- Just ahead on "Black Issues Forum", in today's digital world, information is everywhere.

But what happens when that information isn't accurate or worse, when it's deliberately false?

We're diving into the world of misinformation and disinformation, examining the role, technology, social media, and even artificial intelligence play in spreading falsehoods and exploring how we can fight back.

Coming up next, stay with us.

- [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome to Black Issues Forum.

I'm your host, Kenia Thompson.

Well, in our interconnected age of technology, social media has become a double-edged sword.

On one hand, it's a powerful tool for empowerment and education, but on the other, it's also become a platform where misinformation and disinformation spread like wildfire.

And unfortunately, these misleading narratives often have devastating effects, particularly on those within the Black community.

And as the days go by, we're getting closer and closer to election day.

We just wanna make sure that you know what's what.

So in today's conversation, we're breaking down the myths and revealing some truths.

And to help us do just that, I wanna welcome our guest to the show.

We have with us Lamar Bryan, a regional organizer in the triangle, and a marketing communication consultant, and with him here we have regional managing organizer at Democracy NC DeMonte Alford.

Welcome to the show.

- Thanks.

- Thanks for having us.

- Of course.

So I wanna break down, before we dig into this, the meat of the conversation, I wanna define for our audience what is misinformation and disinformation.

So Lamar, I'll start with you.

Tell us what is misinformation.

- Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.

So misinformation and disinformation, I like to think of them as cousins first, right?

So misinformation is when people are spreading information or false information and they don't realize that it is false or they don't necessarily realize that it is harming people.

So misinformation is a bit different from disinformation.

- So what I'm hearing from you is that it's not intentional.

- Not at all.

- It's like maybe hearing from my cousin and- - Right.

- They heard from their cousins.

- Right.

- That we think is true.

- Right.

- And now we keep spreading this information, - Or you see an article- - Okay.

- That might have the wrong picture on it.

- Yeah.

- You, of course, you're not a journalist or a reporter, so you don't know that that is, that picture is incorrect.

- Okay.

- So you're just, you know, sending that or spreading that through social media.

- Okay.

Still harmful, but not intentional.

- Right.

- So DeMonte disinformation?

- So it's very easy for misinformation to slide into disinformation once folks begin to weaponize and use misinformation maliciously.

- [Kenia] Yeah.

- Whether they're twisting facts they're manipulating stories or creating narratives for propaganda reasons, we would categorize all of this as disinformation, which has a tremendous harmful effect on folks.

- Yeah so let's talk a little bit about those harmful effects.

Let's talk about some of the tactics.

How, how is disinformation used, for example, in a political election?

Lamar, I'll start with you.

- Yeah so misinformation and disinformation is in a nutshell, fake news.

And so you have to think about like candidates spreading fake news because they know that if they say something that is of interest to a community, they would vote for them, or disinformation is used when you're talking about voting, giving out the wrong voter dates.

- Right.

- And of course we know that that slides into disinformation because you know that those dates are incorrect, right?

Unfortunately, creating websites, creating social media campaigns or platforms that talk about one candidate over the other, IE, an example would be Kamala, Kamala Harris putting thousands of Black people in prison or jail, and so that is, those things are sort of disinformation and you can kind of tell a little bit of it, especially if it's very twisted.

- Right?

- And you know that it's just not the truth.

- A bit extreme is kind of raise a brow.

- Right.

- DeMonte, what are some examples of using disinformation and misinformation as methods to manipulate voters?

- Easy example is preemptively claiming fraud before an election happens, creating distrust and fear and panic in the procedures and the way the vote is counted and it takes place, so claiming that machines are connected to internet, which is hacked by Venezuelan dictators that have passed away.

- Right.

- Another example would be creating fear of non-citizens voting, which we know is already illegal.

- Mm.

- So it creates this panic that folks tend to spread.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- So when we hear it, if we seeing it come from the news, we're reading it in the newspaper or a magazine or an article.

How can the average person...

I mean, I know, I'm in media, right?

You guys are well-informed, ear to the ground, but not everybody has that luxury.

How do we know what's real?

- Right.

So for me, honestly, we've all received text messages throughout the last several months in regards to election day, candidates.

For me, I would say this, most simple way of knowing that these things are false is misspellings.

I mean, that is very, very easy to kind of decipher whether or not information is accurate or not.

But also knowing or not even being able to understand the website codes or the website itself.

If you've never seen this website before, or you're like, "Wow, this website came out of left field," nine times of 10, you know those websites aren't true, but you always wanna go fact-check.

You wanna go fact-check that bit of information to ensure that it is false.

And of course, I've found that candidates are starting to spread misinformation closer we get to November 5th.

So we know that oftentimes, unfortunately, candidates could be those that are spreading false narratives to ensure that the other candidate they are going against just doesn't win.

- Yeah, they sometimes are spearheading that effort.

