“Official Voter Guide,” read the mailings sent to voters in seven battleground states ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
Presenting undeniable comparisons of applicants’ perspectives on key issues such as abortion, schooling, and democracy, readers confident that they had “asked researchers to dig deeper into the backgrounds, statements, and votes of local applicants in major legislative elections,” then provide this data to constituents like you, so they can make an informed selection on Election Day.
Given that they were produced through My Voter Information, an assignment by Forward Majority Action, a dark-money organization formed in 2017 to elect Democrats to state legislatures, it’s unexpected that those emails have a strong political orientation.
Nor is it unexpected that in six of the seven states, most of the fabrics that researchers “dug” to build those caricatured profiles of candidates were ripe fruits, such as the candidates’ campaign and their social media posts, from relevant advocacy groups. Matrix and online stories from local TV stations or newspapers.
The exception for mail covering races in Michigan.
Analysis of 92 emails shared on Forward Majority Action’s Michigan page revealed 69 quotes from the Main Street Sentinel, a mysterious, short-lived quasi-local news site targeting Michiganders on Facebook, garnering over a hundred million impressions in ten months thanks to an unaccounted advertising investment of more than 1. 4 million dollars.
The Main Street Sentinel included 3 virtual entities: a website, a Facebook page, and an Instagram account, all created in February 2022.
The Facebook page, in which it is classified as a “media production and broadcasting company”, created on February 7, 2022 and the first publication made on February 24, 2022. Your Instagram page only shows the account created. in February 2022, and the first visual post on August 14, 2024 is dated March 1, 2022.
The domain of the online page was registered on February 17, 2022, according to ICANN’s Whois records. The latest screenshot of an online page running through the Wayback Machine is dated February 8, 2023. It now redirects to an Archie template page from Teal Media, a platform that promises “fast-changing, budget-based” Internet sites for “large nonprofits with small initiatives,” new organizations just starting out, and political campaigns that want donations yesterday. Teal’s clients come with Courier Newsroom, the local partisan network spun off from the liberal black cash organization Acronym.
The Main Street Sentinel was obviously designed to exploit Facebook’s targeting capabilities. According to data from Meta Ad Library, between $1,215,000 and $1,665,689 were spent on classified ads for the page between February 25, 2022 and November 18, 2022. (The Meta Ad Library provides a figure of $1,412,891, which it describes as “the estimated total amount of cash this advertiser spent on classified ads on social, electoral, or political issues. “
It turns out that this expense allowed Sentinel to be offered to many Michiganders. Meta’s ad library provides minimum and maximum numbers of ad impressions: the “number of times an ad was shown on a screen, potentially including prospects through it. ” people” and the approximate location of the Facebook users who earned the classified ads. Based on this data, Main Street Sentinel classified ads earned between 108. 5 million and 123. 9 million impressions, 99. 4% of which They were in Michigan (approximately 107. 9 million). Another measure One of the successes of Michigan is that California is in second place with about 61,000 impressions.
Sentinel’s first advertising crusade began on February 25, 2022, with 30 classified ads for ten items. These can be grouped into 4 thematic groups:
These classified ads, which charge $8,900, earned 1,078,000 impressions, according to metaknowledge. The 27 classified ads for which the Meta Ad Library supports regional knowledge were viewed exclusively by users in Michigan. (The Meta Ad Library retrieves location knowledge for classified ads with fewer than 1,000 impressions. ) As a result, Facebook delivered over a million impressions to this fake news operation within 4 days of its release. publication.
The Main Street Sentinel gained some early and late attention in its short life, much of which highlighted the opacity around its property.
On March 27, 2022, Axios discussed it as part of a report on Real Voices Media, an organization responsible for “a vast network of social media communities in battleground political states that can be activated ahead of elections and political struggles. “, Axios wrote, “It’s unclear who the site is. Its indexed publisher, Star Spangled Media LLC, was formed last month [February 2022] in New York and lists a registered agent service as its sole principal.
