 Please note also that this call is being recorded to allow for further learning and for people who could not join to benefit from this webinar, so please take note that it is recorded. Okay, so again, good afternoon, good evening, everyone depending on where you are in the world, it could be also good morning. Thank you very much for joining our webinar, which is organized by the Advocacy Working Group of the Global Protection Cluster. Some housekeeping points before we start for the interpretation, please press the button in your list or you will have a globe button where you can choose French, Spanish or Ukrainian in case you have not been able to do that, I will just very quickly in both languages for the interpretation, please press the globe button where you can choose French, Spanish or Ukrainian for the interpretation, press the globe button in which you can choose between French, Spanish or Ukrainian, so I hope this works, please if you have any challenges with the interpretation, put a message in the chat box and hopefully we will be able to assist you in this regard. Try to keep yourself muted as mentioned during the presentations to avoid background noise, if you feel comfortable to put on your cameras, we would be delighted to see you as well as hearing you. You can post your questions and comments in the chat box and you will have the chance to interact directly with our panelists in the Q&A session that will follow the presentations. So today's webinar covers a topic that is receiving increased interest within the humanitarian sector, most notably because of the impact of misinformation, disinformation and hate speech which they have on protection of civilians in conflict settings. So and because the spread of this misinformation and disinformation is becoming so fast as a result of social media and the online channels. The global protection clusters protection analysis, so if you look at the protection analysis of the global protection cluster where different protection risks are analyzed, you would see that on disinformation and misinformation, 60% of the countries where there is a protection analysis, this means like 15 out of 25 countries where these protection risks are monitored, 60% display medium to high levels of disinformation and denial of access to information. Disinformation in armed conflict can expose civilians to multiple protection threats, including exposure to violence, targeting of specific groups, obstruction of access to basic services, mental suffering and of course among others. A few days ago, I was watching the news on TV and I heard an intervention of a member of the French National Assembly and he was speaking about Gaza. He quoted, the first casualty of war is truth. And with the speakers who are participating today in this webinar, we had started preparing for the webinar before the 7th of October and the war in Gaza. And today in light of the current context, we find the topic to be very pertinent and we are hoping that while the research that will be presented is focused on Ukraine, and while there's a lot of work to be done on the Ukrainian context, we are hoping that also the different interventions and the tools that will be shared and the discussions will allow for cross learning and broader reflections on the topic. And to tell us more about this, we are pleased today to be joined by colleagues who have a lot to say about the topic. First, we will hear from Ms. Joelle, the Digital Threats Advisor of the International Committee of the Red Cross based in Geneva. And then the main findings of the Center for Civilians in Conflict Research in Ukraine, this is Lauren Spink. She's the Senior Research Advisor for Civic and she will be telling us more about this. And finally, Ms. Leah Krivchenia, Senior Humanitarian Program Manager for Internews, who will tell us more about some of the tools and the toolkits that were produced by internews to allow or support with practical measures in this regard. Our panelists will be discussing the topic of misinformation and disinformation in conflict settings and their impact on civilian protection, highlighting the different initiatives within their organizations, including studies and toolkit. And to be very honest, I'm very excited that some of these toolkits will be presented for the first time today in this webinar. Without further ado, I want to turn to our first speaker, Joelle from the ICRC. Joelle first, thank you very much for joining us today. And we are very pleased to have you with us and to hear from your perspective and the perspective of the ICRC. But also, it's very interesting to hear from your perspective because you focus on digital threats. So we see that the ICRC has produced a lot of resources and material and facilitated discussions and analyses around the topic of disinformation and misinformation. If I may ask you, Joelle, why has the topic gained so much attention and traction over the past few years? And what is it that you would say are the main associated risks of protection or risks associated with the topic in terms of protection of civilians? Thank you. And thanks for having me. Apologies. This was all organized last minute, so I won't exactly have a presentation. So I'll speak maybe for a few minutes and happy to answer questions later. Can you hear me well? Because earlier I couldn't use my microphone on an earlier call. Can you hear me well? Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, perfect. So this topic actually has been on our mind and has been a concern for us at the ICRC for quite some time now. It's even more than five, six years now. And when we first started looking at it, we were thinking about it from the perspective of means and methods of warfare and hybrid warfare and also from the perspective of can information be weaponized or not? Is that even a legal a legal interpretation or legal terminology that can be used? But we quickly realized that the issue is a far more complex than this. And it's touching really on the lives of everybody that is affected by conflict because everybody is consuming information and the information ecosystem in conflict is important for more than just access to information itself. It's really important for people's decision making, for their safety and for their dignity. And for that, we wanted to go more in details on what that really means. And one way that we look at it today is the information dimension of conflict. And we decided that instead of talking about whether an information is true or false fabricated or not, we really wanted to focus on an umbrella term. And that's where we came to misinformation, disinformation and hate speech. Now, when we say misinformation, disinformation and hate speech, we don't only mean M and D and H. We actually use that as an umbrella term to talk about different information disorders in situations of conflict that are potentially harmful to civilians affected by conflict. So that could also be