 I'm sure you have already read many articles about that a lot of important elections throughout the year around the globe and of course each and every of these elections is characterized with some concerns also about how the information space is evolving around such elections how our campaigns unfolding a lot of campaigning these days happens obviously online a lot of information we get happens online our opinions are shaped for many of us online and we are still concerned of course that in this space there is a lot of manipulation this information etc. and with this in mind the three organizations hosting this event have written up a policy brief of which you will hear in a moment and we are happy to launch this brief here together with you and the three of us are the forum on information and democracy international idea and democracy reporting international I represent the latter organization my name is Michael Meyer Zender I work as the executive director of democracy reporting international and I look forward to an interesting debate with voices from around the world involved in elections involved in election support and in many other roles and now to go quickly through our program I'm very happy to invite Laura Chinjilla the former president of Costa Rica to give us her view as a participant if you want of electoral processes and how she looks into the sole question of information integrity and how we can safeguard it to protect our democracies in this intensive year of elections please over to you Laura Chinjilla thank you very much Michael and thank you kindly for the invitation to participate in this webinar which is a very timely activity considering as you said Michael the many elections that will take place during this year I want to take this opportunity to highlight two main features that underpin the valuable policy framework launch today to protect democratic elections by sub guarding information integrity the first feature is its actionable fit nature and the second one is its hopeful approach in terms of the first feature the actionable nature this policy framework not only provides valuable guidance to platform forms and states but also sends a powerful message encouraging them to avoid in action while there are no easy truths when it comes to the benefits and prayers that digital technologies entail for democratic elections and institutions by now we know that this information misinformation malinformation negatively affect the integrity freedom and transparency of electoral processes and we must do something about it as a former candidate and president who governed during the era of social media and as head of some of the most challenging electoral observation missions in the western hemisphere including the United States in 2016 and Brazil in 2018 I can testify of the risk that new digital technologies pose to elections and the numerous regulatory and capacity building gaps that persist even in well established democracies for some time academics policymakers international organizations and civil society grappled with the challenge of say garden elections from the births of social of technological developments and the widespread use of social platform by citizens however I most recognize and we must recognize that significant improvements have been made in the past I will say five to six years this progress is evident through the implementation of regulations protocols and capacity building initiatives facilitated by national partnerships among state bodies platforms and NGOs this kind of collaborative effort aim to protect the integrity of elections against weaponized disinformation and hate speech additional electoral management bodies have enhanced their expertise in cybersecurity and fact checking practices in 2022 during the brasil's elections for example I had the opportunity to inquire with electoral justices about their perspective in comparison to the elections held for years before they unanimously expressed that they were much better prepared this time to address disinformation and hate speech so the policy framework we are presenting is informed by these experiences and best practices as well as a series of international initiatives that have collectively established a robust body of recommendations and standards on this subject which is impossible to ignore while numerous challenges lie ahead and ongoing policies recommendations and standards will require constant review both states and platforms can no longer justify inaction by sitting the absence of frameworks to guide their actions the significance of the war carried out by organizations and initiatives such as international idea the forum on information and democracy and the democracy reporting international lies not only in rejecting the notion that there is nothing to be done to enhance democracy but also in reshaping its epistemic boundaries to faster inclusivity adaptability and trust this brings me to the second feature of the policy framework that I want to highlight its helpful approach by involving state actors and digital media platforms and placing them at the center of action these recommendations emphasize the civic responsibility that civil servants and platforms hold in not only protecting but also transforming democracy the implementation of these recommendations is in itself a democratic exercise democracy is not only a goal but also an ongoing process in this sense the utilization of the framework is also likely to generate a new set of positive synergies and interactions that could further enrich democracy in the words of the spanish philosopher daniel in a guarantee democracies are the most intelligent political systems but they also require the development of more collective intelligence if they want to maintain their standards and legitimacy so to finalize I strongly believe that our primary mission ahead is cultural and educational preserving the integrity of electoral systems and democratic processes require implementing measures aimed at reinforcing basic notions of seniority reevaluating democracy and its institutions within society and promoting values of tolerance coexistence and dialogue to counter current tendencies towards polarization these frameworks my friends does that it educates and it guides but more importantly it demonstrates that the task of protecting and perfected our democratic systems are not mutually exclusive on the contrary they go hand in hand thank you thank you so much for your very powerful words and a great introduction to what we are discussing today I relate very much to what you say about the hopeful approach we have to be careful not always to give the impression that everything is good and bad and getting worse I agree with you also that in the last years a lot has happened I would argue that five years ago we couldn't have written even such a policy brief because there was just too little knowledge about the issues around too little evidence to point that and all these things we have now and as you also have said we have regulation around the world and a lot of very active people who are trying to make sense of it and to bring accountability into the space of online information systems it's time I think to have a brief look now at this policy brief what have we what are we actually recommending and I'm happy to pass the floor to my colleague Michael from the forum on information and democracy and he will talk us through some of the key messages that we included in that paper Michael over to you thank you the other Michael and it's a real honor to follow former president today as we shift continents to to where I'm at here in Asia in Southeast Asia in Bangkok and thank you to everyone who's joined in and those who are watching live on international ideas a youtube channel as we launch this policy brief a quick background the forum on information and democracy is the implementing entity of an international non-binding governance process under the partnership on information and democracy which currently has 52 state signatories we work on developing independent policy recommendations for states or platforms for civil society to ensure that technology works for citizens through advancing information integrity and realizing our right to reliable information and I'm really grateful for the collaboration with international idea and democracy reporting international as we worked on this policy brief we drew from a lot of the work our three organizations have done over the years from our side we drew heavily from some policy work where we brought together leading civic academic and technical experts from around the world across a range of sectors to develop policy recommendations around information integrity and