 that is streamed on Facebook. The recording will be posted on International Ideas YouTube channel later, where you will also find the previous lectures as well. And one of which is very relevant to the discussion we'll be having today with Professor Dujan Tam. So at this point, very warm welcome to all of you. I see quite a few of you in the participants list. So thank you for joining us on WebEx and Facebook. And sorry about the late start. And my name is Inke. It's an honor to be joining you from Mongolia today and moderate this session, which would be an interesting session and how also timely this session is given all the recent elections we have witnessed, including the one in the U.S. still going on, seems like. So today's lecture is part of a series of online lectures that the International Idea is organizing in collaboration with friends in different countries in Asia and the Pacific. So we have friends collaborating from Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, Myanmar, Fiji, Indonesia, Vietnam, and of course, open-site forum. It's very proud to be working with Idea as well. So the lectures are organized on a fortnightly basis. The next one is coming up in two weeks. So keep an eye out for more information on that, on Idea and Idea Facebook and Twitter pages. So before we start, there is also a few housekeeping announcements I would like to make. One is the pre-lecture survey. I already asked you to fill it out. And throughout the lecture, we will also be posting like snap very quick questions. It would be like a one-minute, very quick questions. So if you can also fill that out, that would be very helpful. It will make this event more interactive and exciting for all of us. So please do that. But this only also applies to those joining us on Webex. And then at the end of the lecture, Professor Thao has spoken. We will have a Q&A session and we'll appreciate if you can actually write your questions in the chat box on the right hand also side of the screen. And address, make sure you address that to everyone so we can all see what kind of questions are coming in. So I think I've covered all the housekeeping stuff and let me now introduce Professor Jujung Thao. So Jujung Thao is of course, you know, you hosted one of the previous lectures and it was a very exciting discussion as well. And today's discussion is also very much relevant to that discussion, like a continuation of that discussion. So I'm very happy to welcome you. So Jujung Thao is Professor at Melbourne Law School. He's also Director of the Electric Regulation Research Network, which is an initiative sponsored by Australia's New South Wales Election Commission, Victorian Electric Commission and Melbourne Law School. Actually, I was actually quite excited to learn about this network because as someone who has been working with civil society groups, government and policy makers to improve electoral integrity and build trust in democratic processes for more than a decade, I'm extremely grateful such a robust platform exists for applied research in this field. And Professor Thao has been at the forefront of this initiative since its very beginning into 2012. As a leading expert in the field, he has researched and written extensively on topics relevant to electoral democracy, political participation and in particular, the controversial role of money in politics, exploring questions relevant to many countries including Australia where he's currently based such as should the foreign political donations be banned, public funding of political parties. And of course today's topic, which is looking at issues at the intersection of digital campaigning and political finance. So now let me pass it on to Professor Thao. Flower is yours. Thank you so much NK for that generous introduction. And really let me begin by thank you International Idea for this great initiative. I think particularly the efforts of Adi and Jennifer. I've learned a lot through this online lecture series and I very much look forward to learning more, including in this particular event. What I plan to do today is really deal in the intersection with three sets of challenges that constitute existential threats to democracies across the world. The first is money in politics, which now doesn't just pose a threat in terms of integrity of elections, but also according to the OECD policy capture. And according to the UN Deputy Secretary General, in fact, in the worst case scenarios, state capture by money interests. Now the second set of challenges which constitute also an existential threat is really the impact of digital technologies, which I think we all can agree is affecting a profound transformation in terms of the landscape governing democracies. So the principal question that I'm going to address today is how much digital campaigning affect the problems of political finance? And I'm going to do so by reference to a third set of challenges and really the challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. And really reflecting upon how the impact of digital technologies on the problems of political finance might be shaped by COVID-19. And what I'm presenting today and the paper that will be circulated after today's event is really conducted by way of a road mapping exercise. So what I mean by that is really I'm trying to sort of elucidate what I consider to be some of the key issues or what might be a good framework in thinking through these issues. And there'll be various examples in the presentation and also in the paper to illustrate the arguments. But really it's really by way of preliminary analysis really by way of a conversational starter and I'm really looking forward to the interactions I have today on this event and also after this event in terms of your experiences, your perspectives in terms of your particular country. Now let me begin by some definitions and I'm going to be brave and share my screen. Okay. Great. Did that work? MK, sorry. It seemed to work on my side. Yeah. Right. Fantastic. Okay. I'm going to run through the definitions reasonably quickly, but this sort of set the scene for the analysis that follows. So the first is really to sort of be clear in terms of what I mean by digital