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    Don’t Feed The Bots

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    One in four Twitter followers of Philip Boucher Hayes is a fake account, the RTÉ broadcaster announced on his Twitter feed recently. Around the end of August, Boucher Hayes had noticed an uptick in new followers on Twitter, which he had monitored since. “Previously 100/150 people would follow me every week”, Boucher Hayes posted on Twitter. “Suddenly it became 800/1500 a week. Most had Irish-sounding names. None had tweeted. They were all following the same high-profile Irish accounts”. Boucher Hayes noted that many of the accounts had usernames consisting of a name followed by a series of random digits, such as @ John87654321 or @Mary12345678. This pattern, suggestive of names being mass-generated automatically, had also been seen earlier in the year among many ‘Brexit-bots’ in the UK. Although Boucher Hayes reported the increase in fake followers to Twitter, the pattern continued unchecked. “Either most of the high-profile Irish accounts have grossly inflated numbers of followers (which is admittedly a bit of a “so what?”) or someone is amassing a very large Twitter mob for some as yet unidentified purpose”, Boucher Hayes posted. “Either way it further erodes confidence in an increasingly compromised platform. Twitter doesn’t seem worried, maybe its users will be”. The same phenomenon may also account for the large numbers of fake followers identified for the @rte2fm radio account by the anonymous account of ‘Secret RTE Producer’ (@rtesecretpro), and would certainly make more sense than the national broadcaster spending licence-fee money to boost a social-media headcount. Perhaps reflecting official sensitivities, as Village was going to press, 2FM had reduced from thousands to 45 the number of accounts it was following. In recent testimony to the US congress, Twitter estimated five percent (16 million) of its accounts belong to fake users. Bots in turn can be divided into subgroupings. Spambots post URLs, hoping to encourage users to click on them, either to sell a product, or to lead users to a malicious website, which can infect their browsers and take over their laptops or phones. By contrast, influence bots seek to influence public opinion, whether by spamming hashtags, promoting artificial trends, pushing smear campaigns and death campaigns, or boosting political propaganda. “Artificial trends can bury real trends, keeping them off the public and media’s radar. Smear campaigns and death threats can both intimidate vocal opponents and dissuade would-be speakers. The link between propaganda and legitimate political speech is a fine one, of course, and in some cases is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, bots can be used to amplify the propagandist’s desired message”, noted Nathalie Marechal, a researcher with the University of California, writing in the International Journal of Communication in 2016. A 2016 study found that Twitter’s algorithms would eliminate a bot which tweeted spam links, but would not delete the associated accounts that retweeted the original post. This meant bot networks could all retweet a message hundreds of times, at the loss of only a handful of original tweeting accounts each time. Analysts at the University of Washington in Seattle studied a network which they named the Syrian Social Botnet, which worked not only by posting pro-Assad news and promoting astroturfing, but by flooding timelines with irrelevant news. A hashtag about the Syrian civil war would be flooded with irrelevant reports about other stories, for example from Hurricane Sandy, swamping the system with noise and making the hashtag useless for search purposes, a practice known as smokescreening. Another network – the Star Wars Botnet – discovered by researchers at University College London, numbering over 300,000 accounts, was so-called because the accounts each posted random snippets of text from Star Wars novels in the minutes after they were set up. A large number of the bots followed a handful of real users, and it seems to have been built for this purpose, and sold to users who wanted to inflate their follower counts and exaggerate their popularity. Bots can also be used to create page impressions, as Twitter and Facebook accounts are often used as logins by readers of news sites. This could exaggerate page views and ad impressions on websites seeking to defraud advertisers. A second botnet uncovered by the same London-based researchers numbered over 500,000 accounts, and was behind a large-scale spamming attack on Twitter in 2012. Gavin Sheridan, who worked as innovation director with Storyful, the News Corp-owned online news-verification company started by Mark Little in 2010, says it is not possible to determine who might be behind this nascent bot army until it is activated. (And indeed, now that it had been noticed, its usefulness may have been diminished to such an extent that it is never used). “I’ve read a lot of research, and I’ve seen the bot armies myself”, says Sheridan. “There were bot armies for California leaving the Union, for Texas leaving the union, there are pro-Erdogan ones in Turkey, one for Catalonia, one for Scotland leaving the UK: all bot armies in some shape or form”. “I started looking at [the Irish botnet] about two weeks ago. I wasn’t being followed by them but I noticed them following other people. A couple of people contacted me and said that they seemed to be being followed by strange accounts. There’s a couple of interesting things about these bots. One thing is the rapidity with which they are following certain users, the second thing is that they appear to have Irish-sounding names, not all of them, but a certain number, so if I look at, say, a prominent member of the Repeal the Eighth movement, I’ll see that of the last 50 followers, about half are newly set up – in the last few weeks. They have never tweeted and engage in no other activity. Some follow 50, some follow 80 accounts, that include people prominent in the Repeal the Eighth campaign. I’d have to analyse every single checking account to see if they follow people on the other side of the debate, but so far they’re also

