Irish Abortion Referendum
[DRAFT]
Disinfo Operation
Ireland's 8th Amendment to the Constitution protected the rights of unborn children, making Ireland one of the most restrictive countries in Europe on abortion access. A referendum on the amendment was voted on in a special election at the end of May 2018. In late 2017, a few concerned citizens began to notice misinformation about abortion beginning to penetrate the public conversation and founded the Transparent Referendum Initiative (TRI). From January 2018, TRI collected paid advertisements appearing on Facebook. Repeal Shield on Twitter begins to collect and share the handles of accounts harassing and trolling pro-repeal activists. Over the first four months of 2018, social media posts and ad campaigns began to accelerate.
Defense Tactics
Working with the news agency Storyful, TRI began training media professionals on open-source intelligence techniques. Citizen volunteers, TRI, and Storyful began to track disinformation narratives and publish their investigation methods and results. These stories were picked up by larger news outlets, especially Buzzfeed, which published an article on it on March 30. In addition to false information, reporters exposed the fact that a large percentage of the political ads about the referendum were originating from anti-abortion groups outside of Ireland. Anti-abortion organizations in the United States and elsewhere, viewing Ireland as one of the last remaining bastions of rights for the unborn, had started pouring money into campaigns targeted towards Irish citizens. On May 8, Facebook banned all ads from foreign groups about the referendum. A day later, Google banned all ads related to the referendum, including on the AdWords platform and on YouTube. Twitter policy already prohibited advertising on select health issues including abortion advocacy, so there was no paid advertising about the referendum on the platform. As evidenced by TRI data collection, there were still some "dark ads" appearing on Facebook, where their origin and funding source was unknown, but the restriction reduced the volume. On May 25, the referendum on the 8th Amendment passed, and was signed into law in September 2018 after an unsuccessful appeal.
Context
Media environment: Ireland is dominated centrist or non-partisan media sources, and the early involvement of Storyful, which is Dublin-based, meant that journalists had an unusually high degree of literacy around disinformation reporting. TRI formed partnerships with platforms, especially Facebook, aided by the fact that many tech companies have offices in Dublin.
Resources
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/01/abortion-referendum-how-ireland-resisted-bad-behaviour-online/