campaigning and what I mean is really the use of digital media in election campaigns. And as we all know that occurs through a swore of strategies, internet strategies, social media strategies, data-driven strategies and also the use of protocol campaign software. And when we think about digital campaigning we must of course think about in the context of the fact that election campaigning of course is longstanding and election campaigning takes various forms. We know of course it takes the form of face-to-face campaigning doorknob campaigning, gatherings, rallies. It also takes uses what's called traditional or legacy medium like television, radio and print and for purpose of today's event it takes the form of digital campaigning. Now why the focus of digital campaigning and I suppose we can distinguish digital campaigning or the digital medium from those other forms of campaigning through a combination of various features. One is accessibility both in terms of coverage of internet or mobile services in terms of low cost of digital devices but also the fact that cross-border communication can occur with tremendous ease. Speed and in fact I was reminded about this when I was reading today about how disinformation or let's put it more plainly lies that Joe Biden had lost Pennsylvania that were actually put in terms of a YouTube video and in 12 hours according to a piece in the New York Times they have been viewed 900,000 times. So that goes to the speed in terms of the communication and the distribution and production of content. Interactivity. So people talk about not just a move away from passive audience to pro users. That is to say that people are not just using content but also producing content and able to do so in a very accessible and cost-effective ways. Targeting and this really connects to the use of data both in terms of collection harvesting algorithms, analytics and also personality profiles. In the last feature I'll point out so it's called anonymity. So that in terms of digital campaigning what information can actually be promulgated without the entity being truly known including by messages sent by computer programs or automations for example like the so-called bots. Now what is clear is of course that digital campaigning can have an upside in terms of the integrity and the robustness of democracies both in terms of broadening and deepening protocol participation, communication, deliberation and accountability. In elections digital campaigning can in fact be a source of richer and deeper voter information it can provide for more effective campaigning by particle parties or other particle organizations. Now at the same time what we of course know is that there are clear threats in terms of digital campaigning. Now I'm going I can't seem to there we go and these are threats are various related threats which I don't propose to deal with directly in this presentation given my focus on the problems of local finance but simply to point out of course they have relevance in terms of this particular area. So we have the threat of disinformation or what is colloquially referred to as fake news. We have problems in terms of interference by foreign nations elections. We have this more subtle but really profound problem of the public sphere bring undermined through the digital medium through the forms of communications that it favors both in terms of virality meaning the certain premium in terms of emotional appeals but also in terms of messages that my seek to maintain or exacerbate polarizing aspects in terms of the constituency. And we again have even a much more subtle problem but very much pressing and potent is is the problem that Josh Soros actually alerted to about the erosion of undermining of political freedom or political economy through the choice architecture that's established by information technology companies. Now connected in all that is of course the really the substantial market power at times quasi monopolistic power of the big tech companies. Now all these are really is beyond the scope of my presentation of paper to deal with any sustained way. What I propose to do is of course focus on the problems of political finance and by political finance I'm going to adopt the very helpful definition that's set out by the International idea handbook on political finance as to quote the the financing illegal and illegal financing of ongoing political party activities and electoral campaigns in particular campaigns by candidates and political parties by also by third parties. Now we think of political finance or specifically problems by political finance they of course manifest themselves in various ways and they are quite strongly shaped by the political economics of different nation states. Now given the audience for this lecture I'm going to focus on the Asia Pacific. Now that cuts the calm down complexity of the task somewhat but not by much because we of course know that the Asia Pacific region is the most populous region in the in the world is very heterogeneous including in terms of the different regimes it has authoritarian hybrid and democratic regimes and democratic regimes performing at varying levels. But for the sake of analytical simplicity let me sort of present in a sort of a stylized way yeah what are problems of political finance in the Asia Pacific region and what you have in that slide is me sort of drawing heavily on two important international idea publications identifying what are the sort of key challenges in terms of political finance in the Asia Pacific region. What I'm going to do for further analytical simplicity is really cluster these problems under two headings the heading of corruption and here I include problems in terms of abuse of state resources clientelism intersection between business and politics illicit funding and vote buying in my mind these are really just different ways in which the problem corruption manifests itself and then the second heading is about unequal electoral context and here I'll include in this particular grouping the lack of resources for opposition parties and female candidates and regulations discouraging competition now with this analytical lens of corruption and inequality in