mal-information. So information that is actually accurate, it's not fabricated. But the way it is shared, the timing in which it is shared may actually have the intention to cause, for example, unrest or cause violent reactions or incite certain harmful behavior. And so in our mind, it's really the harm that may emanate the humanitarian consequences that result after the spread of certain information. And as we look at M, D and H, or as we look at M, D, H as a phenomenon, really, it's important to keep in mind that this is not new. We've all been with, it's as old as conflict existed, whether in the form of propaganda, it's as old as communities existed. Really, it's rumors, for example, is something we've all dealt with in every type of field work that we've done. So what I would keep in mind here is that the way that this phenomena has been shaped in the past, I would say 10 or more years, is through the digitalization of the information ecosystem and digital platforms, including but not only social media platforms. And what that has done is that it has become much easier to spread harmful information. It can, it's easier also because it can be largely anonymous for the user. And also because the scale and the speed at which it spreads has been altered by the use of digital technologies. And we see that in situations of conflict, it's not only the users and it's not only individuals that are spreading harmful information. In fact, there's, in a way, states and state affiliated groups, or even non-state actors and groups affiliated with those are also leveraging the digital space through, whether it's through social media platforms or whether through messaging or other type of communication systems, digitalized communication systems, leveraging that to achieve an information advantage in a given conflict situation, to achieve a certain influence over the beliefs or over the behavior of either population or adversary groups as well. So for us, it's no longer about whether information is mis or disinformation or malinformation. For us, it's, this is about how conflict is impacting people. It's about means of methods of warfare. It is about respect to law and it is about protection. It is about protection because it's impacting people's decision-making. It's impacting people's situational awareness. We see that information space is being used to spread disinformation about people's safety, about airstrikes, about evacuation routes, about safety of roads, checkpoints, etc. We also see that the information space is used to spread fear among people, causing potentially eviction or displacement. It is also impacting their ability to make decisions in a way that impacts their dignity. When you are consuming information that is mostly fabricated, manipulated, or altered in a way to influence your behavior and your beliefs, I would even argue that isn't that also impacting your autonomy as an individual or a community to make these decisions and therefore your dignity. Of course, also we see, and that is one of the ugliest forms in which MDH can cause harm, is the incitement of violence against individuals or against communities or groups. Beyond hate speech, the dehumanization of individuals and of communities, but also the clear sometimes incitement of violence or incitement of generally violations of international humanitarian law and also maybe one specific aspect that is very particular to situations of conflict and that is the behavior in the information space that impacted dignity of protected persons and in this particular case, for example, the prisoners of war and exposing them to public curiosity or exposing their identity and their pictures or the way that they are being treated in the public domain. There's of course many other different forms but I think this is the umbrella of the different type of concerns and the trends that we observe are as a result of misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech and maybe one very overarching trend that we also see is a bit of a mix of all of the ones I've already mentioned but in a way this quick escalation of narratives around and that are largely dehumanizing for the adversary or dehumanizing for people of certain background or coming from certain areas or speaking certain languages just because or of different religions. It generally really undermines the capacity of humanitarian actors to conduct to do their job to conduct dialogue around humanitarian principles and it makes it really harder to discuss, for example, human rights or international humanitarian law with certain actors. The last point I'll make is about humanitarian action at large and the way that the spread of misinformation and disinformation especially when it is in a coordinated or an organized way either about a specific organization or about the very delivery of aid about the humanitarian action itself or the very role of a humanitarian organization say in relation to evacuations for example or in relation to delivering aid to hospitals or medical facilities. So when this happens then the information is not only becomes a security risk to humanitarian workers themselves but also to the very humanitarian space and the ability of a humanitarian actor to fulfill their mandate. I can say a bit more maybe later depending on the time and the space of how we're handling, how we're thinking around MDH, how we're structuring ourselves and our approach a bit a bit to that but I'll stop here to make space for the other speakers. Thank you. Thank you very much Joel and you know as you speak I think too many examples are coming to everyone's minds given the current context. So thank you very much Joel and I think the other speakers will definitely build on what you have just presented and now I want to turn to our colleagues from CIVIC. So we have Alex Griff with us who is the country director of CIVIC in Ukraine and Lauren Spink who's the senior research advisor for CIVIC and both of them will be telling us more about the research that Alex, Lauren and their teams in Ukraine have worked on to highlight this information and misinformation and link it to the or showcase the impact on protection of civilians. Alex and Lauren first thank you very much for choosing this platform to present the findings of your research. So if you can tell us more about those findings and what are the main recommendations that you would put forward based on those findings. Over to you Alex and Lauren and thanks again. Thanks so much for hosting us Yasmin and to everyone who's joining the call thanks for your interest in CIVIC's research and I'm really happy to have the chance to exchange with you today. I will start just by giving some background on what we actually looked at with the research and how it was done quickly. We looked at three issues in the research and that is first how trust in and use of different information sources was changing after the Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine and