html. Accessed 27 April 2020.
Secureworks. (2016). Threat Group 4127 Targets Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign. Secureworks Counter Threat Unit. Available at: https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targets-hillary-clinton-presidential-campaign?_ga=1.211064981.1830189129.1474006576. Accessed 26 April 2020.
Techcrunch. (2018). Twitter Now Says 1.4 Million People Interacted with Russian Trolls During 2016 Presidential Campaign. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/31/twitter-now-says-1-4-million-people-interacted-with-russian-trolls-during-2016-presidential-campaign/. Accessed 27 April 2020.
ThreatConnect. (2016). Shiny Object? Guccifer 2.0 and the DNC Breach. Available at: https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/guccifer-2-0-dnc-breach/. Accessed 24 April 2020.
Vilmer, J.-B. (2019). The “Macron Leaks” Operation: A Post-Mortem. Available at: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The_Macron_Leaks_Operation-A_Post-Mortem.pdf. Accessed 5 June 2020.
Vilmer, J.-B., Escorcia, G., Guillaume, A., & Herrera, J. (2018). Information Manipulation: A Challenge for Our Democracies. Paris: The Policy Planning Staff (CAPS) of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM) of the Ministry for the Armed Forces.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Aaltola, M. (2021). Stages of Digitalized Regressive Meddling in Three Western Elections. In: Democratic Vulnerability and Autocratic Meddling. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54602-1_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54602-1_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-54601-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-54602-1
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)