Week 25 - 'Should we worry the general election will be hacked?'

'Should we worry the general election will be hacked?'
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/20/uk-general-election-2017-hacking-ddos-attacks-bots-fake-news

• The public administration and constitutional affairs committee (Pacac) said that the failure of the voter registration website, “had indications of being a DDoS ‘attack’”
•  it mentioned Russia and China
• Labour MP Paul Flynn, who sits on the Pacac, certainly thinks we should be worried – although closer inspection of the report finds that, beyond the headlines, there’s a startling lack of evidence for those particular fears
• Not only is it not actually hacking at all, but it also looks rather similar to when a lot of people at once try to use a server that doesn’t have the capacity
•  The University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, found a huge number of Twitter bots posting pro-Leave propaganda in the run up to the EU referendum
• The actual report reveals the researchers can’t directly identify bots – they just assume accounts that tweet a lot are automated – and admit “not all of these users or even the majority of them are bots

The main issue here is the lack of clarity shown within this article. The article is clearly addressing the issues that we may face with the upcoming general election, however it also suggests that there is a lack of evidence to suggest that this is even an issue. This highlights a clear sense of moral panic as reports make accusations about Twitter bots swaying votes and also blaming countries such as Russia and China. The issue here is of course the rise of fake news which could manipulate audiences and aid their response to the elections, however the reports to suggest that the research published is inaccurate highlights how moral panics are simply being created and are becoming out of hand in today's media saturated society.