The dirty online battle for Irish abortion rights
As the Republic of Ireland finally agrees to hold a referendum on the near-total ban on abortion, Irish journalist Norma Costello reveals campaigners’ troubling tactics
THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF AN end-of-may referendum on the Republic of Ireland’s abortion laws led to an explosion on social media last Monday. But, as both sides armed themselves with online campaigns, claims were made that all is not as it seems on the digital frontline. Was a real, living person behind every tweet?
Currently, Ireland’s 8th Amendment prohibits abortion. Since 1983, the law has forced many Irish women to travel to the UK for the procedure (3,265 women are reported to have done so in 2016) or illegally import termination pills and use them – alone and inh pain – at home. High-profile cases, like that of 31-year-old dentist Savita Halappanavar (who, in 2012, was refused an abortion and then died from septicaemia) have led to a growing movement calling for the 8th Amendment to be repealed. Finally, last week, campaigners were given a date at the ballot box.
But, as PM Leo Varadkar called on all sides to be respectful, experts have warned that anyone turning to social media for information might actually encounter armies of bots – fake accounts posting and retweeting insidious opinions and articles that support an anti-abortion agenda.
Gavin Sheridan is an Irish transparency campaigner who has studied how Russian bots were allegedly used to influence the 2016 US presidential election. Sheridan says armies of fake accounts are being prepared in Ireland and could be used to dominate hashtags and clog up voters’ social media feeds. By programming the bots (via an algorithm), the controller can put out
multiple anti-abortion messages, make it look like lots of ‘real people’ are expressing the same opinion, and possibly sway voters.
‘In late 2016/early 2017, people in Ireland started noticing a growth in followers among many high-profile Irish Twitter accounts,’ he explained. ‘ These followers were often recently created and were “bulk following” people in the thousands. They often had no Twitter avatar but had Irish-sounding names. Often, this type of pattern can be part of something that is being prepared. It’s automated or well-orchestrated behaviour.’
Sheridan’s bot warning comes after a series of revelations in the Irish media linked the country’s anti-abortion campaign with digital strategists behind Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign, and Brexit in the UK.
Kanto, a company founded by Thomas Borwick, has been hired by Ireland’s Pro-life campaign. Borwick was technology chief for the official Vote Leave campaign and previously worked for Cambridge Analytica, a company that worked on Trump’s presidential campaign and which has close ties to Steve Bannon’s ‘alt-right’ website, Breitbart. Ireland’s anti-abortion campaign, it seems, plans to employ similar ‘fake news’ tactics, promoting their agenda by influencing social media to sway the referendum.
Another method employed by the anti-abortion campaigns so far is to reportedly buy pro-choice website domain names in a bid to catch undecided voters. Repealeighth.ie, repeal8.ie and repeal8th.ie actually redirect to anti-abortion websites. Activists claim this is in direct violation of IE Domain Register’s rules on misrepresentation and bad faith, but no decision has been made on their removal.
Veteran campaigner and human rights lawyer Wendy Lyon, from Choice Ireland, says those behind Ireland’s anti-abortion campaign need to condemn the use of subversive techniques and support an open campaign. ‘ These new tactics are very concerning and it’s really up to the regulator to take action which, so far, I understand, hasn’t happened. It’s also dirty campaigning and ought to be strongly condemned by those leading the opposition to repeal.’
But could bot farms really influence the outcome of the abortion vote? Last month, an Irish Times survey found 56% of voters would vote for constitutional change. But with 15% saying they didn’t know, Sheridan says their sway can’t be underestimated.
‘Imagine that it’s after the result, and the margin between yes and no was very narrow,’ he explains. ‘Imagine evidence was uncovered that thousands of accounts had been created and had been generating an “artificial” weight behind one side or the other. And imagine if tens of thousands of legitimate Irish accounts had seen those bot tweets, or had retweeted them to their own followers – the effect could skew people’s perception of what’s a “popular” or widely held view or not. Voting decisions like this are sometimes based on emotion rather than rationality – so could we find ourselves in a situation where one side or the other claims the referendum result was manipulated? Yes.’