how that changed. Second how disinformation targeted at Ukrainian civilians affected them affected their protection their decision making. And third how different information ecosystem actors responded to that disinformation threat and and what those responses looked like. Our methodology we had a survey of Ukrainian civilians in different areas across the country. We did qualitative interviews with a variety of subject matter experts in Ukraine and outside of Ukraine and we also worked with a partner to do analysis of messages being shared on telegram in specific locations at high risk times to see what types of narratives were being shared. Moving to that first research question around Ukrainian information practices and the ecosystem and how it was changing in the days and weeks after the Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. The first thing we noticed very clearly was a large increase in people's consumption of information which I'm sure is not surprising but if you see here from our survey responders you know before the full scale invasion most people were watching a few hours of television a day or online a few hours a day and then in the days and weeks after the invasion you see that jump significantly with with many people spending more than six hours a day on multiple platforms. And and this is also across different regions of the country and not only in front line areas so indirectly speaking with people in front line areas many said they spent every waking moment checking information platforms every waking moment that wasn't dedicated to fulfilling other critical critical survival needs. And looking at a shifting use of platforms and trust in platforms there's you know you could see this jump from before the full scale invasion reliance primarily on television for information about the political situation and the security situation in the country very clearly to to a growing very rapidly growing reliance on social media platforms telegram in particular but this this does this does vary by age I think that's something to to beat for protection actors especially to be aware of you know we we actually only saw for example in in the weeks after the invasion the the average person might be spending you know the average participant or 30.7 percent of across the people we we surveyed were using telegram as a primary source but only 4.8 percent of people over 60 years of age were actually using telegram and then and and and in response to why you know this is about speed relative mobility of this platform particularly as people are you know fleeing their homes to shelters they're able to bring their phones they're able to access telegram which is designed for mobile phones in shelters while on the move and sometimes even as other forms of communication are being cut off and and it's not just use of information platforms but also growing trust in telegram and and so you know if what this means for the forced civilian protection if you think about that is is that telegram is important to civilians as a critical source of information a timely source of information when other sources are becoming less reliable so that they can make a decision about whether they not need to shelter so that they can understand so they can get information about conflict developments but at the same time we also see an increase in disinformation being shared on social media platforms including telegram and a mismatch between growing civilian trust in the platform and the evaluation of most experts that telegram is one of the least safe and regulated platforms to be to be accessing information on I'll move now to that second research question on the on the impact of disinformation on civilians and and how it affected their protection so we first to mention the certain tactics and the impact of those tactics we saw that Russian affiliated actors were launching disinformation in specific geographic areas at a very local level and with timing that coincided with Russian military offensives civilians were often the main target of this information not the military and with this very local level information or misinformation and disinformation a lot of a lot of the people we spoke with stressed that it was harder to identify this type of disinformation these types of narratives at a local level than more strategic and national level narratives which could be picked up on quickly and and proven to be false much more quickly and also that they could identify as disinformation more clearly rather than not being sure if it was miss or disinformation the harmful narratives that we we saw with our research so first we saw narratives obscuring frontline developments and sowing panic among civilians so this for example included information about which areas of the country were under control by Russia versus under control by Ukraine information trying to convince communities that there were spies among them and they should be searching for these spies in different ways or about impending attacks that that were planned or didn't materialize and then we also saw something that Joel was speaking about around manipulating population movements so what this looked like was false information about the existence of evacuation of supported evacuation routes the safety timing and location of evacuation routes as well as efforts before Ukrainian offensives were were likely to recapture territory occupied by Russia an effort to get the population to move to Russia a lot of fear and disinformation being spread to try and influence that movement and what this in particular this some of these efforts to manipulate population movements looked like in you know on telegram and in specific locations we have a few case studies in the report one I'll highlight first was for example this this pro-Russian news outlet Anna news claiming that the Ukrainian military was firing on injuring and turning back civilians on certain evacuation routes at a critical time where civilians had to make decisions about whether to flee Mariupol as as as Russia and Russia was advancing to occupy we didn't see any credible or corroborating evidence for this claim by Anna news and a similar case study looking actually at the area around Harkiv posts from one account that we reviewed claiming that Ukraine the Ukrainian armed forces were firing on civilians trying to evacuate also advising against civilians taking very specific routes and recommending other routes and if you look at the the link between harm there it's not always very clear but in this case we did see that the route recommended by this individual was bombed hit with artillery Russian artillery the same day that the route was recommended and there's a few more case studies in in the report a third area where we saw harmful narratives were in efforts to undermine social cohesion so this is not new in Ukraine but we did see it continuing after the full scale invasion and and that included you know efforts to