Journalist and Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Ressa Addresses the Corruption of the Public Information Ecosystem and the Future of Democracy

Less than a month before election day in the US, journalist and Nobel Peace laureate Maria Ressa delivered a critical assessment of the US information ecosystem and warned that Americans continue to be manipulated online, resulting in voters going to the polls with less shared reality, fewer facts and more fear, anger and hate. 

Speaking to an audience of faculty and students on Tuesday, October 8th, at an event hosted by Columbia SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics (IGP), where she is an Affiliated Faculty Member, Ressa shared the latest report from data forensics company The Nerve, which she co-founded and is an affiliate of digital news site Rappler. Ahead of the 2024 US election, The Nerve’s information ecosystem research uncovered worrying trends in news consumption habits and online information cascades.

SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo opened Tuesday’s event with introductory remarks that touched on the challenges of fighting disinformation, the ease and speed at which it’s being disseminated, and its impacts on influencing public opinion. 

“We have seen the potential of disinformation to polarize communities, disrupt the social fabric, and undermine trust in our institutions,” said Yarhi-Milo. “We saw it during the COVID-19 pandemic, January 6th attack on the US Capitol, and we see it in international conflicts unfolding as we speak.”

The Nerve research pulled data from the last two years and had three components:

• deep dives into three major highly emotional fracture lines often exploited by information operations – immigration, abortion, and the Israel-Hamas war;
• A survey on Americans’ media consumption habits; and
• A review of related literature.

On the issues of immigration, abortion and the Israel-Hamas war, the data showed two key findings:

• Political Tribalism and Information Distortion – social media and personalized content created echo chambers that heavily rely on hyper-partisan sources, blurring the line between fact and fiction, news and propaganda. The platforms’ incentive structure continues to fuel the spread of falsehoods, hate, and exclusionary narratives that foster hostility towards specific groups, often bringing real-world harm.
• Growing Generational Divide – evolving news consumption habits are widening divisions between younger and older Americans. The study suggests that the youth’s high trust in and reliance on social media may not only be a contributing factor to their divergent worldviews; it also makes them more vulnerable to information operations and manipulation.

“Americans are going to vote at a time when their news feeds will give them less facts and reliable information. Personalization has turned the public sphere into an insane asylum, where every person can have their own reality,” Ressa said.

Ressa noted that this emotionally heightened environment is made worse by technological developments that have splintered reality even further: the first generation AI on social media, clustering, and microtargeting, maximizing surveillance capitalism for profit. What were once advertising and marketing platforms have been hijacked by geopolitical power. Information warfare targeted Americans as early as the 2016 elections, when both sides of Black Lives Matter were pounded by Russian disinformation, touching 126 million Americans. The goal then — and now — is chaos, and eight years later, few of the design problems that ran through the technology that connected us have been addressed. 

Ressa also noted that in 2024 most of the safeguards for the 2020 US elections have been rolled back: Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, dissolved its trust and safety council, renamed it X, and fired 80% of its safety engineers. Layoffs by Facebook and Google also ravaged their trust and safety teams. 

Ressa has been outspoken about the unchecked power of Big Tech, the erosion of news and the urgent need to hold tech companies accountable for online harms that lead to real world violence and threats to democracy.

Speaking about AI, Ressa added that the information ecosystem became even more chaotic after generative AI was released publicly in November 2022. She noted that the technological arms race now means that disinformation can be mass-produced for very little cost. Deep fakes mean you can’t trust your eyes and ears, and now LLM (large language model) chatbots mean you can’t even trust that the person you’re talking to is human. The enshittification of the internet, when low-quality content is estimated at 57.1% as of January 2024, is in full swing, and its casualty is trust.

According to the Nerve’s study, Americans need to develop a more robust understanding of the country’s information ecosystem, how information streams have been weaponized, and how the situation has led to shifts in perception and power.

“America faces an immense challenge for the November elections. Burdened with lies, rage, and splintered realities, how can it be assured of an outcome that reflects informed choices?” said Ressa. 

For more on The Nerve’s research findings, see Rappler’s coverage here

Access The Nerve’s full report on the US information ecosystem here