Diamante, during the pandemic, we saw a lot of misinformation and disinformation around COVID, right?

And that impacted Black communities greatly.

We had people dying as a result of that.

Let's talk about how that same impact during election time, what impact does it have on Black communities?

- Thank you for that question.

At Democracy in North Carolina, we have a hotline, our 1-888-OUR-VOTE hotline.

And we keep track of the typical reasons why we get calls.

As a result of the disinformation and misinformation about absentee voting, mail-in ballots and early voting and the claims of fraud, we have seen that 35% of the calls that we had come into our 1-800 number came from folks with questions about early voting and confusion about early voting with another 25% of those being about mail-in ballots and questions with that.

And we had about three or 4% calling with concerns of voter intimidation and harassment and fear.

So, the- - Let's pause there.

What does voter intimidation and harassment look like?

What are people experiencing?

- Voter intimidation and harassment looks like having a band of, it could be armed folks, it could be people in heavy military fatigues or camo in front of polls.

It could be folks going and challenging votes for folks for no other reason of them being just an elderly Black couple.

So, voter intimidation, in North Carolina, has looked like a number of things.

And I would say that voter intimidation, voter suppression is as North Carolina as UNC.

- Oh, wow.

Wow.

- I'll add to your point of saying that voter suppression and intimidation could be just police officers at polling sites.

We know that people unfortunately don't really like the police, and I think that creating voter suppression is a tactic so people just simply won't go out and vote.

They'll wait till later on in the day to go vote.

And so, of course, with that being said, you have those instances where, as I mentioned before, polling hours may be wrong.

They may be telling people, "Hey, you can't vote after seven," but people don't know that if you're in line at seven o'clock, you can still vote.

And so, literally just small things of that nature would make it or have people thinking that they can't vote or mail in ballots as he mentioned.

Mail-in ballots aren't sufficient, if you will.

So a lot of people, of course, are elders or those that are sick that aren't able to get out to the polls.

They're like, "Wait, if mail-in ballots are insufficient, then how else can I cast my vote?"

Or even not having curbside voting as an option.

That is another voter suppression tactic.

And as you mentioned as well, having armed civilians at polling sites.

In particular, there was an example last year of a county that had guys driving around with rifles on the back of trucks and people were really intimidated 'cause gun violence is a big thing in North Carolina and across the country.

And so, those are some of the smaller voter suppression tactics.

- Wow, and then, AI has become a huge manipulation tactic I think in every space.

It's great too, but I've received text messages, videos.

Have you guys seen the viral video that portrayed Trump and Kamala that got together and had a baby?

- Yes, oh, my God.

- For a second, I thought it was real, right?

And so, just seeing this.

Someone like, you know, maybe my dad or one of my older uncles, they may believe these things are true.

How do we get through the facade that AI is portraying images that are real for some people?

And then what impact do you think that's gonna have?

- So I think there's two avenues that we need to explore with that.

- Yeah.

- There's the regulatory and creating laws.

For instance, there's Senate Bill 88.

- [Speaker] Okay.

- In the North Carolina Senate, which we believe was a first step, but it was way too weak.

And how it approached the specificity of naming that these digital ads, or these social ads came from AI.

So basically, Senate Bill 88 would have it where candidates would have to say that this particular ad was made using AI, but it did not mandate that digital communications or social communications had the same process, which we know digitally and socially, that's where a lot of the misinformation and disinformation comes from.

On the house side, there was a better bill, House Bill 1072, which made sure that everybody that was involved in partaking in political activity had to disclose if AI was involved.

But it stalled on the Senate side.

So I feel like that is one way that we can handle it.

But also personally, as organizers and as people, we have to get on the phone and knock doors and make sure that we talk to our folks, talk to our family, our friends, but also we encourage people to do the research and go and look up the changes to House Bill 747, with your mail-in ballots.

I would encourage folks to go and look at the language and the specificities behind voter ID.

I would go and ask folks to do the work around what are the federal laws around non-citizens voting?

And maybe we should govern our behavior of whether or not we should panic off of the laws that are already existing in the books that have been working.

- Right.

- I'll add to that.

I use a slogan with our HBCU students.

Think before you link.

- [Speaker] I like that.

- And with that, literally think before you link, oftentimes with disinformation, artificial intelligence, misinformation, we're finding that these tactics pulled on the heartstrings of citizens and their emotions.

- [Speaker] Yeah.

- And so with that, think before you link, slow down first, get your emotions under control, and then think about what you're reading, does it even sound correct?

And then from there, do your research.

Do your research and see, well, is this factual information.

But I always slow down and think, because of course, we're all emotional human beings.

And so a lot of things that we see, whether it's a picture or some language that really makes us think, or if we're passionate about those things that we're seeing, it really pulls at our emotions.

And so, slow down and think before you link.

- Can I say this?