create tensions between displaced persons and host communities within Ukraine efforts to to drive tensions between primarily Russian language speakers in the country and primarily Ukrainian speakers in the country those were kind of the highlighting the ongoing concerns that people flagged there was also a concern that in the future that the same type of disinformation and narratives would be used were very likely to be used to drive tensions between people who stayed in occupied areas of Ukraine and those who who evacuated we looked for this is another issue that Joel raised really poignantly in her introduction we also is about disinformation about life-saving services so we also looked for for that we didn't see you know as distinctive pattern or or as much of this as as we know has happened in other conflicts like Syria but we did see a few narratives that appeared to be designed to undermine Ukrainian civilian trust in the government and military that could have an impact on people not seeking access to life-saving services that was available so for example saying that hospitals were closed that ambulances weren't available for people in certain areas when they were available and and spreading rumors about water being contaminated for example and then we asked some questions about the impact on mental health it's obviously difficult to draw that that direct link between disinformation and mental health but among the Ukrainians we spoke with their own self-assessment was that it was contributing to to a real shift in mental health that did have an impact on mental health and they described feelings of it disinformation creating feelings of anger vulnerability anxiety panic despair were kind of the the primary issues primary sentiments that people raised then the third kind of research question we looked at on response of actors in the information ecosystem or protection actors our main takeaway is some of them are listed here so that proactive and frequent communication from the Ukrainian government from officials civilian officials military officials at the local and national levels were very important for civilians the trust in these official sources was very high use of these official sources was very high to parse through disinformation and that proactivity was was really important to civilians being able to navigate a very confusing information space there was also coordination between government and civil society that was critical in identifying and preventing the spread of disinformation as well as some some efforts to bring together social media platforms with civil society and government to identify and and combat this dynamic but we also saw that government and civil society were least able to identify and address disinformation at a at that local level and this is just the type of disinformation that civic saw was most harmful to civilians or had the most protection most most immediate protection concerns for civilians was this local level these local level narratives for example around evacuation and we also saw the response of social media companies often delayed and not very well contextualized and even though we didn't see kind of the the distinct patterns and levels of of disinformation around humanitarian response that has been seen in some other conflicts we did see that civilian views of humanitarian organizations were influenced or appeared to be appeared to have been influenced in some cases by mis and disinformation I think the primary factor and when we asked about trust was their direct experience of services with humanitarians but then we saw examples as well of mis and disinformation detracting from that trust and so if you think about the recommendations emerging from this there are many in the report there are some two humanitarians working on protection to be thinking about how this analysis is incorporated into their protection monitoring mechanisms their their humanitarian response plans their staffing their training of staffing their training of staff and and many recommendations to to Ukrainian authorities including that their burial awareness and planning around how disinformation is likely to impact civilians and response to that not only paying attention to and focusing on disinformation the way disinformation affects their ability to fight wage and win war but also their ability to protect civilians I think I'm probably beyond my time or at my time so I'll pause there and there's I think a lot more we could we could discuss later if if there's time and I will stop sharing thank you Lauren Alex do you want to add something thank you I think I'll I'll let Leah speak first and then I'll come in after we had the Q&A to talk a little bit more about the the many actions that Ukrainian society has always taken to address the issues that Lauren spoke of and then to show kind of like the gaps that remain today okay thank you very much so and Leah from Internews over to you again I think the excitement is throughout this presentation because Leah also will be presenting to us a toolkit that was just launched by internews and that is titled information and risks a protection approach to information ecosystems so yeah if you can tell us more about the toolkit but also the different toolkits that you have within internews and that the participants can benefit from in their daily work to address disinformation and misinformation over to Julia great thanks Yasmin and hello everyone it's really nice to be here I'm going to talk about a couple things that we as at internews have been working on related to our work on misinformation and disinformation and then also related to protection so first just looking at these sort of questions of misinformation analysis and rumor tracking these are activities that internews has been doing in crisis for many years and I want to highlight a couple areas that I think really echo what came out of this super interesting research that Civic has done so one is just the sort of really basic statement that that we we find that misinformation is really about trust and and over the years that we've been working on this we've recently sort of put forth our this trust framework that you can see on the screen and and and that is to help us on the analysis side for one right so understanding what makes narratives that might be mis or disinformation trusted by communities this is not a sort of normative framework it doesn't mean that the information is quote unquote good or accurate or relevant but what are the components that create trust and therefore why are what what are some of the reasons why these narratives can take root and cause harm as I think we've really seen clearly from the last presentation so this is one of the tools that we use in our sort of ongoing qualitative analysis of rumors and mis and disinformation one other point that I think came through really clearly it is qualitative analysis right it's sense making it needs to be done as close as