Shortly after, on April 11, 2022, conservative news site National Review covered the Sentinel with the headline “Your Favorite Facebook Page May Be a Trojan Horse for Progressive Propaganda. “The report calls Sentinel “an online page whose call screams small-town news, but it’s a left-wing propaganda site that offers a heavy dose of Democratic spin and White House talking points. »
A month before Election Day, the Sentinel was subpoenaed in an investigation co-published through the Substack Statehouse Action and FWIW newsletters, the latter of which has longstanding ties to the Courier Newsroom. FWIW is led by Kyle Tharp, who has held communications positions. at Acronym and Good Information Inc. , and is now the national managing director of Courier Newsroom. FWIW is now indexed as a Courier Newsroom newsletter.
Presenting a positive view of the Sentinel, the authors of FWIW/Statehouse Action said, “Of all the states holding competitive congressional elections this year, Democrats and their allies appear to be conducting their most complicated virtual operation in Michigan. “
Added:
Candidates, the state party, and outdoor groups are attacking all Republicans across the state with abortion-related ads.
In the past 90 days, it wasn’t Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s campaign or a primary national advocacy group that spent the most on classified political ads on Facebook in Michigan.
Rather, it was a difficult-to-understand progressive virtual political organization called Main Street Sentinel. The liberal site, affiliated in some way with a progressive Facebook network called Real Voices Media, has spent more than $700,000 on classified ads supporting Democrats running for state legislature and other offices.
Continuing his summary of the increased virtual ad spending around the declining election in Michigan, he noted that Forward Majority Action Michigan had “introduced new ad campaigns on Facebook attacking Republican applicants from the negative side. “Three of the classified ads submitted through Forward Majority Action Michigan in September and October ran in myvoterinformation. org.
Shortly after, weeks before Election Day, NewsGuard featured Sentinel along with Courier Newsroom, American Independent and Metric Media in a report detailing about $4 million in political advertising spending on Meta platforms. They also noted the difficulty of understanding its provenance, reporting: “The Main Street Sentinel states on its online page that it is owned by Star Spangled Media LLC, [however] the group’s classified ads on Facebook and Instagram imply that they are ‘paid by via The Main Street Sentinel, a call that doesn’t appear in any state ads and gives the ads a veneer of journalistic authenticity. NewsGuard’s findings garnered more policy from Bloomberg’s Davey Alba, under the headline “Meta Makes Millions. ” with political ads. ” From fake ‘Pink Slime’ newsrooms. ” Alba noted a connection to Democratic strategist Will Robinson, first reported in Axios’ March report, but added: “The other investors are not known, however, the site has published several articles featuring President Joe Biden and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as beneficiary.
To date, nothing has been reported about how Main Street Sentinel works outside of Meta platforms.
Forward Majority is a super PAC created in 2017 to assist Democratic applicants in state legislative elections. It is affiliated with the Forward Majority Action PAC and has many state-specific derivatives. Forward Majority Action Michigan was the largest recipient of the Forward Majority Action PAC’s budget during the 2022 election cycle, according to Open Secrets.
When the super-PAC was introduced in 2017, Politico wrote: “The Advanced Majority style includes targeting more races that are most likely to affect the maximum number of local parties or state caucuses. The purpose is to flip the GOP chambers. ” to the Democrat by employing wanted Crusade tactics are rarely used in these types of local elections, adding polling and message testing.
According to OpenSecrets, Forward Majority earned $4. 1 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the shadowy organization with a history of deceptive investment media operations like Main Street Sentinel. As Anna Massoglia reported:
In 2018, the Sixteen Thirty Fund sponsored social media pages and virtual operations for five pseudo-local media outlets in three states. They seemed independent of others, but they were promoted with almost the same virtual ads.
Facebook pages operating under the auspices of the Colorado Chronicle, Daily CO, Nevada News Now, Silver State Sentinel and Verified Virginia gave the impression of being several independent local news outlets with unique names and disclaimers. But the sponsors of those classified ads are just fictitious names used by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to virtual ad data and Washington, D. C. , government incorporation records.
In mid-2022, the Target States page in ForwardMajority. org stated, “Forward Majority Action is pleased to endorse Democratic applicants in several key states.