electoral context let me now turn to the question two questions yeah flip side of each other how much digital campaigning address the problems of political finance and how conversely might it worsen the problems of political finance now what we can see in terms of the upside or the possible upside of digital campaigning in terms of addressing the problems of political finance is that it can provide and very effective tool in terms of dealing with these problems in both in terms of corruption and secondly I'll come to in terms of equality in the electoral context now we can provide the two if in fact there were digital systems of reporting and disclosure set up by public agency for example electoral management bodies which enable the public and social society organizations greater ease in following the money yeah and in fact if you combine that kind of data in terms of political funding together with effective search tools with information concerning lobbying assets and money laundering and this in fact was what was recommended by the 2017 International Idea Global State of Democracy report these tools can be quite potent weapons against policy and state capture by money interests including their use of illicit funding another way in which a digital campaigning can be used as a tool is of course in anti-corruption campaigns yeah so we saw this for example in Malaysia with the campaign against former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Raza for his diversion of funds from one MTV we see this in terms of anti-corruption campaigns in Indonesia including campaigns by Kapeka yeah and digital campaigning too can be particularly attractive to oppositional movements yeah oppositional movements they're seeking to actually avoid the much more stringent regulation that might apply to traditional or legacy media an example of this is really the the Arabs one of prime examples is really the Arab Spring uprisings where digital tools were used to great effect to communicate with the external of the outside world now in the COVID-19 pandemic it is possible that there might be an increased reliance in some countries or in many countries on digital campaigning given social distancing groups now having said that I think the extent to which there's such an increase or the extent to which digital campaigning displaces other forms of campaigning I think is unclear or somewhat moot one can for example just as examples the rallies that were held by presidential candidate Trump in the recent US presidential election or another example closer to where we are campaigning in the upcoming December regional elections where there seems to be continuation in terms of face-to-face campaigning now that said if in fact digital campaigning acts as a replacement for face-to-face campaigning it is possible that it might actually disrupt some the dynamics of vote buying as a result and it's something to monitor now digital campaigning can also be can provide for a more level playing field so what's been said for example in Malaysia particularly in the last general elections the 14 general elections that digital campaigning was used as a weapon the week for the opposition parties was in fact instrumental in ending the long rule by the ruling coalition Barisan National and in fact there's consistent evidence in both in Australia Canada and New Zealand that smaller parties can account for the equivalent internet presence to bigger richer parties with a lesser spend yeah so this really connects to the feature of accessibility of digital campaigning and digital campaigning in a related note can broaden political participation so we've seen across the world the so-called born digital organizations so an example from Australia is Get Up it's a what's it's a third party organization that really engages if it's members in members are really digital members yeah okay and really and actually as a result of pioneering these forms of digital political participation has actually been responsible for you know increased activism in various forms now the last dot point on that particular column is that digital campaigning can level the playing field in terms of fundraising and that is true crowdfunding and again the famous example here is Barack Obama President Barack Obama's presidential campaign but we can add to that for example Bernie Sanders campaign and Elizabeth Warren's campaign to be Democrat Democratic Party's presidential nominee now let me come to the flip side of question how might digital campaigning worsen problems of political finance and there's really a dark mirror here for the potential of digital campaigning to address the problems of political finance digital campaigning doesn't necessarily to transparency or sunlight necessary as an antidote to corruption on the contrary it relies in key respects on secrecy now this is obvious in terms of anonymity but it's also the case with digital micro targeting with each carried out to the granular level of targeting specific individuals constitutes dark advertising that is advertising that's only known between the creator and distributors that are advertising on one hand and the individual recipient on the other and furthermore in terms of the opaque forces shaping digital campaigning is the often impenetrable use of big data and we saw this vividly illustrated by Cambridge analyticals activities in the United Kingdom's Brexit referendum and neither is digital campaigning the so or dominant preserve of oppositional movements indeed it can be used effectively by dominant political parties and those seeking to avoid accountability in many authoritarian regimes for instance social media has been co-opted as a tool for information control to suppress fundamental human rights to discredit political opposition and to drown out political descent in Indonesia for example anti-car anti-corruption campaigners who have been subject to digital attacks including the use of bots and trolls which appear to have been orchestrated by elements within the Indonesian government now the COVID-19 pandemic has in fact worsened the situation by providing a convenient excuse for some governments for suppressing digital speech with some governments targeting online