they've come from really diverse sectors from tech data science psychology law journalism media studies political science human rights engineering it goes on because technology intersects with so many facets facets of our lives our new series of policy briefs aims to present these recommendations to states and platforms in sectorally focused fight sized ways to make advocacy and policy making easier so this brief presents top 10 recommendations to platforms and another top 10 to states in specific topical areas that are particularly relevant to the two groups of stakeholders so for platforms we've identified four key areas in which private companies operating platforms can immediately take action to ensure that the billions of citizens going to the polls this year can be assured that they have access to reliable information and that their votes count credibly through the ballot box the first area is around ensuring trustworthiness and information plurality during elections these three recommendations presented in this section encourage platforms to take tangible aggressive action to ensure that authoritative information from independent electoral management bodies sometimes known as election commissions and we'll hear from Janet Love from South Africa later on and I'll and public public interest journalism that these information from these sources are promoted an excellent mechanism to ensure this is leveraged is through the journalism trust initiative this is an effort by reporters without borders that draws on an international standards framework to ensure credibility so I encourage you to to look up JTI we also recommend early substantive collaboration with independent election management bodies in preparation for the elections this is not a checkbox exercise or a nice to have exercise but one that requires investing time effort and commitment to integrate critical feedback from EMBs into platform policies and enforcement we also recommend that the recommender algorithms absolutely do not impede access to accurate electoral information or diverse points of view this means better work at improving classifiers strengthening content policies for hate speech and harmful content this also means undertaking systematic risk assessments of recommender algorithms the second area for platforms is to diminish the reach and effect of mis and disinformation here are three recommend recommendations focused generally on implementing internal viral circuit breakers to temporarily prevent the algorithmic amplification of content once it reaches a certain threshold they they should also integrate user feedback with a timely review and feedback group and clearly label political advertising and ban the use of sensitive personal data to target ads for political purposes another area for platforms is around strengthening the accountability of influential actors this means that special regimes should be put in place for journalists influencers and highly influential actors in the electoral process with fast track appeal mechanisms after the full and transparent application of impartial content policies on content have been created and executed lastly for platforms we look at enabling independent scrutiny of efforts this requires greater levels of transparency from platforms across a range of areas including policies regular reporting on recommender operations and content moderation systems we also recommend that platforms demonstrate much more transparency around how they moderate requests from governments and importantly also from civil society including the all-important turnaround time data must be made available to allow scrutiny by independent researchers and regulators trust but verify so we recommend significant transparent efforts around ad spending on political content limiting advertising in line with political finance regulations in each country and ad libraries that are available to everyone to search and see what kinds of political ads electoral contestants are putting forward so those are the recommendations for platforms briefly now I'll talk about the bucket of recommendations for states this is in three broad areas the first is ensuring the reliability and plurality of information this means first and foremost honoring international and domestic human arts obligations it also means advancing policies that enhance the plurality and sustainability of journalism especially local journalism and journalism that serves historically marginalized groups this also means fairly compensating journalism for content shared through platforms and states should provide for public service media that are fully independent we also recommend to states adopting open standards for content authenticity and providence this is particularly relevant in the era of AI both online and offline states can take measures to ensure the political representation and participation of historically marginalized groups this includes women gender and sexual minorities people with disabilities indigenous people and so forth to ensure that there is a plurality of voice and views and participation the second area for states is around diminishing the reach and effects of disinformation states must hold platforms accountable and ensure sanctions and moderation decisions align with international human rights norms and standards this includes transparency obligations on platforms again so we can trust and verify we also recommend states require platforms to provide easy-to-use appeal mechanisms with expeditious adjudication encourage platforms in their obligation to engage and collaborate with independent electoral management bodies as i discussed a few minutes ago and lastly for states we offer recommendations to enable independent scrutiny of efforts this includes being open and transparent around content restrictions and personal data requests made by governments the reasons for these requests should also be made public together with responses from the platforms including any agreements made with platforms on content restrictions and we also encourage greater interagency cooperation within governments and independent administrative authorities mandated to support citizens who use platforms oversee the platforms serve as research hubs and advise on important public policies so all of these recommendations which you can read in in the policy brief that we were publishing at this moment all these recommendations to states and platforms are based on years of work by the forum and our partners international idea and democracy reporting international i think they represent first in class recommendations that can ensure the integrity of our information space especially at elections and to help realize our collective right to reliable information so to everyone who's who's dialing in from i've seen libya jordan london posterica and elsewhere in the world have a look at the brief and help us move the policy needle in the right direction so that technology can serve citizens thank you all for joining and i very much look forward to the discussion that follows thank you very much michael for the very clear overview of what we have recommended and we now move to the discussion panel to go a bit deeper into what we have been recommending here and how we see the situation and i'm happy to see many people joining us from many countries around the world this is a truly global discussion as has to be all these services are global and the challenges are not always identical but often quite similar so it's very good that we discuss this from very different perspectives and i'm very happy to now invite our debate panel and i would like to say to those who watch us feel free to put your questions or your comments or suggestions in the chat i will try to pick them up and i have also encouraged members of the panel to discuss which is with each other so we try to have a bit of a lively discussion here in the next hour about these points and now let me introduce to you who we have on the panel we have first of all the practitioner of elections commissioner janet love from south from the south african election commission and she has worked actually quite a lot already on this that subjects and has a lot of real world experience of the information space in an election environment and our second panelist will be renata nicolai she is a deputy director of the directorate general connect dg connect of the european union and many of you will know that the eu is one of the most important regulators in that space and has been for many years and very intensive dialogue with all the platforms and by now has hard law adopted which which binds platforms to a certain conduct and some of the things mentioned here audits or risk