Anti-Voting Influencers: Discouragement and Disinformation Pulling Voters from the Polls

What this episode covers

Violent and systemic voter suppression has kept communities of color from the voting booth. But perhaps as generations turn to more innovative platforms than years past, voter suppression has taken up a more covert form. The greater accessibility and reach of today’s communication methods allow someone aiming to keep voters from the polls the greater means to do so. Even a casual post on the Internet today can accidentally bring the voter turnout down. A comment by a human-like bot might tell a lie about a candidate. A podcast could exclaim that elections are pointless and all candidates are the same. Or video from a classmate from high school could portray the length of a polling center line. Anti-voting influencers make the polls seem mundane, tedious, and ineffective to those able to cast ballots. Black Voters Matter Fund’s CLIFF ALBRIGHT and Scripps News national news and disinformation correspondent KADIA TUBMAN join The Sidebar by NYABJ’s KATHRYN JONES to discuss the media actors telling Americans to skip the voting booth. --------- The opinions heard in this episode belong to the individuals who made them and not to NYABJ. Music by HoliznaRAPS. For more information on the New York Association of Black Journalists, please visit our website at www.nyabj.org.

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