dissent on the pretext on combating fake news concerning the virus in this disturbing way the pandemic operates according to the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of freedom of expression and speech as to quote a pathogen of repression now the broader point to be made is that digital campaigning is not intrinsically a weapon of the week it is also a weapon of the strong and more pertanly for this paper digital campaigning is easily deployed by those with a greater amount of funding and this arise most fundamentally from the fact that digital campaigning is not only organic that is in terms of free content but also paid and paid digital campaigning can enhance the scope and effectiveness is campaigning in various ways and you see in terms of the third dot point in the right column the various ways in which paid campaigning paid digital campaigning can enhance its effectiveness data-driven strategies Cambridge the vivid example paid advertising of course cyber troops and what do I mean by cyber troops and I using a definition here from the Oxford project on computational propaganda what I need to refer to are government military or political party teams committed committed to manipulating public opinion over social media and what that project has found is that the number of countries which should cyber troops are present have increased dramatically in the past few years from 28 countries in 2017 to 48 countries in 2018 and now 70 and 70 countries in 2019 and the use of cyber troops is clear in terms of Asia-Pacific region we saw this clearly in terms of 2019 Indonesian presidential elections and also in terms of the last Malaysian general elections and in terms of the strategies here in terms of this campaigning the distinction I put between organic and paid can often be blurred often paid digital campaigning is directed at eliciting organic campaigning and sometimes it can do so by masquerading as organic campaigning now take for instance the paid use the paid use of social media influences such as buzzers Indonesia their effective use will largely depend on others perceiving their opinions of the influences are generally held and not the result of financial inducement another way in which the paid former digital campaigning occurs which is important to foreground is the digital campaigning industry and in important respects this industry is transnational so one example is really one of companies at the heart of the Cambridge analytical controversy SCL elections now according to the UK parliamentary on fake news and this for indecent information fake news SCL elections a campaign elections for prime ministers and presidents since 1994 in at least 28 countries now more recent example is the 2020 New Zealand elections where the so-called bad boys of Brexit Aaron Banks and Andy Wigmore the two chief architects of the leave EU campaign UK provided paid support to instance Peters and his party New Zealand first now through all these paid forms digital campaigning can heighten the risk of corruption by inflicting the cost of election campaigns so the cost election campaigns increases so the need for political parties and candidate candidates to raise funds and given the pre-existing clientelistic relationships and relationships between parties and business the main source of funds will be corporate funds and equally clear digital campaigning because of the money it involves can distort election campaigns by providing added advantage to the greater resource let me end by point out to no problem there's also important bare mind in terms of digital campaign campaigning it gives rise to new ways of abusing state resources and the use of government data by incumbent parties is a case in point so in Malaysia for instance again there's evidence that virus national parties access and use personal data collected by government agencies for their election campaigns and the pandemic may in fact exacerbate this particular risk by increasing the legitimacy of government gathering and using personal data of the citizens to contain the spread of virus notably true health surveillance such as contract tracing but also true the as governments operate in so-called emergency mode let me come to the my concluding section how the the balance between these opposing tendencies and how they play out would depend on particular national context with a complex range of factors present technological changes will interact with political and social dynamics as well as the COVID-19 pandemic I think it's therefore wise to avoid technological time that visual campaigning will address the problems of political finance or the dystopian genre where the view is that digital campaigning will worsen the problems of political finance now crucial element that was the impact of digital campaigning on the problems of political finance will be regulation effective regulation both in design and in presentation can steer digital campaigning in the direction enhancing the integrity of political finance and what you have on this slide some quite very well some new documents were not necessarily not exclusively dedicated to political finance which are quite useful in terms of providing guidance for the way forward and what I'd like to do in the next minute or so is really highlight six regulatory principles one can draw from these sources in terms of regulating digital campaigning in the space of political finance one is media neutrality so if there should be regulation it should extend to digital campaigning and generally should not be restricted to particular media transparency and here I think we can take key of the advocacy by the UN special expenditure on the promotion and protection of the right of freedom opinion of expression for an agenda of radical transparency in the digital age and we should be considering measures such as digital imprints of advertising a registered particle advertising including digital digital advertising and details of spending on digital campaigning limits on spending and here I think we can take hard from the recommendation from the new daily decoration on political finance regulation South Asia to limit election campaign spending to reasonable limits at this