assessment these are things that the eu and the european commission has been dealing with for many years and has put into law and last but not least old friend of ours professor marco aurelio rüdiger is the director of the school of communication media and information at the funder sound jitulio vargas from brazil ben bindo marco very nice to see you here as well and we thought we kick off with you um marco if you could uh give us a little bit of a scene setter we are discussing the threats to election integrity i would say maybe for a decade already now and um we would be interested to hear from you do you share the sense um that was mentioned before also that there is significant improvement are there less problems these days um and also what is your insight as an academic into the impact of things like hate speech or disinformation on electoral behavior i think that's that's the question we often ask ourselves we can see many problems online but can we say they really impact an election and election behavior so i would like you to comment a little bit on these questions professor rüdiger now i see there's no camera and now i wonder if the connection is stable here marco can you hear us yes please you are invited to share your insights on on how did could you hear my question marco can repeat the question please yeah so i was interested if you can set the scene a little bit fast and tell us whether you in your research have seen that there has been serious improvement over the last years because we have many more discussions we have more regulation platforms have done more things they have changed their their own standards often so do you see a changed field or is the fundamental challenge still the same and can you say something about the impact actually on electoral behavior of social media discourse i i think marco thanks for the question and thank everyone for the invitation and good morning for everyone in my opinion i think the situation is worst because i think the of course platforms are not very concerned about the public goods i mean it's really concerned about markets and their market share and their position the markets and as you know also the platforms have a kind of a strategic position in a world where china is challenging the ai and and other innovative technologies so it's quite complicated to press them to to to change the way they behave and their policies although i think this is totally fundamental thing to do and on this regard i think europe and south america and latin america would say should should really work together on that but anyway i think the situation is worse because if you do any kind of research about the images and information that you can spread using artificial intelligence right intelligence right now it's extremely difficult to to notice to understand what is fake or what is not fake and i think the platforms could help a lot to curb to curb this but the point is that they are not interested because it's in the end they are business they want to to seek profit and i don't think there's any problem about that but they had the platform has a kind of a public commitment should should have a public commitment because in the end democracies around the world have been really harmed about what's going on so i think the situation is difficult here in brazil we're we're trying to go ahead with regulations which is not easy at all but i think that that's it's it's a process we have to work really hard on it we fight for this right now i think democracy is really being challenged as we understand for example if you have a discussion in a group for example in x or other discussion groups in the web eventually we're discussing with a machine not a person you just don't know and you have images that are produced you can say you can't really know if it's it's we or not and i think the fact-checking institutions are not quite able to to to to work on it and and and and say what is true or is not as well so it's a it's it's it's a time of of distress and i think distress is something which is not only harmful but it's corrosive for democracies in the end all democratic process is based on a minimal trust that you have and so i think it's worst but not pessimistic although i'm saying it's quite pessimistic can sound quite pessimistic but i think that we can find new ways to work on it for example we can also create machines and artificial intelligence uh uh uh tactics to to help us to to analyze information that i spread around so i think there's a lot we can do and if you think we should do like that together and all this regard i think europe and and latin america should be more close on on on design common policies that's my my opinion thank you very much professor ridiga so that was uh maybe a more skeptical view you see more problems perhaps for now than solutions of course we know the situation in brazil is also very challenging although i have to say i've i'm often impressed also by the level of the debate in brazil by the engagement of the election tribunal in all these questions but yeah it it does certainly remain difficult and the struggle and i will go backwards uh our panelists and um asked renata nicolai so you work primarily in the space of the e you where there is a hard regulation now and where we have soft law for a while cult of conduct etc and would you still share the the skepticism of professor ridiga or would you say you feel or you can point at tangible improvement in the way that platforms organize our services in the e you space i would highlight one critical moment before the slavic elections last year in during the silence period there was a deep fake audio file shared um by many social media and many times and it was fake and it didn't make one party of the election look good so i think we all agree that's that's something we do not want to see in our election so do you feel the regulation is not good enough or it just takes time to apply itself over to you it's nicolai thank you very much michael for having me i hope you can hear me see me all good um so i uh first of all it's great to be part of this global debate and to bring in the european perspective and indeed i think um you know filling also uh following on what what we heard from medical from the brazilian experience i would say my perspective is a little more positive because i would i mean i'm really in the machine room of the day-to-day enforcement of the new kind of you know hard law that we have adopted in europe the digital services act to hold platforms more accountable for what's happening um on their kind of you know services and this of course came about after many years of self regulatory work very much kind of building on what you have also tried to capture with your policy brief um what we have captured with the code of practice against disinformation that we had already in place ahead of the last elections in 2019 when i compare the situation ahead of the last european parliament elections 2019 to the upcoming european parliament elections now in 2024 i would say on the positive side that the scene has really totally changed we just had the world economic forum uh quoting as the second important threat for this year disinformation and election integrity we would not have had that debate five years ago the same goes for the the political debate um at the european level we had a special committee in the european parliament in this mandate dealing with disinformation um we have new law the digital services act we have european leaders talking about that we are out at every kind of national elections to kind of look you mentioned the slovak elections to look at you know ex ante what are we observing and exposed what are the lessons to draw on that uh is the situation perfect after we have the hard law in place certainly not um i think we are seeing developments um the rules um increase a lot building also on what we heard from the presentation of your policy brief they increase the transparency obligations they um increase the empowerment of the users they um establish a sanction systems if the platforms do not kind of act they establish a risk assessment systems that is publicly available they give an obligation to share data with um you know uh researchers so all that will over time allow us to really deal with the systemic risks caused by the platforms in a more substantial way what we also observe just because of the fact of the new rules is that the platforms have already changed some of their behaviors there's not a single platform that has not kind of looked at in terms of references increased the transparency uh already changed some of the profiling features uh done a lot on minor protection so you know i think we are at