- Go ahead, please.

- I definitely agree with that.

Particularly like when you do your research, X is not a reliable correct source of information.

It's not reliable.

Recently here, last month when President Biden announced that he was removing his name from the race, the X bot, the AI artificial bot that is on X gave misinformation for 10 days, and it did not change about the ballot process for New Mexico, Minnesota, Michigan, very important battleground states, they were not correcting that misinformation that went out for a complete 10 days.

- Yeah.

- So when you're doing your research, make sure like your research is actual research and just not a quick search on X.

- Yeah, and for those that may not know, X is what we've formally known as Twitter now, right, X.

So with that being said, what are some credible news outlets and sites that people can go to?

- [Speaker 2] Well, for me, I would say that I think it's Pew Research Center.

The Pew Research Center, excuse me.

- [Speaker] PEW.

- Yes.

But outside of websites, I would say go to your candidates, those that are running for office, You can go to your local government officials.

You can go to your elected officials that are already in these seats, go to them, ask them.

A lot of our community residents don't know that they can literally contact your mayor, contact your judges, contact those people that are in these offices to ensure that what they're saying is correct.

And then you have to take it a step further.

If you do have to speak out about things that aren't correct, do that.

Advocate for yourself and the community and ensuring that the information that people are receiving is accurate information.

So easy as calling up your elected officials, scheduling meetings with them and letting them know like, hey, what is the information that we're supposed to receive?

And how is it benefiting our communities?

And that's even just outside of just websites.

Just using your basic communication skills.

- Yeah.

- To reach out to your elected officials.

- A thought just popped up in my head DeMonte, you know, we think when we get things through the mail, that it's real and accurate information.

As a business owner and those business owners out there know.

We get stuff all the time in the mail that's asking for money saying that we didn't register for this or that, and it looks legit.

Do the same thing happen with voting information that's used in the mail?

- Yes.

That happens.

In fact, this is some of the things that Senate Bill or House Bill 1072 would like work to address is making sure that the specificities of who is behind everything is put out to folks.

- Yeah.

- Regulating that.

But yeah, definitely make sure that if you are looking on mailers, what they're supposed to have is who it's paid by or paid for, and what organization represents that particular candidate or whatever.

You should be able to go and look those folks up, look that website up, look at those people and see who donated the money.

There's a way that you can go and look and see where the money came from.

But yeah, those, there is a way where this is easily be researched, be skeptic.

- Right.

- Be a skeptic, be cynical, you know, but don't be too cynical.

- All right, I wanna take a moment before we end the show.

I mean, we still got a little time, but I wanna do a little fun true and false little scenario here.

Got a few questions and I'm sure you guys will all know, will both know the answers, but just for our viewers, just to clarify any, some voting details up.

So first question is that you don't need an ID to vote in North Carolina or any state.

Is that true or is that false?

- False.

- False, that's for sure.

- That is false, yeah, so in North Carolina, voters will be asked for photo identification to vote at the polls, and for voting by mail.

And how does that work?

The mail voting ID verification?

- And so in order for you to, well, you do have to have, as you mentioned, an ID, of course for students, they can use their student ID.

But also for the mail-in voting, there's several rules that comes with you being able to mail in your ballot.

One of those being that you have a signature on it.

Oftentimes people are sending their mail-in ballots in without signatures or without witnesses.

But also a lot of people don't know that you can go to the DMV and get a no fee ID.

- Okay?

- So a no fee ID would allow you to get a voter ID that you can literally take to the polling site.

And so typically you don't want to do a provisional ballot 'cause provisional ballots, you know, they have things going on.

- Let's define provisional ballot real quick.

- Provisional ballot is if you don't have an ID.

- Okay.

- Or, you know, if you don't have identification and you are, or you're trying to change information.

And so if you're like, wait, this is election day, of course, you know, I know I can't register on the same day, I can do a provisional ballot.

But we do want you, we are encouraging you to get a voter ID and we know that the DMV can have long lines.

- Yeah.

- Unfortunately.

- But you can appointments, you can.

- But you can't make appointments in order to schedule those and get a voter ID.

- And no fee means free, so you ain't got no excuse there, right?

- Yes, absolutely.

- All right.

Second question.

Same day voter registration is available on election day.

True or false?

- False.

- False.

- False, all right.

Eligible voters may register to vote during early voting in person at a polling place in their county.

Same day registration, however, is not available for most voters on election day.

Anything you wanna add to that?

- That's perfect.

- [Host] It's pretty straightforward, right?

- Straightforward.

- All right.

Third question.

You can vote via an absentee ballot in North Carolina.

True or false?

- True, yeah.

- True.

- True, yes.

So the deadline to request an absentee ballot, however, in this state is October 29th, 2024 at 5:00 PM, is that like, it's 5:00 PM, is that specifically?

- Yeah, unfortunately.

