views
essay
editorial
continued from page 6
Th e Nation Needs 3-Digit Suicide Hotline Number
dents to become future leaders within their com-
munities. In recent years, the organization has
become quite involved in arming students with
information to combat the spread of anti-Israel
sentiment on campus.
• StandWithUs. An Israel nonprofit group
dedicated to educating people about Israel
and combating anti-Semitism and extremism,
StandWithUs is now extensively involved in
providing educational services to Jewish col-
lege students. It offers fellowship programs that
recruit, train, educate and inspire pro-Israel col-
lege students to assume leadership positions.
It holds symposiums, writes articles and offers
training seminars and the chance to intern at
StandWithUs’ Jerusalem office.
Each of these organizations relies on commu-
nity support to sustain its mission and, not sur-
prisingly, the lion’s share of it comes from Jewish
donors. In 5779, I will support each of them and
other youth-focused, pro-Israel groups, and I will
encourage others to do so. They are performing
a vital service to the Jewish people: preparing
our kids to be tomorrow’s defenders of Israel.
That’s a holy mission, worthy of our unbridled
support.
That is my 5779 Pro-Israel New Year
Resolution. I hope you will join me. •
E
Mark Jacobs is the AIPAC Michigan director for African
American Outreach, a co-director of the Coalition for Black
and Jewish Unity, a board member of the Jewish Community
Relations Council-AJC and the director of Jewish Family
Service’s Legal Referral Committee.
arlier this month, President
Donald Trump signed the
National Suicide Hotline
Improvement Act of 2018 into law.
The legislation requires the Federal
Communications Commission and
Departments of Health and Human
Services and Veterans Affairs to
conduct a study to assess the
feasibility of establishing a three-
digit number to a national suicide
prevention and mental health crisis
hotline system — like 911, the
number everyone knows to dial for
emergencies.
According to the law, a report
must be submitted to Congress
with a suggested dialing code and
a cost-benefit analysis of switching
to a three-digit number within one
year. Let’s hope they can get the
work done sooner.
The National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline is a national network of
local crisis centers that provides
free and confidential emotional
support to people in suicidal crisis
or emotional distress 24 hours a
day, seven days a week.
The lifeline’s current phone
number is hard to remember
(1-800-273-TALK) and moving to
an easily remembered three-digit
number could mean life or death
for thousands of people at risk
for suicide.
Most people who
have suicidal feelings
do not really want to
die, according to John
Draper, director of
the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline.
Rather, he says, they
want to end the
unbearable pain
they are feeling. “It’s
important to help
people because those
thoughts, we know from
many different studies, are rarely
persistent. It’s often a temporary
condition,” Draper says.
Draper says that the hotline has
consistent success with reducing
a caller’s distress and suicidal
feelings.
Talking helps. In fact, one of the
simplest things a friend or family
member can do for someone
struggling with sadness and
depression is to ask if they are
having suicidal thoughts. Research
shows that bringing up the word
doesn’t make someone suicidal;
talking about suicidal
feelings with someone
who cares can help
people see another
way through
to solving their
problems.
In Michigan, the
growth in suicide
deaths is more rapid
than the national
average. The Centers for
Disease Control reports
suicide deaths increased
nearly 33 percent in
Michigan since 1999 to
13.3 deaths per 1,000 people in
2016. It is the 10th leading cause of
death in the state, behind the flu/
pneumonia and kidney disease.
All too many of us have known
the pain of losing loved ones to
suicide. Anything that can be done
to make help easier for people at
risk to obtain — such as creating a
national three-digit suicide hotline
number — should be done as
quickly as possible. •
commentary
It’s Time to Examine How Online
Disinformation Aff ects Social Groups
C
omputational
propaganda
— the use of
automation and algo-
rithms on social media
to manipulate public
opinion — has become
a global phenomenon.
Samuel Woolley
This has come as a
surprise to many in the
technology sector, and
it’s quite the adverse
development given that
less than a decade ago experts hailed
social media as a savior for democratic
communication. Russian manipulation of
Facebook during the 2016 U.S. election is,
however, only the tip of the digital disin-
formation iceberg.
Online political harassment has hin-
dered free and open journalism in Turkey,
bot armies have been used to threaten
the lives of activists in Mexico, and the
same automated fake accounts have
suppressed dissent in the Philippines.
Communities around the world have not
8
August 30 • 2018
jn
only become skeptical of the news they
see online, but they have become targets
for focused political trolling campaigns
that prevent them from using social
media as an effective means for sharing
civic information.
Considering the growing body of
research on this subject, it would be easy
to think of computational propaganda
as a broad phenomenon isolated to
national elections and security crises.
My work at the University of Oxford and
Digital Intelligence Lab at the Institute
for the Future has examined the use of
political bots and digital disinformation
during major elections and events in the
U.K., U.S., Brazil, Taiwan, Venezuela and
many other countries. Other scholars
have studied online manipulation dur-
ing similarly momentous occasions in
France, Georgia, Germany, Russia, Syria
and elsewhere.
But these analyses — generally focused
on assessments of big data from social
media platforms coupled with fieldwork
with people who make and track the
tools of computational propaganda — fall
short in acknowledging the fact that digi-
tal disinformation and politically moti-
vated trolling have become a daily affair.
These studies also fail to fully illu-
minate the fact that already embattled
social groups and single-issue voters are
frequently and disproportionately the
targets of online propaganda attacks. We
need more research that explores the
human element of computational propa-
ganda. I am excited to be tackling exactly
this as an ADL Center for Technology and
Society Belfer Fellow.
In the United States — during the 2016
election, in several special elections and
in the ongoing run-up to the 2018 mid-
terms — marginalized social and issue-
focused groups have been the primary
targets of online propaganda attacks. In
2016, Jewish Americans and other minor-
ity groups were targeted with several
disinformation and anti-Semitic trolling
campaigns. Facebook ads and group
pages purporting to be from Black Lives
Matter groups were spread by Russia.
During the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial
race, automated Twitter accounts were
used to stoke anger against a Latino
advocacy group. In current contests
for toss-up Senate seats in Arizona and
Nevada, we are seeing a troubling rise of
anti-immigration online propaganda.
It is time for researchers, policy mak-
ers, companies and civil society to work
to understand how computational propa-
ganda affects minority populations.
We must work to protect social groups
and issue advocates from this burgeon-
ing form of political manipulation and
defamation because their participation
is integral to a functioning democracy. If
the voices beyond the status quo cannot
be heard, then all people run the risk of
falling prey to the cynicism and polariza-
tion at the heart of computational propa-
ganda. The consequences are far-reach-
ing, and I’m looking forward to finding
answers as part of the ADL CTS team. •
Samuel Woolley is the Belfer Fellow with ADL’s
Center for Technology and Society.