least on a path uh we will in the european context pay a lot of attention to the upcoming elections so we will use the kind of the the many kind of tools that we now have starting with the digital services act use it to its fullest potential we will ask the platforms to give a special attention to their risk assessment with regard to the upcoming elections we will of course also continue to build on the code of practice and i want to thank here also democracy um a reporting international for their active partnership in the code thank you very much michael for your continued work on that because i think that has created an ecosystem of civil society academics platforms regulators that you know has allowed us to really look at this in a whole society approach and that that's what we need we need to be ready on the analytical side to kind of detect uh disinformation campaign and especially here from the european perspective with the war um at our borders regarding ukraine and russia we know that there are you know malicious international actors that are using also upcoming elections for uh launched kind of you know disinformation uh campaigns in a way of modern warfare so we have to be good at the analytical side we need to make the best use of our roles with regard to platforms and we need to continue to have the dialogue with the citizens so that they are aware and that they make their right choices and it's always important to kind of you know not overshoot to really protect the freedom of speech especially if you have hard law in it so i want to stress as the final point from my side the digital services act is not a content moderation act it's the kind of act that kind of deals with the systemic risks and that puts a frame uh a context around the actions of platforms and holds them accountable in that regard and i think that's an important point also to make because to kind of order certain opinions would really be the wrong approach in this debate thank you thank you very much Renate i know it's a very rich tableau the regulation of the EU i think this was a excellent overview for everybody of of the various streams um on which you are working and we we are also working as you mentioned and uh let's shift the focus now to one specific country in one specific role genet love from the south african election commission so you are in the middle of this you have to deal with this as an election commissioner can you give us a sense on a scale from one to ten if one is terrible and ten is wonderful how you see the information environment of election in south africa and how you see the dynamics over the last years has it become worse and what have you been able to do as an election management body about that um i'm not sure about giving a a scale of one to ten because it would be giving different scales for different components but i would like to maybe pick up on what um with marco and renata said first of all i want to agree with renata um well with marco firstly that things are harder i would not be um looking at them from quite the same perspective i think what has made them harder is in particular the um fact that we have generative ai at very few uh members of the enforcement apparatus if i can put it that way not just uh within um our context in this country and within our continent but i think even as far as as the european and and the us dimensions there is an insufficient knowledge base with those who enforce um uh issues to do with the digital platforms insofar as um the pervasive nature of generative ai um i think so so for me that is what has made things a hell of a lot more difficult um uh in the in the in the growing space so i do think it has become harder i think there are some gains and so i would completely agree with um renata at the moment we have a situation where the platform is generally within the continent for understanding but if they are going to perform um any any um actions there needs to be a recognition of responsibilities in terms of setting up systems before elections and so on i think said that i think the difficulty is that the gains that potentially are being made and can be made through the digital services act in the eu are gains that really um i would i would not be so um unambiguously positive about mainly because there is a universality around the um uh digital space and unfortunately the um the the european legislation although it um has a has a responsibility obviously to europe itself it does not raise any kind of expectation for the the um engagement with the platforms to be an engagement that holds the platforms responsible to adhere to the highest standards not only within europe but outside europe and i think that that's a particularly difficult issue because there's nothing to stop somebody who is in the heart of uh you know Stockholm or anywhere else in europe to be um manipulating information which through various VPNs and so on is not going to be traced to where they're coming from but that can have a very direct impact on elections within this country within south africa or anywhere on the continent so i think that it is um a difficulty i also um believe that the the fact of the work that is being done and the policy document in itself reflects a very positive development if you look at the many standards that um have existed uh from the the very um good work that has been done under the auspices of UNESCO for example there really has been an insufficient focus on election management bodies now i know that that is because there can be huge variation um across the across the globe about what the structure of those emp the electoral management bodies looks like but i think that there is a really important issue to ensure that platforms are obliged not only to engage with various other state actors but in particular to engage with the electoral management structure whatever it happens to be in the different countries because unless we have um a proper understanding that develops between the body and the platforms we are not going to see ourselves having a proper understanding of the heightened period um of of threat and danger and risk of an electoral cycle as all um uh electoral practitioners know electoral cycle is ongoing and um so so it's important for there to be a common understanding of that risk and an example of how this common understanding really needs to be established between those bodies is that if we look at um for example the issue of um political advertising and political party funding and so on the reality is that we all know that the paid for advertising is not the only way in which platforms are used for party messaging and there needs to be some kind of collaborative effort and understanding at what is possible in a manner that does not um negate um or undermine the very important um issue about um freedom of speech and and so on freedom of information but I think um while I think this policy will be absolutely critical in um in doing what president Chinchilla said in her opening remarks it become itself generative to get us to understand and improve and so on I think that possibly is um a gap um on two on two areas as I see it at the moment the first is that I think that um it's not only important to protect um uh journalists and and the media space in general but I think a lot more has to be done to foster the professionalization and the retention of journalists within the media industry because there is a juniorization of journalism in in many spaces and I think that investigative journalism and and and objective journalism is is something that really is vital in terms of um of the space that we're moving into I think the second thing is that we've got to ensure that there is a widespread understanding um involving relevant uh electoral stakeholders and other people of the of the digital platforms generative AI tools that can be positively used if there is not an understanding of how they operate and how they can be positively used there will be far fewer people able to understand how we can prevent their abuse how we can expose their abuse and so on so I think this is a key area a key gap which we really need to try and bridge let me let me stop there yeah great thank you thank you very much um uh Janet for these insights and I see we also have many interesting questions coming in and I would like to link maybe to the question raised here by Felix Kafuma who asks how does this regulation actually work in authoritarian regimes or in hybrid regimes he refers to the question of AI but I think we can expand the question a little bit generally to this regulation and I would go back to you Renate about the issue of the role of European regulation in the rest of the world so generally EU