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    Referendum Practice

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    The Government intends to hold seven referendums over the next two years, and the Citizens’ Convention is due to consider Ireland’s referendum practice before it winds up next spring. With a contentious abortion referendum looming up soon after that, this is a good time to consider how we run referendums. A code of good practice in referendums was adopted in 2007 by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission for Democracy through Law. The Supreme Court cited this code in its 2012 McCrystal judgment which found that a Government information booklet in the children’s rights referendum of that year contained significant errors and ruled that it had to be withdrawn. Referendums in Ireland are forms of direct legislation in which citizens vote on a Bill to amend the Constitution, the basic law of the State. It is the citizens, not TDs and Senators, who are making the law on these occasions. Once an issue is put before the People for decision, the Government, as Government, should not interfere. It should not, for example, spend public money, which comes from voters on both sides in a referendum, to push the side it favours, any more than it should be able to loot the Exchequer to bribe voters in elections. Of course the political parties that make up the Government can spend their own money for partisan purposes, but that is different from the Government, as Government, doing so. Between 1987 and 1995 Irish Governments massively abused the referendum process. In 1987 the Supreme Court in its Crotty judgment on the Single European Act (SEA) required the Government to put any treaty that entailed a surrender of sovereignty before the People for decision. As the People are the repositories of sovereignty, only they can surrender it – in the case of the SEA to the supranational EU. Voters at the time would have passed the SEA referendum comfortably, but to make assurance doubly sure the Charles Haughey-led Government of the day spent taxpayers’ money in full-page newpaper adverts: ‘Ten Reasons for Voting Yes’. This had never been done before in any of the eleven referendums that had been held since the Constitution was adopted in 1937. The same thing happened in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty referendum on replacing the púnt with the euro. On that occasion the Albert Reynolds-led Government commissioned a private company to place the Vote Yes adverts. One of them read: ‘A Vote No Disempowers Women’! Patricia McKenna put a stop to this abuse of public funds by taking her famous case in the context of the 1995 Divorce Referendum. The Council of Europe’s Code of Good Practice in Referendums accords with the Supreme Court’s ruling in McKenna that partisan expenditure of public money in referendums is unconstitutional, undemocratic and unfair. The Government’s response was to establish a new statutory body, the Referendum Commission, to give citizens information in referendums. The 1998 Referendum Act that established the Referendum Commission charged it with producing and publicising two statements, one telling citizens what the referendum was about, and the other setting out the main arguments for and against the proposed constitutional amendment. The Referendum Commission is not a permanent body, although idealy it should be, as its UK equivalent is. It is called into being anew every time there is a referendum and the Government appoints a new chairman each time. Its four regular members are the Ombudsman, the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Clerks of the Dáil and Seanad. On the Commission’s first outings in the 1998 Amsterdam Treaty and Good Friday Agreement referendums and the 2001 and 2002 Nice Treaty referendums its chairman was Mr Justice T.A. Finlay. As a retired Chief Justice he was not open to subsequent Government patronage. Both sides recognised that Justice Finlay carried out his statutory duties impeccably. Since 2001 successive Referendum Commission chairmen have all been High Court judges, of which, unfortunately, the same cannot be said. When citizen-voters rejected the constitutional amendment to ratify the EU’s Nice Treaty in 2001 the Bertie Ahern-led Government of the day removed from the Referendum Commission its function of setting out the main Yes-side and No-side arguments. It did so because it judged that that had been too helpful to the No-side in Nice One and it wanted that function removed for the referendum re-run in Nice Two in 2002 so as to get a different result. With one day’s notice to the Opposition, the Government put all stages of the requisite change to the Referendum Act through both houses of the Oireachtas in a single day, the last day before rising for the Christmas holidays in December 2001, when most people were concentrating on the seasonal festivities. Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens voted against the change. Setting out the main pros and cons of any referendum proposition in a fair and objective manner is fully in accordance with the Council of Europe’s Code of Good Practice in Referendums. This states that in order to encourage a wellinformed citizenry on these occasions: “The best solution is for the authorities to provide voters with an explanatory text setting out not only their viewpoint or that of persons supporting it, but also the opposing viewpoint in a balanced way, or to send voters balanced campaign material from the proposal’s supporters and opponents”. It is surely a pity that Ireland’s pioneering step in encouraging more politically educated voters in referendums was brought to naught in the way described. It is unfortunate that the original remit of the Referendum Commission was not given more of a chance to prove itself, and that the Commission was deprived of its Yes-No function because it proved inconvenient for the Government in such a politically important referendum as that on the Nice Treaty. After all the need for citizens to be properly and fairly informed of the main Yes-side and No-side arguments applies in all referendums regardless of the issue. In carrying out its original Yes-No function Mr Justice Finlay’s Referendum Commission