possible to the community level I think it was a really interesting finding around those really hyper local disinformation narratives being the most harmful and that makes a lot of sense I think in a protection context where we know that protection risks are quite localized as well and also speaks to certainly the role of civil society and in leading and participating in this kind of analysis and then the other point that I'll make about about trust is I think that using this this way of thinking about trust is also then how we can think about responding to misinformation and disinformation and so our focus on that in in the work that internews does is is less around sort of that fact checking or sort of correcting necessarily but creating alternative platforms and channels and information providers creating or supporting existing ones that can provide trusted information and what are those aspects that create that trusted information is it locally relevant is it culturally appropriate is it fast is it responding to the very specific questions and needs and concerns that people have and so this framework helps us both on the analytical side understand that misinformation and then also when we're sort of designing responses to help us understand how to most appropriately design those responses and and and make sure that the the information that we think people need is also trusted so I'm going to shift also quickly then to to talk about some other work that we've been doing really bringing in this question of protection risk and so we have been working on a BHA funded project recently that we've just released these guidelines I'm really excited to be able to to share them with you all and it covers a lot of things there's a whole section on safe and accountable programming there's a whole section on sort of a community safety guide for local media today I'm going to talk about this piece around protection analysis of the information ecosystem which is really in line with the work that civic has been doing so one of the things that we like to say it's very cheesy if you'll forgive me is that information saves lives and information can also be a threat to life right so we're interested in information partly from the perspective of it being a way to contribute to protection outcomes it is a way that we can support the reduction of protection risk but it can also be a part of the threats that that we see against civilians and so looking at it in both of those ways is really important so some of the work that we've done on this this protection analysis of the information ecosystem has been about identifying some of those risks that Yasmine mentioned earlier so we sort of talk about them around information related protection risks and so we're looking at on the one hand the denial of access to information and on the other hand disinformation misinformation and rumors which we similarly I think to the way Joel talked about it at the ICRC we tend to group together and so on the one hand interested in denial of access of information it's a form of deliberate deprivation that can take many forms inhibiting people's ability to create share seek and obtain information and this is you know it's a whole range of things we can see the elimination of of communications infrastructure internet shutdowns intimidation keeping people from speaking of things very specific denial of access to information around services people in one community maybe don't get that information there's a whole range of things on the other hand we see this set of disinformation misinformation and rumors false information that has spread either intentionally or unintentionally that can that can lead to significant harm one of the things that came out really clearly in the research that we did in in developing this framework is that these these risks are very interlinked and and can create a cycle between themselves and so need to be sort of looked at in that way so on the one hand the denial of access to information makes it very difficult for people to to verify information right to recognize if the information that they're receiving is accurate or if it is miss or disinformation and on the other hand the proliferation of that kind of misinformation disinformation or rumors makes it then very difficult it throws up increasing barriers to the access of information that people need so looking at both of these together in the the the pilot countries that we did we really saw this interplay which also means that over time this can really spiral into sort of increasing harm for civilians and really need to be sort of interrupted and and I will say that we you know have really appreciated the work that the global protection cluster has done and incorporating this into these frameworks for protection analysis and are are really I think it's a great we're at a really important moment to where there's growing understanding and growing sort of analysis of this risks incorporated in our sort of collective protection analysis in the humanitarian sector this is a lot of detail and so as a part of this work that we've taken in the protection analysis framework that was developed recently by IRC and DRC and the global protection cluster and pulled out these information pieces and created a sort of corollary framework for the information protection analytical framework the ipath is what we call it and and I'm just going to highlight a few key things and for those of you familiar with these protection and analysis frameworks it will be very familiar so one is context right how are we understanding this information ecosystem the second one is what what are the threats are we understanding these information related threats who might be responsible how are they spreading I think when it comes to misinformation and disinformation these questions of why are they spreading why are they taking hold and then we come to the the sort of effect of that threat that's that that vulnerability component of the the protection risk equation so to speak and looking at who's affected by these right I think the the civic research really talked about some of the ways that different components of the community are being affected differently and that's a really important thing and what what's that impact among those different segments of the community and then of course on the capacity side are we recognizing existing community capacity to confront these threats and one thing that I'm just going to sort of point out here is I think um local media is a really important player in terms of this community capacity and I say that because I think it's it's often a set of stakeholders that we as humanitarians don't always consider um in in our own networks and for our own work and so I want to just that's been a really important thing is that there's I think a lot of opportunity for increased collaboration between humanitarians and local media as a way to to sort of work towards protection outcomes