is quite proud and says we are leading the world with this regulation we are setting standards but there is a question of course what could be the effects in um other places of that kind of regulation is it easily copied or is it could it easily be copied in a way that is abusive so the digital services sect of course relies on the idea that we have independent judiciaries in all countries where it's being applied so that is not a given not even all EU member states and not in the rest of the world how do you see that um Renate that that relationship to the rest of the world yeah thank you very much I there is there's some talk sometimes um when when talking about the regulatory power of the EU about so-called Brussels effect that sometimes when we are good at kind of coming um because we have a cumbersome process before when when kind of adopting regulation now we have kind of you know 27 member states to agree with we have a european parliament to agree with so it's already quite um uh normally quite uh intense and um you know uh important political process in this legislative work and we had a good example for instance with our privacy regulation that we did a couple of years ago at the general data protection regulation where we were also um quite pioneering in uh updating our privacy rules which had the effect in reality for I think more than 100 countries in the world who are also thinking of you know updating their privacy rules to the digital age when they were looking around for inspiration a lot of them actually looked at the european kind of you know context so there has been a lot of kind of engagement with third country partners for instance in that field uh what I'm observing uh in the context of our platform rules in particular the digital services act is a similar kind of you know uh element we cannot do extraterritorial rules that should never be the case we can only regulate for our space and that's the european union but uh you know for instance uh with a country like brazil we are in very close kind of you know discussion for instance on you know aligning our regulatory kind of approach also with many partners in asia we are having discussions about um a convergence on our digital transition and the approach we are taking um the matter of fact is that indeed I think I would I would argue in the world we are seeing systemic rivalry at the moment when you look at the digital transition and how it's being used uh autocracies kind of use it rather um you know to supervise populations and to order uh you know a certain opinion whereas liberal democracies kind of you know use it of course you know to ensure um you know an open space for debate but addressing um with regard to freedom of speech of course you know the harm and the illegality of content that it might arise so um what I what we can offer from the brussels from the european perspective is indeed to be a partner we are also of course we were very much engaged in the unesco work uh that has been mentioned by by janet um you know on on their convention we are also involved in the un work that is also working a little bit on kind of you know harmful content moderation um and what could be done to bring accountability into the platforms um and the broader you go of course the more complex it becomes um to kind of you know agree on this but that doesn't mean that we should shy away from the effort um so we try to kind of showcase that these um rules have an impact in the european union i think that's our primary task to showcase that we are not good at coming up with ideas for the digital transition but that we can actually adopt these kind of rules that's what we have proven what the digital services act but that these rules have an impact and the test case when it comes to you know a protecting electoral integrity will be uh the european parliament election later this year we are really hope that we will be able and we are working on ideas to maybe also develop it's not yet fully decided but we are we are considering kind of using the toolbox that we have in the digital services act which offers for instance also guidelines that we come up with specific guidelines um you know based on the on the digital services act to really showcase and guide platforms even more to kind of you know make sure they demonetize they kind of the debunk they kind of give everything that is also in your policy brief make sure there's transparency on who is behind an ad um that you know we have possibilities to kind of you know um get authoritative sources uh up that there is kind of good cooperation with qualified journalism and all these kind of things so so we are definitely clear about our role as kind of not only pioneer in setting rules but also showcasing just these rules matter yeah thank you very much um on this I heard an interesting point made by a platform who said well the EU regulation is now so stringent that we invest a lot of our resources for election integrity in EU elections even though often there are small countries and we don't actually have big concerns but we have big regulation there and that diverts our attention to which I said that I think they should give equal attention to each elections everywhere so I don't think it's a good way to say because we do it in the EU we can do it elsewhere then probably more resources need to be dedicated to the task but there is um I think a little bit the suspicion around the world that EU regulation puts a lot of um what makes the EU very dominant in this debate when maybe the in other countries there are lots of challenges and different contexts I want to weave in a question um from Alice Colombi she's very involved in the um election observation and bringing um the monitoring of social media and the online space into the work of election observers so this is something we are also very interested in it's a little bit as it has been with election management bodies that at the first stages this whole election ecosystem wasn't very involved in these debates that took place in in different circles and over the last years I think we have managed to bring them closer and to integrate the concern for the online debate and into traditional election observation and I will have a question to to Janet also on this but before that question to Marco all this has to do of course with the ability to have data access we cannot monitor anything if the platforms don't give us this access to data and um I would like you because your institute is quite involved in that question also to tell us how that is going according to you do you think the data access at least is quite satisfactory at the moment and what would be your top recommendations for improvement there I'm becoming very afraid because in the end I guess I I'm I sound very pessimistic comparing to the others here and I really don't think so I think you can really do a lot of improvements so I'm cautiously optimistic I would say and my point is that anyway I mean getting data is becoming harder you know for example X policies the former Twitter just changed the rules so it's harder to get data from from Twitter for example and from other platforms becoming harder as well so it's quite complicated on this ground and eventually this should be under the rule of law as well so they should provide the data that it cannot eventually not updated data but data for for research with a time lag of three months for example should be mandatory eventually and so researchers and and institutions can search the data and try to understand what's going on and the level of the kind of efficiency of the policies that platforms are performing trying to curb the any kind of disinformation that would be very helpful in my opinion and so this should be considered for regulatory purposes as well but I think that we have to also consider and that's one point that in a certain sense I'd like to point out to my colleagues here and in Europe and well I think that we should consider time as a key issue a key key factor on this process so if you consider the harm that the spread of the disinformation can can make in the end and how how how much time do we have to to to use to understand what's going on during the democratic and electoral process for example it's quite problematic in my opinion and usually for example here the court the electoral court was quite I would say efficient to bring together universities research centers and also the platforms for to the table and try and together work in our last presidential election to to to manage and filter a lot of disinformation so they were effective and even I would say that they use some some parameters from Europe to justify some the freedom of speech these are these some