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    Social History Isn’t History With Politics Left Out

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    2016 was inevitably an outstanding year for the history industry as publishers, writers, and those elements of the intelligentsia that love a good commemoration got to work on the Easter Rebellion’s hundredth anniversary. The Irish people have an interesting relationship with their own history. It is, like their relationship to Catholicism, frequently the subject of fervent debate, at certain period followed slavishly as orthodoxy, and on other occasions the subject of shame. In the more modern Ireland that began to emerge from the 1960s a new revisionism took hold about the history itself. Revisionism itself became a pejorative term as scepticism about our history joined forces with those who would be sceptical about the benefit of Catholic Ireland. In the 1970s liberalism, secularism and scepticism about nationalism ascended. The first historical-revisionist tract was produced by a Jesuit priest named Fr Francis Shaw. His scepticism about 1916 was so overt that it was thought best to delay publication for six years as the country was, in 1966, fervidly commemorating Easter Rising anniversaries. Fr Shaw’s revisionism seems mild by the yardstick of today – he blamed 1916 for the division of Ireland, the Civil War and the fact that little or no commemoration was possible of those who gave their lives in World War I. Eunan O’Halpin and Guy Beiner take us through the various commemorations in Irish life in their essay ‘Remembering and Forgetting’ as a final input to the exhaustive and very stimulating ‘Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland’. What this book reminds you of is the timely and regular nature through which historians not only review earlier conclusions but also attempt to put a new narrative account on what has previously been thought of as undisputed territory. it is noteworthy that one of the best-selling books on the 1916 centenary celebrations was a book about how children were treated though the week-long rebellion. The editors of the Cambridge Social History, Mary Daly, Professor Emeritus of Modern History at UCD, and Eugenio Biagini, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge, are quick to point out that social history is not just history with the ‘politics’ left out. That said, they are robustly critical of an over-emphasis on political, constitutional, and institutional histories of Ireland. “Our emphasis is on economic and social change, our focus on people and cultures, instead of institutions and political ideologies”, they assert in their introduction. The book suggests a purposeful placing of Irish history in the context of wider European and global events. This is challenging stuff but with 40 distinct contributors cover ground of interest to both academic and general readers. The wide-ranging topics include previously taboo subject matter like sex and class in Ireland. Thankfully, as historian Joe Lee acknowledged in his Irish Times review, this is not a textbook. More than half the contributors are based outside of Ireland, which again shows a purposeful focus on diversity of thought by the editors. Lee has said of this book that the historian’s delight is a reviewer’s nightmare. The book is not a rainy-day read. One of the great tragedies of recent Irish scholarship is the number of posts in economic and social history that have either fallen vacant or simply just not been continued. It is to be hoped that Irish universities and corporate philanthropy will re-discover the benefits of social and economic history and invest in it. My own view is that local history, as well as social and economic history, deserves investment to counterbalance the overarching political narrative. Amongst the essays included here is one by Terence Dooley, Professor of Modern History at Maynooth University, on the fate of the Big House, the preserve of the ascendancy class and a symbol of an Ireland that is now essentially gone. Dooley deals both with the social destruction of that class but also the physical destruction of its physical heritage. This still makes for sad reading, in particular, when one looks at the Department of Finance’s memorandum in 1929, declining to take Russborough House in Wicklow, one of Ireland’s greatest houses, into state ownership because it was only of interest to “connoisseurs of architecture” and had never been associated “with any outstanding events or personalities in Irish history”. Despite the obvious neurosis that afflicted the early state with regard to the Big House there should surely be now an argument for a much more comprehensive policy to preserve heritage properties of every description, if only to assuage tourism’s endless search for new venues and more enchanted and more promotable ways. Henry Patterson, Emeritus Professor of Irish Politics at Ulster University, takes up the challenge of Irish working class experience and why, despite the best efforts, this did not translate into support for the Irish Labour party. He quotes UCD economist Cormac O’Gráda as acknowledging that by 1939 Fianna Fáil had become the party of the working class. Even the 1970s were never socialist. Moreover, unsurprisingly the recent displacement of the Labour party has been at the hands of a resurgent Sinn Féin which is reaping an electoral harvest and an indelible presence in working-class areas, from peace in our time. Patterson (‘The Irish Working Class and the Role of the State, 1850-2016) acknowledges why working-class politics made so small an impression on Irish life, pointing to the obvious conservatism and anti-communism of the Catholic Church and the fact that James Connolly threw in his lot with nationalism as a progressive force in Irish life. The other reason that class consciousness never took hold in Ireland is probably the existence of the Big House and the ascendancy class. The fact that the ruling class in Irish society were not drawn from the majority Catholic population meant that for several hundred years radicals had no class enemy to tilt at but the ascendancy. Jennifer Todd, Professor of Politics at UCD, and Joseph Ruane, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at UCC, make a timely point (‘Elite Formation, the Professions, Industry and the Middle