- [Host] So it has to be postmarked by that date.

- Yeah.

- In that time.

- There's no more grace periods this year.

- Yeah, unfortunately.

- Unfortunately, yeah.

Even though the irony of it all is that the military, which we know in North Carolina, we have a large military population.

The military ballots are still going to be coming in past the three-day grace period.

So, you know.

- [Host] Yeah.

- Which is a voter suppression tactic.

- Suppression tactic.

[laughing] - So like, you know, of course, as you mentioned, like cutting off at 5:00 o'clock is a voter suppression tactic 'cause you know, votes will be rolling in after that period.

- [Host] After that?

Yeah.

- Especially after 7:00 o'clock.

- [Host] Right.

- On November 5th.

- Right.

So that's what I was gonna add.

Those ballots must be returned by 7:30 is what I had.

So that might be a little bit of misinformation.

- Definitely.

- We'll clarify that.

- But also just voter suppression as a whole.

- [Host] Yeah.

As a whole.

But that's on November 5th.

Fourth question, you must have resided in your county of registration at least 30 days prior to election day.

True or false?

- True.

- True.

- That is true.

So if you have lived somewhere else within the last 15 days, you need to just go back to that county to vote, correct?

Doesn't mean you can't vote, just means you should go back to that county?

- Yeah.

Well, yes.

Well, you can or you can, as I mentioned before, get a no fee id.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- And if it's within the 30, if it's within the 15 days or whatever, like I don't see why you wouldn't be able to early vote in your previous location.

- Okay.

All right.

So this is also telling me that people need to plan ahead.

- Definitely.

- Absolutely.

- If you have some of these, yes.

- A voter plan.

- All right, fifth and last question.

Employers are legally required to give you time off to allow you to vote.

True or false?

- False.

- False, for sure.

- False, they're not legally required to do that.

- Not required.

- Not yet, should be.

- Should be.

- Right, and unfortunately, some organizations or jobs know that that is a voter suppression tactic that allows them to just decide on their own, so yeah.

- Yeah, yeah, well these were all questions that I actually pulled off of the PBS NC website, so you have no excuse.

If you need more information as election day approaches, PBS is making sure that you have the information that you need, so you're prepared to vote.

You can find information about election day, voter registration deadlines, early voting, voter ID, and so much more, so make sure you visit pbsnc.org/vote.

Scan the QR code on your screen so that you can get additional details.

So before we wrap up, we've got just a few minutes left in the show.

Let's just, what are some tips for election day and leading up to election day that you wanna share with voters?

Diamante, I'll start with you.

- NCvoter.org.

Go there, type in your zip code.

You'll be able to look at our digital voter guide, reach out to us, North Carolina Black Alliance, Democracy North Carolina, Common Cause, the Rural South or the Rural Project.

Like there's a ton of organizations, non-profit, non-partisan organizations that are out here doing the good work, knocking doors, making phone calls.

Get involved, roll up your sleeves.

Democracy is a full contact sport.

Don't be afraid to get dirty and messy.

It's going to be a long, rough fight, but we who believe in freedom cannot rest.

- Yeah, so is it fair to say that any website that ends in the .org is one to trust?

- No.

- Yeah, not necessarily.

- Not necessarily.

- Yeah.

- Vote for Democracy in North Carolina, yeah, at least with ours, with NCvoterlookup.org, we have 30 years of work in North Carolina providing, you know, watchdog service when it comes to safeguarding democracy and voting and the access to the ballot.

- And you said that's NClookup.org?

- So it's NCvoter.org.

- Voter.org.

So NCvoter.org.

- [Diamante] Yes.

- Wonderful.

Lamar, what do you have to share?

- Yeah, it's similar to Advanced Carolina and NC Black Alliance.

We have safevoternc.org, and it's updated frequently with voter ID information, polling site information, changes to polling sites, whether it's closures or, you know, additions to polling sites being added to the roster of those that you're able to vote at.

But I would also say at the end of the day, you know, just making sure that you are using this information that is online, the correct accurate information online to your benefit, but also making sure that you're sharing with your families.

You can also go to use Vote Owl, which allows you to create your own sample ballots that you can share with your family and friends, especially those that you know are not necessarily tied into politics.

- Nice, well, Lamar Brian, Diamante Alford, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- We appreciate it.

I learned a lot.

Hopefully our viewers learned a lot as well.

I think the most important thing I learned is that we should all have an election plan, election voting plan.

So make sure you've got something in place for everyone, not just yourself, but all in your family that you care about.

And that's all that we have for today.

I wanna thank our guests again, and I thank you for watching.

If you want more contact like this, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag Black Issues Forum.

You can also find our full episodes on PBSnc.org/blackissuesforum and on the PBS video app.

I'm Kenia Thompson.

I'll see you next time.

[upbeat music] ♪ - [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.