some kind of filters on disinformation so it was fine this was really fine and I think was okay but I already point out to the in different forums that this capacity that we had in the past it's not it doesn't exist anymore because you can create and spread disinformation so sophisticated and in a such a short time that that the procedures from the government to try to to to look for it and try to to to find where it comes and punish disinformation punish the hate speech and so forth it's it's the harm is done when the when the process just finished so so so I think that we have to improve our institutions in a way that use AI as well to to help us to to understand this process to to try to to avoid huge damage in an electoral process for example which takes I would say two months for in a campaign or three months or four months and and and we know how the spread of disinformation can harm the democratic process after it's finished so if we're going to punish someone many months after that it's very complicated someone the eventually someone who uses this information a lot it's already in power so it's complicated to challenge this decision from from from people that elect him so anyway it's it I think we have to a lot of work to do to to protect democracy right now and I think it's very important that that all right for example in Brazil I think we we are the fifth major user of platforms social platforms social media in the world I guess and for example I think we it's quite important that Brazil works closely to Europe's trying to have some common ground in terms of regulation so forth but still a lot has to be has to be done in my opinion so so we need to bring together to the to the table more often and be more aware about the time frame that we have to curb this information right now with the new technologies I think it's really harmful for democracy yeah thank you very much I think what you said somehow reflects back on what we discussed before about EU regulation also so if we look at X and EU will at some point start a proceeding against X and force them to be more diligent in their moderation I think the world will be probably benefiting from that beyond Europe but we can also see for example in the question of data access that maybe in countries outside the EU data access will be a little bit more bureaucratic than it has been and platforms can say well that's the EU standard so this can't be wrong if that's what we do in the EU and they ask for that then there's no reason to complain so it is a complex field this this impact I would go back to you Janet on two questions the one raised about the election observers so the question is always what evidence do we actually have to say that what's the problem online is it more than just a guess or a feeling and so have election observers been useful to you being at South African groups or regional observers or international observers who looked into that space and brought their evidence to them and then a related question for me is as an election commissioner do you have particular concerns about how election information so I'm not talking about the political campaign but just the hardcore election of information when do polling station open where do you register etc how they are spread or maybe manipulated online what's your experience there okay so first of all I think with regard to let me start with the second question with regard to actual election management processes I think in this regard we have established a good cooperation with the platforms I exclude X because we had established a very good cooperation with Twitter on its rebirth into X I think that the communication is negligible maybe I would not even really recognize it as much communication but we have established with other platforms a good communication so that when there are you know pieces of information about polling stations having moved or closing at different times and so on which is what we have had we are able to report those and ensure not only that we use the same social media to put out the correct information but we do get the platforms to take action and so I think that having the cooperation and having the discussions as I had said before with the platforms on an ongoing basis but particularly when the risk times are higher is absolutely critical difficulty I think is really around the transparency of the platforms to engage firstly in fairly open discussions about how the assumptions on some of their algorithmic processes secondly we have not been able to obtain good statistical information about actions that they have carried out it doesn't necessarily have to in the form of take turns it can be various other forms of engagement and we haven't had a delivery of comprehensive information and so far as the observers are concerned I mean observers have reported through to the commission things that they've picked up we have in South Africa we have a center that operates in each of the provinces and nationally which takes in information including around information from the digital space and responds immediately to some of those posts online and then engages with the platform and in that regard some of the observers have given us information that we hadn't been aware of but I think what would really important for observers to include in their remit is the possibility for them to engage directly with the platforms to find out how the platforms are seeing their responsibilities in terms of the electoral space because I think if we are serious about recognizing the communication is part of the communication and information space is part of the public good it means that we then have a need to ensure that critical actors in that space are able to recognize the importance of engaging with people who are trying to enhance the transparency and reliability of the electoral process so I think that that would be really really important the other thing I just wanted to say is that I think that the problem partly is also that in a number of countries I certainly include South Africa in this the state itself has been has has not passed the necessary legislation to afford it the possibility to act with a kind of level of rigor and and and determination that the European legislation is giving them and and you know and and hopefully we will all able to learn from that and I think that that's a big failing part of the reason for that honestly believe is because within not just overall the general stakeholders and the electorate in in and and so on within the state itself there are pockets of knowledge and excellence in terms of digital space but not in terms of the overall enforcement capacity and not nor in terms of the judicial capacity for that matter so as we know this is elections are very time-bound so to have something which needs a determination of whether or not it is an encroachment on free speech or it qualifies as hate speech is something in an electoral management body itself can't determine it needs to be determined by judicial authorities and they act usually quite expeditiously firstly they don't have all of the legislative tools but secondly within that space they also don't have a lot of the understanding of the mechanisms and and the capacities that really would give them I think a lot more authority to be able to make pronouncements which are potentially going to limit very important to freedom and and so I think that that's something we just have to take account of thanks you're on mute thank you for that just a short question for for short answer Janet and then I walk the panel backwards and he asked from she's from Mongolia I think and she asked why or that you have many smaller states where platforms do not pay enough attention so what can be done actually to to change that and I think South Africa is probably not one of those countries where there's a lack of attention I don't know you know better it sounded as if you feel there is good attention but you also know your region so how do you think about no I think in South Africa and in terms of the continent as a whole I think in South Africa there has been attention it's something that we've worked for since 2016 so it didn't come without a great deal of engagement and and and work that has been done by the electoral management body in particular but I think that one of the things that the continent has done and I think it's important to say this is that as a consequence of some of the experiences not just in South Africa but also in places like Kenya and so on the the significance of the digital space is something that has led the continent to adopt a set of guidelines that are continent wide and which really need to be socialized within the different