point it seems to me is important to give consideration to full implications of data as currency in this area of political finance and also to measures to quote to restore the human scale that is to say restore campaigning to human interaction and we might consider in that particular space about limiting the use of personal data for campaigning purposes the fourth principle we have up in slide our controls on the use of government digital resources for election campaigning so this thing should extend to government advertising in the pre-election period which where there should be controls that are particularly strict effective oversight this of course is an abiding concern of those or reformers in this area and it seems to me that in this space of digital campaigning as with political finance regulation generally there should be an oversight or ecosystem comprising of institutions anti-corruption agencies inter-agency collaboration courts as well as political parties and civil society organizations the last principle regular and frequent information sharing and review is practically vital we're in the midst of an acceleration moment in technology we should have a profound impact on the workings of democracies as former Secretary-General of the United Nations coffee on and put it technology does not stand still neither can democracy thank you thank you very much so just to remind our participants if you have questions on this topic to Professor Jojen Tham you can go to the chat box on the right side of the screen and address that to all panelists so we can see your questions and I can read it out to everybody and then we can discussion around this topic also we have like among our participants we have a few experts joining us from Indonesia Philippines and Malaysia and since this is such prominent kind of challenge now is affecting elections all around the region actually globally I thought we thought it would be interesting to also hear from some of the participants to add to what Professor Tham has presented to us and see have this you know challenge of the digital campaigning is affecting the challenge we already were you know struggling with our in our region in terms of the world that many placed in our elections politics so meanies if you can hear me meanies are you here with us okay if meanies is here if you meanies is the market then we have also friends from not really in Malaysia so joining us today to offer insights into how digital campaigning is also unfolding in their recent elections and how it's also contributing to with the problems we have in terms of political corruption you Professor Chan Tham described so there's a question from Lena I'll read it out to everybody should the digital companies such as Facebook be required to disclose the amount of money received from political parties for election campaigning Facebook did this in the recent elections not sure if they were obliged to do so or it's all one entirely for the time with you do you want me to answer that yet yes I I think so I think the answer is yes and if you want the UK Electro Commission report that you have in a slide as well as the UK House of Commons report essentially makes that recommendation and I think this is where I think it comes head to head with the other problem with digital campaigning I mentioned which I said I wasn't going to cover in any sustained detail the power of the big tech companies yep while this basically being a strong push by Electro commission and House of Commons the government is basically UK governments basically dragging his feet and I think this is a big issue in this area in terms of how do you get reform to regulate the digital companies and and what the UK Requiry showed is are two things one this and this is the word they use the content showed by Facebook in terms of inquiry and when it said talk about a content it's focused basically about the repeated request for Mark Mark Mark Zuckerberg to come before the committee and he refused to all right and which really underlines the need for actually international cooperation to actually deal with some problem like this actually like a little bit of perspective also from Mongolia Facebook has this new feature ad library which they actually launched the Mongolia in our June last June election but it wasn't really an effective thing to do because you know for that ad library to actually work and contribute to transparency around money in politics those the candidates and political parties actually have go through an authorization process and then kind of label their app that has been self-political but that didn't happen because there was no requirement in our local laws requiring this kind of transparency on the part of candidates and political parties also third parties doing campaigning during the official election campaign period as well as you know before and after yeah so this actually brings to like an interesting point because you know elections are national state things right it's it's these are like important political events happening within national states but when it comes to Facebook and Twitter these are like trans national companies and even though they are trying to do something in a response to the challenges we just described in this lecture if the national laws are not on par with this new policies you know Mongolia's case kind of shows that it's actually quite quite useless yeah now I I agree with you you you need authorization laws right I mean you need to have a regulatory framework I think it cannot rely on voluntary measures and a part of the big tech companies it's not going to work that way mm-hmm mm-hmm so at this point there is a polling question posted by ID on the right side um we have uh one minute to answer actually 30 seconds to answer this question I would be very happy if you could do that for us I'll read out the question to those of you who are joining on Facebook digital campaigning has worsened the problems of political corruption in my country interesting very relevant question let's see how many of you have answered the agree disagree I'm sure so those are the options you have so again if you have questions please write the questions in the chat box