The pages for 8 targeted states, available through the Wayback Machine, showed a breakdown of that state’s “program information. ” This included Forward Majority’s target districts, a breakdown of the subset of the electorate it would target, what virtual classified ads would be targeted with (typically via YouTube), and the accompanying strategy for physical mail.
Michigan’s Postal Strategy, dated October 27, 2022, 11 days before Election Day, states: “We will send mailers to the electorate with a midterm participation rate > 5, with supporters in the middle among 30 and 60. ”
Along with the five dates on which other letters would be “deposited” (ranging from October 5 to 28), Forward Action connected the PDF files of the letters it would send to the electorate that met its target criteria.
A total of 92 mailings were sent for Michigan, the most for any of the 8 target states.
All record names followed the same pattern:
[State]-[Mailing Item Number]-[House & District]. pdf
for example, MI-M01-HD22. pdf (Michigan-Mail Piece 1-House District 22)
Each mailer followed the same fundamental formula of contrasting the positions of the Republican and Democratic candidates on three key issues (e. g. , women’s health/access to abortion, water quality, education/public schools, the environment, public protection and taxes). The appointments have been for each one.
To give an example, data on Senate District Nine candidates’ perspectives on women’s fitness indicated that Democrat Padma Kuppa “opposes efforts to ban abortion and will enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade into state law,” while her Republican rival, Michael Webber, “has the support of a far-right anti-abortion organization and opposes women’s access, even if they are victims of rape or incest. He even voted to limit access to contraception. “
The 69 Main Street Sentinel subpoenas, all similar to Democratic candidates, were distributed in 38 Forward Action letters. Of them, 57 were discovered in 26 emails covering the House elections in six districts. The other 12 gave the impression in 12 letters covering the Senate elections in 3 districts.
This, of course, means that some applicants’ profiles have repeatedly cited the Main Street Sentinel. On the higher end of the scale, the five letters covering the race for House District 83 between John Fitzgerald (R) and Lisa DeKryger (R) were based on the Main Street Sentinel to all 3 statements about Fitzgerald’s policy positions.
Another curiosity is that the URLs of the Sentinel articles followed the same “[Home and District]” naming conference used for the PDF files of Forward Majority emails. For example, where the Forward Majority letters selling Fitzgerald were MI-M01-HD83. pdf, MI-M02-HD83. pdf, etc. , the URLs of the articles cited as evidence of their perspectives on key issues were:
We don’t know if Forward Majority Action has any connection to the Main Street Sentinel. The organization did not respond to requests for comment.
What we do know is that they were incredibly willing to take advantage of that as part of a targeted influence operation. The fact that this so-called news site has been continually cited in physical mail to increase and spread narratives through an expensive virtual advertising crusade shows some of the other undeniable application of this electoral tactic.
We also know that Main Street Sentinel is remarkably consistent with a strategy of leveraging virtual platforms for localized data warfare that Forward Majority laid out in a “Blueprint for Power” in January 2022.
Arguing that the Democrats’ superseded virtual playbook had given Republicans carte blanche to influence persuasive audiences by addressing them with localized political narratives, this document had many echoes of the notorious memo Tara McGowan sent to Acronym stakeholders outlining her vision for what the Courier Newsroom would become. .
The timing of the “three accelerators for building power” defined in the Forward Majority document, titled “Long-Term Storytelling and Branding with Key Audiences,” described what Democrats perceive:
A replaced playbook is no match for right-wing propaganda: Array. . . [T]he vast majority of the ordinary electorate spends only a few moments choosing their vote, a resolution governed by existing party narratives, increasingly influenced on the right. Latest generation media, disinformation and propaganda.