and and so then lastly and then I'll I'll I'll pause so we can sort of have some conversation and the other thing that we've really identified so in addition to sort of analyzing these threats we have have developed a toolkit that has some assessment and monitoring tools to help organizations that they want to do a big sort of large analysis or incorporate into some of these ongoing monitoring efforts that are that we know are happening but the other important thing that's that's important to analysis is looking at the to analyze excuse me the results of these information related protection risks also have um a set of consequences that we see in all of these contexts and all three of these I think came through really clearly in in the work done on Ukraine so one is a consequence um is that it creates barriers to accessing public and humanitarian services right I think that's a really that's one that we see in a lot of different contexts um as well um and and obviously for the humanitarian community is really important as well as looking at those public services that people need to access the other one that I think is really crucial is the exacerbation of other protection risks right so a denial of access to information we want to look at it as a risk in and of itself that deliberate deprivation but also how does it impact other risks that happen does it put you at risk of gender-based violence because you don't have access to information about safe routes does it put you at risk of exploitation because you're getting false information about uh services available right the sort of whole host of of further harm that that can occur and then the last one is again these cycles that we see that these can really lead to the proliferation of even more misinformation and rumors and so again you do get those sort of cycles um that can can reinforce themselves over time and and and over time in crisis and so that I think really speaks to the need to really want to try to interrupt some of those risks um before they sort of cycle out of control so I'm going to stop there because I know we're we're getting close to time um and yeah I'm really excited to hear from others thank thank you Aliyah and we see what internews has been producing and doing on the topic so that would take me back to both I want to go back to Joelle and Alex to see what is being done whether within the ICRC or the Ukrainian society and civil society actors as well as actor different NGOs there so maybe I will give the floor first to Joelle and then Alex yes thank you so from the ICRC perspective we have developed our own sort of approach which we're also sharing with a lot of other organizations and we hope that uh some point next year we'll be able to even share our internal training on that approach so the way that we look at the information ecosystem or at MDH really is that first recognition that in every context there are foundations for the spread of MDH and these foundations are the issues that basically drive different grievances and different reasons for violence for example or for example that that compromise the resilience of people to harmful information so these foundations are to be analyzed when understanding MDH another issue that another factor to consider when understanding MDH or in in a given context and is the pathways through which we believe it would spread so already in terms of being prepared to understand MDH or to eventually respond to a specific issue related to it we need to understand these pathways because we need to know how such a harmful information would eventually spread in a given community or in a context at large and of course then the signals how do we know that there is harmful information spreading how can we really identify that as a risk that is the signals we look at do we see for example an escalation in a narrative do we see that there's specific wording being used that may amount to incitement of violence so we look at that as a signal of the issue existing and spreading and potentially causing harm that's the first step and then what we what we our approach is basically to detect assess and then respond so first you detect a specific harmful narrative or a spread of MDH then you assess its impact on your humanitarian action obviously but also on vulnerable population on the civilian population you think who is that impacting who is who is being targeted and why and what is that narrative achieving in that community what is it inciting and what kind of behavior really think of all of that and be able to assess immediate impact and longer term impact in order to then inform a response because in certain cases you want to be able to respond very quickly you want to be able to do you want to position yourself in a way that you're already prepared to respond and and be able and in some other cases you will decide not to get involved because it's not your mandate or it's not your role to play or or that you may be causing more harm and spreading even further such a narrative or spreading you and amplifying harmful information rather than actually addressing it one thing I would say that is very important is that two things actually first that it's not only an online issue it is an online offline and as such the response and the addressing the phenomena or addressing the problem is an online and offline response often offline in fact and so we are advocating for a 360 approach 360 degree approach to this that involves really a multidisciplinary response sometimes you want to do a classic protection response sometimes you want to document harms then you want to have conversations you want to have dialogue you want to make an intervention on the law if there is a if there is a legal issue other times you want to work with your network offline network of local journalists network of local influencers of even your network within the authorities your contacts etc and you want to do your influencing there and in other times you might simply want to engage in an in an information exercise where you actually put out information that is trustworthy that is that is factual that clarifies maybe some of the concerns of people that answers to their fears etc or partner with other organizations that do so so that leads me to the second point that in response to NDH most of your actions are not in the information space so it is it is not it's not just because it's a problem in the information space the response to it or addressing it does not have to be an information campaign or a messaging campaign but there is a lot of of course a lot of importance to that aspect of the response I'll stop here and then happy to answer more questions thank you very much Joel and obviously there's a lot to be done in that domain Alex over to you thank you very much I will briefly talk a little bit more specifically about Ukraine because I think we've heard a lot about the frameworks now how does all of this look in Ukraine and in Ukraine