Digital political ads are key for political candidates; but federal laws governing those ads lag behind
In partnership with the UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), the Center for Media Law and Policy has been researching and summarizing state laws that impose disclosure and/or recordkeeping requirements on online platforms that carry digital political advertisements.
Digital political ads have become an increasingly important tool for political candidates and committees, yet existing federal laws governing political advertisements focus primarily on traditional mediums of communication. While the Federal Election Commission has detailed sponsorship disclosure requirements for political advertising on television and radio, the agency currently does not regulate online political advertising in the same way. Congress proposed legislation in 2017, 2019, and 2021 to extend existing disclosure requirements for political advertisements to online political advertisements, but no action has been taken on these bills.
To fill this regulatory gap, a handful of states have enacted new legislation or amended their existing election laws to increase transparency by imposing sponsorship disclosure and/or recordkeeping requirements for online political advertisements. As of 2020, six states had enacted such laws, which we analyzed in a report written by Ashley Fox and Dr. Tori Ekstrand, “Regulating the Political Wild West: State Efforts to Disclose Sources of Online Political Advertising,” and summarized on the CITAP Digital Politics website under the section on State Disclosure and Recordkeeping Requirements for Digital Political Ads.
Since 2020, three additional states, Alaska, Colorado, and Virginia, have enacted their own laws requiring sponsorship disclosure for online political ads. We’ve updated the CITAP Digital Politics pages to include summaries of the new laws, which you can read here.
Right-wing and left-wing activism online simply looks different - in magnitude and character
Digital media are critical for contemporary activism—even low-effort “clicktivism” is politically consequential and contributes to offline participation. We argue that in the United States and throughout the industrialized West, left- and right-wing activists use digital and legacy media differently to achieve political goals. Although left-wing actors operate primarily through “hashtag activism” and offline protest, right-wing activists manipulate legacy media, migrate to alternative platforms, and work strategically with partisan media to spread their messages. Although scholarship suggests that the right has embraced strategic disinformation and conspiracy theories more than the left, more research is needed to reveal the magnitude and character of left-wing disinformation. Such ideological asymmetries between left- and right-wing activism hold critical implications for democratic practice, social media governance, and the interdisciplinary study of digital politics.
When covering elections at a time when their legitimacy is being undermined, journalists need to follow these crucial steps
As we count down to Election Day in the U.S., November 3, 2020, we find ourselves at a dangerous moment for democracy. As scholarly experts in politics and media, we draw on research from our field to offer practical, nonpartisan, evidence-based recommendations to journalists covering the 2020 U.S. presidential election. We hope these recommendations—based on decades of research into electoral processes, news coverage, and public opinion—support the important work journalists are doing to cover the election and safeguard democracy. We recommend journalists:
- Deny a platform to anyone making unfounded claims
- Put voters and election administrators at the center of elections
- Balance WHO as well as what gets covered
- Make quality coverage more widely accessible to expand publics for news
- Publicize your plans to call the election and do not make premature declarations
- Develop and use state- and local-level expertise to provide locally-relevant information
- Distinguish between legitimate, evidence-based challenges to vote counts and illegitimate ones that are intended to delay or call into question accepted procedures
- In the event of a contested or unclear outcome, don’t use social media to fill gaps in institutionally credible and reliable election information
- Cover an uncertain or contested election through a “democracy-worthy” frame
- Recognize that technology platforms have an important role to play
- Embrace existing democratic institutions
- Help Americans understand the roots of unrest
- Uphold democratic norms
- Use clear definitions for actions and actors and provide coverage appropriate to those definitions
- Do not give a platform to individuals or groups who call for violence, spread disinformation, or foment racist ideas.