What follows is a vision of a solution, which boils down primarily to a strategy of fighting fire with fire:
Opportunity to break through by creating a local narrative and logo: To counter this, especially in the Republican trio states, Democrats want a local communications operation that is just as ruthless, but more astute and opportunistic. in the electorate – and long before the election season begins – we will need to help reshape local political narratives in our target constituencies. This includes an accountability statement that highlights incumbent Republicans’ record on unpopular legislation, strengthens the local Democratic logo, undermines the GOP logo, and highlights the impact of state legislatures on people’s lives. Democrats have focused too much on targeting and not on content. This means that we know who to talk to, but much less how to speak as best as possible to move emotions and achieve electoral objectives. What is needed are next-generation approaches to content research, testing and delivery, leveraging earned and paid media. In particular, this local logo culture and strategic communication has the potential to not only influence local elections, but also drive winning narratives and shift partisan affinities from below that can influence the broader electorate.
The Main Street Sentinel probably looked like a disposable Courier-lite. It focused on a competitive indecisive state; had a strategy to identify a compelling constituency and spent significant amounts of cash to microtarget them on Facebook ads; He stressed the importance of addressing the electorate with a small number of localized political narratives.
Speaking after Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, McGowan called local partisan news unparalleled in its ability to help Courier achieve its overtly political goals. In particular, McGowan hinted that Courier’s beloved network may simply be some kind of short-term political endeavor:
In fact, I wouldn’t have invested in a local news network if there were models that were starting to gain traction and succeed in covering that territory and countering misinformation at the local level. I’m just not the one willing to play with my thumbs and meanwhile, we’ll see democracy die if there are short-term responses that can be implemented on a giant scale.
In the same interview, McGowan described the expensive but effective quest to “commercialize. . . news content for audiences who are in those narrative deserts” and “distribute it to the news sources and platforms where they spend their time. “
Although the seven-figure ad puts it on the more expensive end of the spectrum, one could simply argue that the Main Street Sentinel is a manifestation of McGowan’s reasoning taken to its logical conclusion.
Active for less than 12 months, it is a short-term solution. Having generated at least 108 million impressions, it was rolled out on a giant scale. Using Facebook’s targeting features to hit a pre-identified segment of a compelling electorate in an express location, these were marketing stories aimed at micro-targeted audiences on the platforms where they spend their time. And even though its total spending of about $1. 4 million is closer to the amount Acronym would have spent each week in the run-up to the 2020 election, it is still, to use McGowan’s words in the same interview , “incredibly expensive. ”
The case of Main Street Sentinel shows how platforms allow deep-pocketed political influence operations to pollute geospecific data streams on a giant scale. In this case, a new page with the logo is capable of generating more than a million impressions in a specific state within 4 days of its first publication. At the time of its dissolution, after achieving its political goal, it had accumulated at least 108 million impressions in less than 12 months.
These figures only explain why this trend shows no signs of slowing down.
Earlier this year, studies conducted through Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub showed that teams with ties to Russia had used generative AI to whitewash pro-Kremlin narratives on local fake news sites with names like DC Weekly, Miami Chronicle and New York News Daily.
The emergence of such sites suggests that the appetite to pollute the virtual news ecosystem with political narratives disguised as news remains strong.
The case of the Main Street Sentinel only highlights the enduring appeal of this style or the blatant hypocrisy of teams who claim to be driven by a commitment to strengthening democracy while undermining journalism and degrading the news ecosystem. It also highlights the lack of interest in the platform. corporations to do something about it.
The gap between the ease with which political actors can flood the ecosystem and the ease with which citizens bombarded with it (and researchers interested in examining it) can identify where it comes from. Of course, it all comes down to money.
While we can get an idea of how many times the Sentinel managed to infiltrate Michiganders’ Facebook feeds, we can’t know if they were successful in convincing voters.
But we can be sure that if their operators are successful, they will have something similar in the works before November 5th. Like countless contemporaries from all political sides.
Whether your platform of choice is Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, or even print, we’ll be watching.
The Tow Center maintains a list of partisan and politically supported news sites here. It includes major points from individual networks, copies of physical mail that was sent, and existing studies on individual networks. If you receive physical mail, have examples of similar networks operating in your area, or would like access to more granular data, please contact us here.
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, a partner of CJR, is a think tank that explores how generation is transforming journalism, its practice, and its admission, while seeking new tactics for judging trustworthiness, standards, and credibility. of online information.
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