we've seen that there are many narratives that are targeting the perception of how Ukraine conducts itself during this war and so naturally we've seen that Ukraine Ukrainian authorities in civil society are trying to counter strategic narratives that influence how Ukraine is perceived in parts of Africa parts of Asia the European and American societies and so some of these information or misinformation campaigns clearly spoke about the fact that Ukrainian medical services were using infected blood which lowered the trust in the healthcare system there there were misinformation campaigns that the Ukrainian weapon the delivery of weapons to Ukraine were being redirected to criminal networks lowering the trust in the Ukrainian armed forces there were rumors that Ukraine is experimenting on children further instilling fear in parents who had to decide whether to evacuate their children from dangerous areas or not and there were rumors that Ukraine is ready to compromise on peace negotiations something that never happened and so one thing that we noticed in our research is that there were a lot of efforts by the Ukrainian government and by the Ukrainian civil society to counter these strategic narratives one thing that we noticed in our research is that on a local level on a level of a city a town a village or a market there were notably less efforts to help the population identify the spread of harmful information and we've seen that the population made wrong decisions for example when choosing evacuation routes or made wrong decisions as to when to evacuate we need to recognize that there are disinformation efforts that are part of a military strategy and we need to recognize that it is part of the military toolkit available to militaries but at Civic the research that we did and what we wanted to demonstrate that there are misinformation narratives that have nothing to do with the fighting the conduct of military operations and that have caused excessive or that have caused civilian harm without any justification thereof and so one thing that we also noticed and Lauren showed in her presentation is how the most used social media were the ones that were the least regulated ones so you may remember that Myanmar was the first big example of how Facebook contributed to what potentially may be called the genocide of the Rohingya and this and so Facebook put a lot put in place a lot of content moderation and regulation policies and people used Facebook much less than Telegram a social media platform that is not regulated at all now the Ukrainian authorities adapted to that reality and many started their own Telegram channels to inform the population but the population doesn't necessarily know which Telegram channels are accurate and provide accurate information in which ones are not and so in our report you will see a lot of recommendations that are targeted at the Ukrainian government and civil society at large to help with giving the population the tools to recognize which information they can trust in which information they cannot in Ukraine we have a program where we work directly with effective communities and as part of building up their protection capacity and their ability to stay safe in an environment where they face conflict we also want to provide them with sessions on strategic communication and how to select filter and identify myths and disinformation and this is something that we recommend as a whole in our report that you will see that all actors that are working directly with affected populations be it in Ukraine or be it elsewhere focus on the population themselves because these are ultimately the ones that suffer directly from the impact of misinformation thank you very much Alex and it's very important to see the role of the community and how much can be done when working with the community I want to thank all of our speakers because this has been really very informative and if I if I apologize from everyone for going over time but there are two questions in the chat box I think it's important that we address them and Alex, Lauren, Joel and Leah please feel free to step in and answer but I think the first question is for you Joel how is the experience of working with local fact-checking organizations in the operations of the ICRC? Yeah I apologize for moving a lot I had to switch my desk so I yeah I'll take the first question I mean it's not like a specific experience that is different from other for example local organizations or media organizations I would say it really changes from one context to another in some cases we would maybe reach out for engaging on some trainings in others we would actually provide some trainings or potentially even partner with them in a very localized manner but it's not systematic for the ICRC to reach out to fact-checking organizations and we do our own verification mostly but in some cases there might be depending on the relationship with the organization there might be some triangulation that could be done in that space I would also maybe here underline a bit also the internal capacity that we have been building for the past few years it has been very slowly increasing but at least increasing on open source information verification and open source information analysis so and that is a need that I think is growing for all humanitarian organizations really no matter no matter the mandate no matter the size as well I hope the answers thank you very much Joel and of course Mesud if you have more to say about this please feel free to post in the chat box the second question was about artificial intelligence and if there is anything to um sorry let me find is there a tool or automation or the usage of AI to analyze and triangulate or information or is it simply manual work so maybe Lauren and Alex you can tell us about Ukraine specifically how it was done and if there is anything that has to do with artificial intelligence there I think I should distinguish between civics research and what other actors are doing in Ukraine there there are efforts to monitor disinformation using AI within the different different government initiatives and civil society initiatives for civics research we did not use AI to analyze disinformation we used when we looked at telegram in particular we chose specific locations and time periods where we thought there might be higher risk to civilians and looked at known Russian and Russian affiliated accounts accounts with a pattern of of continuing to propagate Russian narratives pretty closely and looked at what information was being shared on those and it spread so it was done manually using an analysis tool and I just add something I mean I mean I'm certainly not an expert on the technology side but it's been a topic that there's a lot of internal discussion and interviews about certainly I think what I would say which is not a direct answer to the question but really that analysis piece I think it's it's just so important like that