Professor Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, provides tips on how voters can stay aware of—and minimally influenced by—disinformation before they head to the polls on Nov. 5.
For Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, threats to democracy from disinformation are vast and real, but voters and election officials have never been more vigilant.
“Look, we know we’re being spun,” says Greenberg, co-editor of Our Nation at Risk: Election Integrity as a National Security Issue.
“The question is, can we step back for a moment and say, ‘I know I’m being spun. How do I either ignore this and move on to something else, or how do I put this in a category where I know that this is likely disinformation or misinformation and see what I can do to verify it?’”
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Disinformation campaigns often try to foster chaos and confusion, Greenberg says, and create the sense that “a country can’t quite hold it together through a transition period.”
“There has to be a counternarrative to ‘we’re doomed, we’re victims,’ she says. “We’re not victims.”
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No matter how well-trained volunteer poll workers are, it’s going to be hard to prepare them for “any kind of aberrations that come up because of misinformation,” Greenberg says. “Go early … and just be patient.”
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Despite all the worries that election disinformation sparks in experts, Greenberg is heartened by what she says is “an incredible amount of attention” being paid to the issue by voters, law enforcement, and election officials. And she feels confident that voters are, on the whole, savvy enough to have their antennae up.
Read “How to Protect Yourself from Disinformation This Election Season” on Fordham Now.