[Air-L] New CDT report - “An Unrepresentative Democracy: How Disinformation and Online Abuse Hinder Women of Color Political Candidates in the U.S.”

[Dhanaraj Thakur]

Hi all,

CDT released a new report “An Unrepresentative Democracy: How 
Disinformation and Online Abuse Hinder Women of Color Political 
Candidates in the U.S. 
<https://cdt.org/insights/an-unrepresentative-democracy-how-disinformation-and-online-abuse-hinder-women-of-color-political-candidates-in-the-united-states/>” 
which examines the problem of mis- and disinformation and abuse targeted 
at women of color politicians who ran in the November 2020 elections. 
The study analyzes over 100,000 posts on Twitter from the 2020 election 
that were targeted at or about candidates, and also relies on interviews 
with women of color candidates and campaign staffers from 14 campaigns. 
The research builds on a long history of community advocates, and 
candidates themselves, raising concerns about this type of harm and adds 
more evidence about the targeting and impacts on women of color 
political candidates in the U.S.


One of the major findings of the report is that women of color 
candidates are twice as likely as other candidates to be targeted with 
or be the subject of mis- and disinformation online; and four times as 
likely as white candidates and twice as likely as men of color 
candidates to be targeted with violent abuse. Read the full report 
<https://cdt.org/insights/an-unrepresentative-democracy-how-disinformation-and-online-abuse-hinder-women-of-color-political-candidates-in-the-united-states/>for 
a deeper dive,our blog summary 
<https://cdt.org/insights/women-of-color-political-candidates-in-the-us-endure-most-severe-online-abuse-mis-and-disinformation/>(including 
links to the codebook and code for our content analysis platform), and a 
Twitter thread <https://twitter.com/CenDemTech/status/1585622447826550784>.

The report makes recommendations for social media platforms, political 
candidates, and their parties on how to address the problem in future 
campaigns.

As always, feel free to share and we welcome your feedback.

take care,

Dhanaraj


-- 

*Dhanaraj Thakur* (he/him) | Research Director
Center for Democracy & Technology |*cdt.org <https://cdt.org/>*
*E:* dthakur at cdt.org | *P:* +1 202 407 8849 | @thakurdhanaraj