because we're talking about qualitative analysis because we're looking at analysis in really particular localized context I think it's like that really needs to be done by humans I think much of it really needs to be done by humans but I would would also say that you know while there are a lot of conversations about these tools I think making sure that we really are are continuing to ground that analysis in in those frameworks but also contextually so again what we find is doing that analysis with civil society groups with often very hyper local grassroots organizations is really the best way to to truly understand those aspects and so while I don't want to say that there aren't any opportunities for sort of technological tools to help us do that I think that that for me is the is the really important piece thank you very much so Armel had a question about the experience of countering rumors and this information in a context where the government itself is less engaged I think maybe all of you could could answer to this question Lauren or Leah about maybe different contexts where the governments are less engaged I mean I think it's a big piece of the oh sorry Lauren go ahead no Leah please well I was gonna say I think it's a big it's a it's a really crucial piece of that analysis right and that analysis of that information ecosystem and then specifically understanding its relation to protection because and I think there's actually an additional question that sort of gets at this question as well understanding the relationship for example of media outlets to authorities is going to be really crucial so starting with an understanding of what what the sort of legal and policy background is but then also what the more informal you know behavior of conflict parties towards individuals civilians media outlets around information is really important because developing those strategies and Joelle sort of talked about those set of strategies needs to be done really carefully so I mean I don't have to have easy answers but I think you know starting with really a nuanced and deep understanding of what those risks are to make sure that you know we want to understand the protection risks related to this information but not put people at further risk through those activities so it's really not easy and needs very careful sort of risk benefit analysis at every stage and of course working with communities right understanding from community perspectives where do they see their potential risks and not because sometimes we have different ideas about that right so we might come in and say well online activity is dangerous because blah blah blah and actually there are ways that for some people in the community that is safer than in-person engagement so I think that community engagement for analysis pieces is going to be really the important part there yes Alex please go ahead I will come in because I think it also relates to Yolanda's question afterwards in countries where governments are the main perpetrator of misinformation and disinformation it is more important to build up civil society and communities capacity to deal with the spread of misinformation and disinformation for example in Sudan this year we have seen how communities and neighborhoods organize themselves to pass safe information and correct information about where they could get supplies where they could get medical care where they could move to be safe and it happened quite organically and I think looking at the environment in which that happened would help us understand which tools we need to provide to communities and which tools we need to provide to actors working directly with communities to make sure that they can react to those so in short the answer is if it's a government that is the main perpetrator in that sense then building out the capacity of the community becomes more important and demanding from actors who work on community based protection activities that this is part of their portfolio whether you are a donor or whether you are an actor or a benefactor is a strong strong recommendation that we can make at this stage thank you very much Alex and thank you for also addressing Yolanda's question Lauren do you want to add anything before we close my my initial reaction and response was going to be very similar to to what Leah and and Alex emphasized the role of civil society looking at other protection actors and actors in the information ecosystem who can who have capacity and influence and you see this you know Alex gave the example of Sudan you could also look at South Sudan where the media environment and the civil society environment is extremely restricted and and the capacity of a lot of actors is limited but you still see civil society stepping out to try to look at some of these dynamics to look at mis and disinformation and and and support civilians to access safe and and and accurate information and and and some of those settings there's also you know well there are many other protection actors the global protection cluster uh folks like internews um but there's also sometimes as well peacekeeping missions mandated to look at uh mis and disinformation the protection implications and respond to it so there are sometimes other uh other actors at the um at the international level who can can play a role and uh in identifying and also supporting those civil society at the community level who are trying to do that work. Thank you very much Lauren and thank you for our speakers I think this was very useful and informative and indeed very very concerning examples from Ukraine but I'm sure um our participants today could identify with some of those examples from their own context I know there might be other questions hopefully we will have other opportunities to answer them but some very initial observations I would like to stress the the part that Alex concluded with on the role of community and the role of civil society and there's a lot to be done there to engage the different actors and as Masoud mentioned in the in the chat benefit from the different capacities that are out there there's also some room for exploration in the AI domain and and the the the technology um around it so I hope there will be some linkages between the different actors after the webinar to do that and one final thing is just a recommendation also to our speakers on all these amazing and protection oriented tools how to make them more and more accessible to people in the field to people working across the globe I think today with the civic um um um research we have seen how much powerful it is to know about things that are happening and how much we can benefit so it would be great to to make it accessible and allow for even further cross-learning and I think we commit in the advocacy working group of the global protection cluster to help facilitate with that thank you very much everyone and thank you to our speakers bye have a good evening thank you bye thank you bye bye