those of you who are on Webex and please make sure that you address that to all panellists interesting but I have another question since as we wait for the following results um you know Twitter actually stopped all paid advertising advertisements and I think I believe November last last year right yeah but then you said in your lecture it's actually there is the boundaries between paid political advertising and you know organic unpaid content is also very blurry so how effective do you think that you know this kind of major would be in kind of controlling the problems we are seeing yeah I I don't support I mean I support greater transparency in terms of the protocol advertising but I don't support a ban on um advertising why shouldn't you know I mean so long as we can ensure proper transparency we can deal the issues into the corruption equality you know it seems to be digital campaigning can in fact you know be a boon in terms of democracy um can I perhaps answer a different aspect to this because um some of this regulation again comes back to the power that companies can actually experience quite strong pushback um from the peck companies nk there was a requirement put in place in Canada and all except for Facebook then some of the companies basically said look we can't do this so we're gonna not going to take any paid protocol advertising and that seems to be a retrograde retrograde retrograde step if you like um but I do think that's not insurmountable problem I think because Facebook is able to do it and I think once you have a big one or a big competitors do it the rest where you feel that this actually fair bit of money of money involved too in terms of for the companies yeah we have a question from also before we do that on the polling question we just ask the two out of 12 agree we have one disagreeing out of 12 and three unsure so most yeah most of us agree or unsure about the correct how it contributes to corruption and then we have question from Michael can you speak a little bit more on cyber troops with government social media units fold under this category thanks so let me just repeat the definition cyber troops are using and it's not my original definition it's from that the also project and I put a link into the chat shortly they define it as government military or political party committed to manipulating public opinion over social media so the answer to your question is yes right it includes government and I suppose in these two we're not just looking at about private actors we're also looking at government actors in terms of the digital campaigning space now let me I'll put a link here where you can see the cyber troops report so this actually adds an interesting dynamic to the problems state resources in elections which is already a huge problem and especially in the in Asia and the Pacific region so like from a practitioner point of view though what would be more like effective effective ways to especially in terms of like controlling this kind of issue involving government yeah is there a good practice emerges somewhere in the region are we there of that yeah I think you know at the very least you want to have very strong care take regulation so that is when when elections are called essentially that that the party that you know still in power but it's contesting for the next election basically there's very strict regulation in terms of what they can use in terms of government resources generally right so and then put data include personnel and so and so forth I think the other area to look into very closely is that in in many countries there will be some kind of funding for parliamentarians less latest yeah less latest to perform the jobs yeah which is are based on good reasons because you know less latest need funds to do that but again I think you need strict regulation in terms of once elections are called okay that those funds cannot be used for election hearing purposes so this is a problem in Australia right so as well as other countries I think those are the things you be be looking at and I do think that data data is easy one to deal with I mean they just shouldn't be able to access the data political parties would access the data that's collected by government and they'll be in accordance with privacy regulation too one of the key principles of privacy regulation is that you can only use the data for the purpose for which is collected so government collects data for public purposes not for the purpose of you know political parties using it for election campaigns we have Ninis with us I think so Ninis if you can if you can unmute her mind Ninis would you like to speak about the Hi can you hear me? Yes can you hear me? okay thank you Inki and Professor Yu-Shung Sam I'm sorry if I miss tell your name I'm Ninis from Indonesia I'm just I'm gonna give some brief talk about what happened in Indonesia we are going to have local election in December 9 2020 and in the context of election amid COVID-19 pandemic actually the government and also the election managing bodies also also courage the contestant to do to use the online media or virtual campaigning but it seems that the contestant still still it is more effective if they do yeah they do the conventional campaign so they are not use the media maximally but I think campaign social media campaign it is cheaper and it's I think it is easier but we in Indonesia we don't have an effective regulation to tackle the challenge that Professor Yuxiang said before because the regulation in Indonesia only limit the number of accounts that can be used by the contestant for example in the provincial level they are only limited to have 30 accounts social and in the district level they are only limited to have 20 social media accounts so and I don't think it is effective to tackle that kind of challenge for example misinformation this information and so on because we have a problem because in social media campaign I think the public can have direct access to the contestant but when the election management body only limited the number of the social media account and they only have time to have campaign at only 14 days before the silent before the election day it is still not not not solve the