Stealth conservative social media messaging aims to influence 2022 election

A conservative nonprofit called the American Culture Project is creating Facebook groups that don't disclose their bias in a bid to bypass the news media in informing and influencing swing-state voters. 

It's "part of a novel strategy by a little-known, Republican-aligned group to make today’s GOP more palatable to moderate voters ahead of the 2022 midterms by reshaping the 'cultural narrative' on hot-button issues," Isaac Stanley-Becker reports for The Washington Post. "That goal, laid out in a private fundraising appeal sent last month to a Republican donor and reviewed by The Washington Post, relies on building new online communities that can be tapped at election time, with a focus on winning back Congress in 2022."

The appeal argues that liberals have more influence in cultural institutions, which gives them more access to swing voters, while conservatives are more isolated in social-media "echo chambers." The group aims to target swing voters by collecting data from petitions and other online tools, Stanley-Becker reports. 

"While data collection and digital ad targeting have become commonplace in political campaigns, what’s unusual about the American Culture Project, experts said, is how it presents its aims as news dissemination and community building. It touts transparency and civic engagement using an online network whose donors remain private — part of a bid to shape public opinion as local news outlets crater and social networks replace traditional forums for political deliberation," Stanley-Becker reports. "The American Culture Project is set up as a social welfare organization exempt from disclosing its donors or paying federal income taxes but, in exchange, barred from making politics its primary focus. The project is led by an Illinois-based conservative activist, John Tillman, who also oversees a libertarian think tank and a news foundation that recently received grant money to highlight opposition to public health restrictions," Stanley-Becker reports. Tillman wrote in an email to the Post that the group's objectives are "issue education and advocacy (not electioneering)" and that he wants to reach Americans "who can no longer rely on traditional media to become fully informed on a diversity of views on the issues of the day."

Noah Bookbinder, president of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Stanley-Becker that the American Culture Project's failure to disclose its donors "puts the lie to the public presentation of these nonprofits as public welfare organizations that might happen to do a little politics ... It shows the system is being abused in ways we knew were happening but you usually don’t see quite so blatantly."