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.