challenge because I think the effective way is to push the transparency like you said there is micro-targeting in social media we should know how the social media platform works how this how some content of media social I can get how the social media content can be distributed to the special group also and also the transparency we don't have the kind of regulation that is the Indonesia context so actually I also have a question for professor Jui Shungka what is the guideline or the essential to oversight social media campaign because I think the limitation if we only limit the number of social media registered by the contestant it is not effective because there is a buzzer he said social media army that can spread this information and misinformation to the public and the social media disinformation and misinformation can be one factor that can that can what we call it that can rise I mean if there is disinformation misinformation or hoax that spread in media social and then it can impact to be the demonstration in the field for example if the result of the election is not it's not accepted by the public I think that's my comment and question thank you Thank you Nyanis there's actually another question from Indonesian related is it possible to limit ads on social media in Indonesia Canada can have ads on social media for 14 days yeah I think the way I'll answer this is I think with the first principle I had is about media neutrality what I mean by that is that regulations that don't select out particular medium whether even be social media yeah so for me the primary concern in this area put aside questions of disinformation put aside question for interference I just want to focus on political finance okay the problem is about money yeah and that money finds different ways to influence electoral outcomes okay so you should we should be developing regulation that captures all forms of election campaign expending yeah okay and I would include in that paid advertising but I would include in that cyber troops trolls I would include in that use of money to purchase data and data analytics I would include in that payment of buzzers social media buzzers in Indonesia but pay social media influences and if we want to talk more specifically in terms of drafting a legislation what I would think would be a helpful way to move forward is think okay you have a concept of electoral expenditure that is very broad that captures digital media face-to-face digital media yeah and you could have an inclusive list inclusive list of specific media just to make clear that parties and candidates and other particular organizations know what should be disclosed so you might put in there okay we want to specifically know how much you spend on social media how much you spend on you know data analytics and so on and so forth but I am definitely not in favor of media or regulation just targeting particular media because what would happen is that money will find a different way that's problem number one problem number two we know these areas evolving so quickly right okay you think about I mean the according to the cyber troops report Facebook is still king in most countries yeah but we know of course that's not the case in all countries as I understand it for example in Malaysia is what's at that's actually the primary way of actually you know campaigning in terms of social media and so on and so forth and I'm sure people can give other different examples so but if we start targeting particular forms of media we'll find that the technology will outstrip our regulatory scope thank you for that answer Nini is that do you have any other follow up questions so at this point we'll have another quick poll question that I did our friend has just posted it's on the right side again I'll read out the question for you digital campaigning has caused unfairness in the elections of my country the answer choices you have are agree disagree and sure so have fun answering the poll question and I'll also read out the answers to you in a minute you have about 30 seconds left to answer this snap quiz question and meanwhile if you have questions also to please write that in the chat room and address that to all panelists so I can read the question for everyone because those who of us on Facebook can't actually see the questions yet yes I think there's a question that maybe it didn't go to everybody by going to the host and presenter so I think it's from TT Angliani do you want me to read that out oh yeah sure go ahead I can't see that so you can fine alright so the question is can you describe in more detail the principle of effective oversight who or what institution is better in undertaking that function I think that's a really important question TT my answer is that when you think of the principle effective oversight I think in terms of what we need in terms of institutions and regulation it has to be multifaceted that's why I briefly mentioned at the end to talk about the ecosystem of compliance and oversight you actually need a whole range of different bodies working in concert without a culture of compliance right so I mean of course the the electoral management bodies electoral commissions are important and you know in terms of the sharp end of things anti-corruption agencies but you also need political parties and society organizations involved and on the last part what I would stress is this is that oversight and the other organizations need to develop internal systems of oversight yeah to ensure that there's proper compliance with the regulation can I just follow up on that because those who are those of us in the civil society who try to monitor and follow many in politics you know it's all about transparency of the money that political parties and committees are spent on digital campaigning though it's already you know we're talking about transnational companies you know big multinational companies and how much money these companies are receiving from political contestants from you know places like Mongolia so in this case though like how I mean not just like Facebook Twitter because those are like our usual suspects but then different tools right so how what would be your advice to civil society