countries and hopefully will lead to a better understanding of the importance of having legislative frameworks in place so I think that that's something that hopefully will help even smaller countries but I do think having international standards which translate into every region's legislative standard that require platforms which are global in nature to adhere to higher standards of transparency, higher standards of protection particularly during elections is something that really would help particularly smaller countries Thanks. Here we are, here's a button. Thank you very much Janet for these insights from South Africa and I have another question here which I would post to Marku. Zoe Tomzi and Richard Kazoo they're asking what can we as civil society organization and journalists do to localize advocacy on disinformation and misinformation at national levels what can we do especially in this year of elections and I think the two of them are particularly interested in sub-Saharan Africa but beyond that Marku I think you have quite some experience also with your own organization and your own social media labs so maybe you can give us briefly some insights on what can civil society and maybe academic researchers do from the end. I have the feeling we have lost Marku I don't see his tile here. Marku if that's not the case please show up and we come back to you. In the meantime maybe I pose the last question to Renate Nikolai and the question I have is a bit your means of verification so now we have the Digital Services Act we will have various elections in Europe especially of course the European Parliament elections so how will how do you have a sense how you can conclude afterwards that this was good enough for you or not good enough for how how do you make that determinations that's a tough one I know I mean I think in in in general terms when it comes to the enforcement of the rules you know that we have just started enforcement you mentioned earlier a potential action against the X I mean we have started and opened officially an investigation against X this is mostly linked to you know illegal content and to their you know community node system but but there of course it's easier to kind of see you know whether our grievances our concerns that we have at least started kind of putting on paper whether they will be addressed the election integrity is not a black and white exercise so I think here the measurement we will have to see what we are what I can tell you is that what we are doing here now is as I said we are trying to equip us as much as possible by using the tools in the best way to have the clearest guidance possible so that's what we are doing with the guidelines there's also a really important aspect to be well connected that includes the electoral commissions in all the member states that includes all the actors in the code of practice that we have that also includes we have also reflected on adding some kind of you know third party evidence to gather when we have in the run up to the elections for instance incidents that we really kind of have third party verification systems in place I mean there are kind of you know organizations that can be very quick and kind of assessing so that we have the best evidence together so that we can react fast it's of course a delicate exercise because we also must not be seen as kind of interfering into what must remain an open debate of opinions we might not agree with all the opinions but that's kind of you know what democracy is about so it's really more about you know identifying if there are kind of you know risky you know issues I think an important aspect will be what we also heard from the other partners in the discussion today is the effect of generative AI the so-called fabricated content you know that we are also in Europe are finalizing our AI act so we are also worldwide the first you know continent to kind of dare making a law to kind of you know give some guidance on artificial intelligence and here I think we can draw hopefully on the AI act that will be adopted fairly soon to maybe also inject into the platforms a little bit of our wish that they increase more transparency on you know showcasing watermarking for instance whether something is fabricated content I think that would also help so we have as I said already kind of done some work in the recent national elections ever since the dsa the digital services act has entered into force in each national elections we went there before the elections ex ante talked to the platforms to the authorities we looked at the results of the elections and our experience ex post so what we are putting together in the guidelines that we are still discussing is the result of that exercise and we will probably do the same then after the european parliament elections but I think it's at the moment really our main objective is to raise this to the political level so that all people are super aware of this and we have the best transparency measures the best connection of all the actors in place to act fast the final point from my side media was mentioned a lot I think this is also a key player in the kind of ecosystem of election integrity and also here in the european union and you know if you had asked me 10 years ago I would not have thought that we would ever do that but we also just kind of finalized negotiations for a so-called media freedom act a european media freedom act that kind of has minimum standards for media freedom and media pluralism in the EU and I think that's also very important to really give a strong voice to investigative journalists to kind of you know critical media that can kind of you know be a partner in you know hopefully preaching the path to the to the best protected elections that we can imagine thank you you're on mute thank you very much Renate Nicolai for the perspective from Brussels I think we lost Marco I wonder if Michael Buck would be happy to answer one question on our briefing paper I can also try to give the answer otherwise a question it was from Alina Khaliff from the foundation the London story and she says they have put similar recommendations forward but platforms have simply refused to publicly agree to them and so the question here is how have platforms received our recommendations and do we see a risk that mainly EU and the US benefit from this kind of recommendations and trying to establish standards and the rest of the world is being forgotten I know the question comes very fast because we just published these guidelines but Michael maybe you want to say something about that also noting that of course you are not sitting in Europe or the US but in Southeast Asia yeah thanks for that question on you know it's you know the burden is on platforms to show up and I think that the role that we in civil society play is to offer a collaborative environment where they can show up and understand the the impacts of technology in the rest of the world you know I sit here in Thailand some of our speakers are in places very far afield from Europe and North America and and so I think that our role is to invite them to participate in discussions with us to create the conditions in which we are able to participate equitably and on a sustained basis and substantively as they work out how to implement policies or how to think about the systemic risk that they face it's not something that they should do in a black box on their own it's something that requires this broader collaboration and I do hear you on you know as we put together these recommendations and the hesitancy that some platforms have in showing up and that's something that we continually try to create conditions where they'll want to participate it's not going to happen overnight but it's certainly something that we need to strive for together yeah thank you very very much Michael on this question also of the question I posed to Marco who we lost unfortunately the role of civil society so just one comment from my side on that if we categorize speech and call something disinformation or we say there's some kind of narrative that we think is harmful for democracy and we monitor social media I think this is better done by civil society which is transparent about that must be transparent about that then saying we want governments to monitor speech of its citizen and decide what is problematic or is not problematic and I'm not saying we can do it better than governments but I think it's more acceptable if these kind of determinations come from within society and of course we put these things there for discussion we are not saying it's the ultimate truth but I feel somehow it's better if these kind of findings come from within society and are put on the table