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    More than averagely trusting

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    The Jobstown trial has inspired a lot of commentary on both the power of social media to influence outcomes, and the credibility (or lack of same) of ‘mainstream’ media. Perhaps predictably, most of the commentary seemed to reinforce already existing viewpoints. Social-media users sympathetic to the protestors and their cause were more likely to regard legacy media titles as hopelessly compromised, while journalists in general even before the trial viewed social media – and social-media campaigns – with suspicion. In other words, each side viewed reality through a filter bubble based on their existing prejudices. So it was that the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017, including a survey of the Irish media landscape, comes at just the right time to put some of these claims and counter-claims in context. The survey finds that 46% of respondents in Ireland trust “most of the news most of the time”, down four percent on last year, though the figure rises to 52% for “news I use”, suggesting that most correspondents rate their own news judgement in deciding which news to consume above that of the population at large. Both these figures place Ireland pretty much in the middle internationally. Out of 36 countries surveyed, the country places 14th on overall trust of news, and 16th for “news I use”.   Overall, Irish users are more trusting of (or have more confidence in) their traditional media news sources than the international average, 46% to 41%. And while trust has fallen in the last year, it has not fallen as steeply as in our near neighbours in the UK. Concerns about ‘fake news’ and partisan coverage of events such as Brexit and the Trump election campaign may have been concerning when it came to international news but so far, while there may be concerns about the impartiality of some local news outlets, none has ever shown the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” blind partisanship of a Fox News or Russia Today magazine show. The same national versus international pattern holds when it comes to social media. Although social media are less trusted than legacy media for their ability to sort fact from fiction, at 28% of those surveyed, this is still higher than internationally, where just under a quarter (24%) trust social media. Facebook continues to dominate social media news, with 41% of Irish Facebook users finding news through the social network (compared to 47% internationally). Twitter and Snapchat both outperform international norms in Ireland, but despite its popularity with journalists and media types generally, only 11% of Irish Twitter users are getting news from the network. Dissatisfaction with traditional news sources is often amplified in new social media, but despite this, social media clearly have their own credibility issues. But despite audience scepticism, old-media outlets continue to be the primary news sources for most people. RTÉ dominates the field in Ireland, with 62% getting their news there once weekly or more often. This should not be too surprising, given that RTÉ has multiple channels, with both television and radio output. Sky (34%) has only television, in contrast, and the BBC (30%) radio channels don’t really penetrate into the Irish market. Additionally, 31% of those surveyed get news from the RTÉ News website, just 1% behind online news outlet TheJournal.ie, at 32%. The Independent online website is a close third at 30%, while the Irish Times, next in line, lies back at 23%. These differences among the leading online news sources may be a product of different paywall and registration strategies, from the most open (the Journal) to the least (Irish Times). Timing is everything, and Ireland may be lucky that its jolt to the system came a few years ago. The Jobstown trial is to a large extent an artefact of the Irish Water protests, which are receding from current affairs into history. From Brexit fallout to the ongoing housing/homelessness crisis becoming a full-blown catastrophe, there’s no guarantee there won’t be another shock to the system in the next few years, but so far Ireland seems to have been spared the kind of existential problems a high-profile Trump or Le Pen can take advantage of, and the resulting loss of faith in news media. Instead, as shown in the Reuters Digital News Ireland report prepared by Paul McNamara, Kevin Cunningham, Eileen Culloty and Jane Suiter at the Institute for Future Media and Journalism (FuJo) at Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland’s media problems revolve around the more prosaic issues of ageing audiences and reluctance to pay for news. One reason for the relatively high trust in news in Ireland may be a figure which describes participants’ political leanings. Two thirds (67%) described themselves as Centre, compared to 19% Left and 14% Right. Decades of consensus politics on the major issues, from national wage agreements to EU membership to Northern Ireland have presumably had an impact in creating the impression among many that their views are part of the moderate middle, whatever an objective outside assessment might be. By contrast, countries with highly polarised polities, such as the USA, Italy, and Hungary, show low levels of trust in news sources. Perhaps related to this, the age differences when it comes to trust in media are notable. Only one in three 18-24 year-olds and 25-34 year- olds (33% and 34% respectively) agree with the statement “I think you can trust most news most of the time”, a number which rises steadily as participants get older, to 43% of 35-44 year-olds, 53% of 45-54 year-olds, and 56% among those over the age of 55.  The reluctance of younger consumers to pay for news may not be a function simply of their familiarity with obtaining free news using modern technologies, but the level of trust they place in it. What should you pay for news you cannot trust? It is also worth considering how much worse those numbers might look for legacy media sources if it had not been for the ‘safety valve’ of

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