groups trying to follow money and also journal it applies to also journalists as well yeah I suspect what I think is necessary requirement is that there needs to be actually a public database of reporting and disclosure and it's a publicly funded database database in terms of disclosure and reporting because it really seems to me that you know in all countries and perhaps only US is the exception but even the US relies upon public data civil society alone cannot produce the data and information to follow the money right it can build upon a base of public data and then undertake further investigation so I think that is got to be the key priority the key priority is to show the laws and a proper public database and the database meaning so if we you know transnational multinational companies are involved in this it also requires them to disclose certain type of information in terms of the money they are receiving from and national states right so who's going to maintain this database is it like a national base national state base database are we talking about or is it something else multinational organization how would they do this national well national the main source of okay putting I mean the problems of foreign interference post real issues in terms of campaigning from outside the country coming into the country right okay but putting inside that issue most of the spending will be by national base actors yes political parties candidates political organizations so that the regulatory entry point yeah okay and it's really by saying okay all right how much have you spent on you know social media accounts and so on so forth where where does where does the big tech companies come in Israeli with the transparency in terms of the political advertising so basically giving telling people okay this is a political ad okay or how if there's micro targeting how did this you know why did we end up actually targeting M.K. was that because of particular date what data did they use end up targeting you right okay so for them they're so involved but in a different way in terms of transparency I see well it's definitely a double-edged sword like you know it seems like as we progress through this discussion the doctor side is actually weighing more than the digital conveying it seems but then you said mentioned in your lecture that you know in certain places that you know long-term problems like worth buying yeah is decreasing because we now have maybe maybe maybe yeah so I'm not you know I'm just saying and we just I mean I'm interested in know other people I suppose I mean Indonesian upcoming regional elections would be a good case study but you know what I've hypothesized it might possibly be true kind of thing I think let me pick up your point about double-edged sword I think you're quite right in pointing it out I think that's why you know I ended up the lecture by saying look we should not avoid we should not you know see this as a binary issue I think it's a much more complex situation is that also I've called for regulation but we have to be careful the regulation of course can be abused by the parties government right and we've seen this you know in a related sphere in terms of fake news elicitation right where you've been used to stifle dissent and so I think we need to design the regulation carefully and importantly I think that implementation should needs to be entrusted in independent organizations like the electoral management bodies but the the problem with that though is like a lot of the that sufficiently could you know to deal with this new challenges yeah that would be something also for us to be concerned about I guess no no and yeah yeah no I agree yeah so we are coming almost to the end of the event today and the post-lecture poll questions are posted on the right side panel again for those of you on Webex so we would really appreciate if you can fill that out because it's going to give us valuable feedback on the lecture today and help us improve as we organize more of these lectures until the end of the year meanwhile I would like to thank Professor Jitjantal for today's and also your contribution to previous lectures as well which is which was very interesting actually I had to watch it over and over again very nice so very kind of especially because last week you know we had a suicide meeting trying to figure out you know what to advise our government on regulations relating to digital campaigning Facebook and Twitter etc suicide groups are very active in Mongolia and we monitored political advertising on Facebook for the first time so it's a challenge for CSOs and a challenge for EMBs a challenge for regulators and it's very unknown territory and as you mentioned in your previous lecture as well it's not going away you know this is only going to group so I appreciate that we have this multinational platform to talk about these things and hopefully we'll see a more clarity and if you if you have final remarks to make I'd like to invite you to do that yeah no thanks for your kind very kind comments I think the point I would stress is the right one this is a transnational international problem and I think perhaps what we can think about in terms of this constituency for this lecture series that I think you know the sharing of information about best practices and worst practices actually will be I think quite a useful thing in terms of all the different countries are trying to grapple with what seems to be a common problem thank you Professor and also I would like to thank the international idea for making this possible making today's event possible and also friends from Asia and the Pacific joining us today from your different countries and from some of the places actually I think it's quite late now so especially to those of you who are joining very late thank you very much for making today's event more exciting and please don't forget to answer the post lecture quiz which will be up for about ten minutes and also after you leave the event there will be an evaluation questionnaire as well and if you can fill that out we'll also very much appreciate your contribution so with that I hope we can close today's session and Professor thank you very much game