for discussion rather than governments saying this is disinformation or that is not disinformation and that also puts an onus on us I think we have to be quite rigorous in doing that kind of research and coming to these findings so there are many different opinions many opinions we don't like but we cannot get on a slippery slope where we start calling different opinions disinformation we have to look at facts that we can consider hard disinformation and call them out well it was a really interesting discussion I'm very sorry that I cannot I could not surface here all the questions we had but I could do so with some of them and they were always interesting but we are now at the conclusion of our discussion today and of our presentation and for that I would like to invite the secretary general of internationally there Kevin Casas-Samora to share with us your impressions of this and what else we will do with this policy brief and how we move forward in this space please you have the floor thank you very much Michael and colleagues and thank you again to all of you for joining us today I am very very glad to be part of this launch of this policy briefing on protecting elections through safeguarding information integrity and it is fair and necessary that I thank the colleagues at the forum on information on democracy and also democracy reporting international as well as former president Laura Chinchilla the distinguished vice chair of international ideas board of advisors fellow Costa Rican and dear friend and our similarly distinguished panel of experts for all their insightful remarks and an excellent collaboration all around I'm Kevin Casas-Samora and I'm the secretary general of international idea and since I don't know how familiar you are with our institute let me just say a few words about international idea we are an intergovernmental organization with 35 number states dedicated to supporting and advancing sustainable democracy we're based in Stockholm but we have 20 offices around the world and all in all we operate in different modalities in over 60 countries all over the place and we've been working in the area of electoral processes since we were founded in 1995 and we also nowadays have a new work stream specifically examining the intersection of digitalization and democracy in 2024 as half the world goes to the polls as we know our institute is squarely focused on the need to protect elections as a central part of our mandate to protect democracy among our many initiatives in this year of elections we are convening electoral authorities from around the world to share insights and good practices we are generating knowledge on cutting-edge issues related to electoral integrity and we are targeting our policy advocacy efforts in this area this policy brief being launched today is part of this broader endeavor and I would like to think that it encapsulates what we at international idea aspire to be scholars facilitators advocates but also partners in what remains of this closing remarks I want to do two things very shortly first I will share why I think this publication is such a valuable addition to our collective efforts to defend electoral integrity and second I will underscore why I believe election integrity is so critical for protecting democracy global the brief has already been presented in detail and a great discussion has been had about many of the key issues at play so let me just highlight three specific contributions this publication makes to the global conversation on protecting elections in an increasingly complex information environment first the brief underscores that the relationship between information integrity and electoral integrity is a whole of society concerned election management bodies are the ultimate experts in each country's electoral context and they must be empowered to lead and to act as required in response to information threats to electoral integrity within their jurisdictions governments at the same time must be attentive to this issue and respond with robust inclusive and right-space legal frameworks and policy measures we also need positive engagement from the digital private sector particularly social media platforms difficult though that is often including around terms of service and algorithmic safeguards to prevent electoral distortion and the commitments and actions of these core stakeholders must be informed and ensured through the engagements of civil society groups researchers with access to data independent media and conscious sixes second the brief and today's dialogue exemplifies the need and the value of learning from each other the distortion of the information environment especially on social media and accelerated now for artificial intelligence is a global phenomenon there are local nuances but many shared issues of course learning from each other makes us better and as the pace of change grows ever faster we simply cannot afford to each figure this out on our own let me give you one example as an integral event organization with member states from all regions international idea was pleased to co-host a forum to engage a very diverse group of countries in drafting the global declaration on information integrity that was launched last year under the leadership of canada and the netherlands both member states of ideas of idea the final declaration was better because it was informed by different experiences and contents and that declaration in turn informed this publication as did all the various international instruments declarations and guidelines third the brief reflects the need for coordinated action across a variety of domains often efforts to protect elections focus on a specific aspects be it effective administration or strong legislation or civic education likewise efforts to support information integrity online may look exclusively at media freedom machine learning learning algorithms or content moderation but both these missions require a holistic approach by spanning the breadth of actions needed to meaningfully address the this issue and by identifying the specific actors who should take those actions this brief brace breaks down responsibility silos that hamper the concerted effort that is needed which is good because there's no time for inaction threats to elections are multiplying and democracy ultimately is at stake this threats to elections manifest online and offline through disenfranchisement disinformation and disillusionment as attacks from outside and decay from within what's more these threats are truly global affecting newer and long-standing democracies alike and threats against elections are so serious because they threaten the irreducible core of democracy as we have seen in democracies as diverse as the united states and brazil even unfounded accusations of electoral laws can foster a perception of illegitimacy that gravely undermines democracy as former uriwayan president julio san guinetti put it and i quote here democracy does not guarantee good government what it gives us is the possibility of peacefully getting rid of a bad government end of quote that possibility only exists when elections are free and fair where the results are respected and incumbents leave office if they lose let us be clear the success of democracy depends on many things but it becomes utterly impossible if elections fail to be sure the full range of threats to elections extends far beyond today's topic of information integrity but the free flow of truthful information is a prerequisite for free elections with truthful results that's why i am so grateful for your interest and your attention on this pivotal issue and that's why i'm so pleased to celebrate the launch of this publication today it represents not an endpoint but the beginning of a crucial conversation in this global year of elections the work ahead matters immensely to secure a democratic future for generations to come an international idea stands ready to support that effort every step of the way thank you thank you very much kevin casas samora from international idea i think also our partners from the forum on information and democracy also on our colleagues who prepared this event we all know this is often a lot of work and it's not visible because we just see the smooth operation here so thank you all for making that happen and of course i also thank the panelists for giving us your time it was extremely valuable to hear you from very different corners of the world and last but not least thank you to all the participants for joining today from everywhere i wish you a good morning a good afternoon a good lunchtime or a good dinner whatever times on you may be in and i hope we reconnect soon thank you have a good election year