{"id":282012,"date":"2017-11-10T14:09:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=282012"},"modified":"2017-11-14T08:40:54","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T13:40:54","slug":"political-scientist-primo-says-americans-worry-government-control-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/political-scientist-primo-says-americans-worry-government-control-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Political scientist Primo says Americans should worry about government control of social media"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"photo
David Primo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rochester political scientist David Primo<\/a> says Americans should be worried when politicians discuss the need to control the media. The debate follows in the wake of targeted Russian misinformation campaigns on social media during the last general election. Congress is currently considering legislation that would regulate political advertising on social media.<\/p>\n

In a letter to the editor<\/a> published in the New York Times<\/em>, Primo, the University\u2019s Ani and Mark Gabrellian Professor and an associate professor of political science and business administration<\/a>, writes:<\/p>\n

“After raking tech executives over the coals over Russia\u2019s use of social media to influence the presidential campaign, Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters, \u2018What we need to do is sit down and find ways to bring some of the controls we have on over-the-air broadcast to social media to protect the consumer.\u2019<\/p>\n

As a scholar who studies First Amendment issues and the ways in which campaign finance laws have been used to stifle speech under the pretext of safeguarding democracy, I get very nervous when politicians discuss the need for \u2018controls\u2019 over the media to \u2018protect\u2019 us. The American people should be nervous, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Primo wrote in response to a New York Times<\/em> front-page story titled \u201cInternet Giants Pique Senators with Restraint\u201d<\/a> (in the paper\u2019s print edition on November 1) about the Senate Judiciary subcommittee\u2019s hearing with executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google about Russia\u2019s election interference. The New York Times<\/em> reported that while the tech giant bosses publicly acknowledged their companies\u2019 role in Russia\u2019s influence on the last presidential election, they offered \u201clittle more than promises to do better.\u201d It was this reluctance that apparently frustrated lawmakers who had sought stronger promises that future US elections would be protected from the influence of foreign powers.<\/p>\n

According to the Times <\/em>story, Facebook came under particular scrutiny from the lawmakers after the social media company acknowledged a day before the hearings that possibly\u00a0more than 126 million users<\/a>\u00a0saw inflammatory political ads bought by a Kremlin-linked company. Just after the election, Facebook\u2019s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, had dismissed claims of fake news and foreign interference on its site as a \u201ccrazy idea,\u201d writes the Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congress is currently considering legislation that would regulate political advertising on social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":942,"featured_media":282062,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29212],"tags":[1696,21462,19232],"class_list":["post-282012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-voices-opinion","tag-david-primo","tag-department-of-political-science","tag-social-media"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPolitical scientist Primo says Americans should worry about government control of social media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/political-scientist-primo-says-americans-worry-government-control-social-media\/\" \/>\n<meta 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