 Good afternoon. I'm pleased to welcome you to this webinar organized by the Institute of International and European Affairs and the Embassy of Ireland in Brazil. My name is Juliana Del Boquerque. I'm an academic at University College Cork. My fields of interest are German and Jewish studies. And I'm currently developing a research on shifting perceptions of Jewish identity in Brazil. I also write a fortnightly column for the newspaper Folha de São Paulo. We are delighted to be joined today by Dr. Robert Muga, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute in Brazil, who has been generous enough to take time out of his schedule to speak to us. Dr. Muga specializes in security, cities, climate action and digital transformation. He co-founded the Igarapé Institute, a think tank and do tank, focused on human, digital and climate security. He also co-founded the SACDAF Group, a data science company committed to detecting and deterring cyber threats and building digital resilience. Dr. Muga is also a senior advisor to McKinsey, a fellow at Princeton, the Graduate Institute Geneva, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and his non-resident faculty at Singularity University. Dr. Muga also advices the World Economic Forum, Councils on the Future of City, its annual global risk report, and the Global Parliament of Mayors. He earned a doctorate from the University of Oxford. We are also delighted to be joined today by both Ambassador Marcel Fortuna-Biatu, Ambassador of Brazil to Ireland, and Ambassador Shen Hoi, Ambassador of Ireland to Brazil, who will provide remarks at the beginning and at the closing of this webinar. Ambassador Biatu now will provide opening remarks. And following this, Dr. Muga will deliver a keynote speech to us for about 20 minutes. Then we'll go to Q&A. Let's use the Q&A tool here on the Zoom call to send your questions and make sure to put your name in the questions and your affiliation so we know where the questions are coming from. Finally, Ambassador Hoi will bring the webinar to a close with a few remarks. And I now formally hand the microphone to Ambassador Biatu. Ambassador Biatu, the floor is yours. Thank you, Juliana. And thank you for your hope for remarks and to the organizers from IEA for this invitation. I enjoyed the invitation because I think it's a very timely initiative. I can provide an opportunity, I believe, for an Irish audience to get better acquainted with recent fracking events in Brazil, which have caught international attention. And maybe just as important because what has happened in Brazil is a challenge not only for my country but globally in its nature and its reach. So I'd like to make a few quick points. First is that we underestimated the willingness, I think, of radical extremists to use violence to put their fringe ideas into practice in direct opposition to a majority opinion. I was surprised by what happened. We luckily did not see any violence, but there is no room for complacency. The fact that there is negligible support for extreme solutions cannot make us ignore the fact that Brazil and many other countries is politically polarized. Which means that we have the duty and the responsibility to understand the motivation as well as the methods of these individuals. This requires, I think, fundamentally distinguishing between dissatisfaction with institutions, which is rife and natural in any democracy, and the willingness to overthrow these institutions. I think there's a fundamental distinction that must guide our actions. My second point is that democracy prevailed, and I believe is stronger in Brazil as a result. The Brazilian institutions have shown resilience. All government branches came together for a coordinated largely seamless response. I believe institutions are only as strong as your ability to withstand threats, and this was showcased in the Brazilian case by the active rule of law which was quickly restored without violence. By showing overwhelming support for democratic process and bringing those responsible to justice, and a full investigation now underway at different levels, both intelligence and justice. Third point is that I think this highlights the wider question of the need to deal with threats against democracy, but obviously without jeopardizing democratic practices institutions. Fundamentally, and I think this is what is happening in Brazil, applying laws consistently transparently, and with accountability. In the case of Brazil there is a fundamental issue here because the attacks involved security personnel, even from on forces, as well as political activists and leaders. This has arisen in the fact that there is now discussion about excluding from office recent politician to be elected, and this is an important discussion which is now going on, I think in a very fruitful manner. I think it is fundamental that we recognize the role of fake news break news has legitimized through social media into democratic sentiments. This fake news exploits real grievances doesn't make it less, less me fake, just makes it more difficult to step out how to regulate this. The crucial issue is to distinguish I believe between freedom of expression and hate speech or incitement to civilians. This must be worked through the institutions, and it obviously very complex debate. It's not easy, not obvious. Fourthly, I think Brazil appreciates the global solidarity that has been shown. We appreciate statements by President Higgins and tarnished the Martin. It helps counter the false narrative, not only in Brazil but equally overseas. And this is a threat as I said in beginning not just a Brazil right wing extremism has been rising, even in Ireland there's been talk of it. In the recent article in the in the Irish Times referring to the influence or negative influence of events in Brazil could have in Spain. There is a need for a global answer, common narrative that allows for mutually reinforcing and legitimizing policies through multilateral sanction and institutions, and that is something which I think it must get the top of agenda. And finally, on a more topical or bilateral note, I would say that the recent creation of the Irish Brazilian parliamentary friendship group, just instituted will provide a venue an opportunity for these issues to be debated within among politicians, but, but with also other issues in a way that helps us bilaterally also to take forward this agenda. So these are the main points I had. Thank you for the opportunity and I look forward to a very illuminating and productive debate thank you. Thank you very much ambassador. Dr Muga please, you can take the stage. Thanks so much to the IEA for for this very kind invitation to participate in today's session. And as I wait for my colleague to put up the PowerPoint. Let me also offer my thanks to Ambassador Beato for for really excellent opening observations and of course to Ambassador Hoy who's going to provide us with some thoughtful reflections at the end in advance. Thanks to you doctor Dalbert Curkey for chairing the session. And let me extend my final thanks to Ireland for for its support to some of our work at the Institute on digital harm reduction. Given the impressive indeed illustrious nature of this group, I'll do my best to keep my reflections to a minimum. So let me turn to the next slide. Thank you for your introduction. And I think was already mentioned, I'm one of the founders of the Institute where a global think and do a global think and action tank working on a range of different topics. Our focus is not just at the local scale in Brazil but also regionally and globally, and our activities span the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. One key point is the Institute is women led. So I am not necessarily representative example of the Institute. This is one of the issues from gun control and drug policy to environment crime and cybersecurity. Next slide please. I've been asked to reflect on some of the challenges facing Brazil today and into his future. This is no small task in 25 going on 23 minutes. What I'm going to try to do rather than taking them all on is really focus in on digital harms. And I'm going to focus on digital harms because I think they amplify a host of other risks facing Brazil and indeed as the ambassador mentioned, many other issues. In this very short presentation, I'll start with a simple explanation as to what I mean by digital harms. I'll then offer a few general reflections on how they're potentially impacting Brazil's democracy and democratic institutions. And to avoid being overly gloomy, I'll offer some examples of the ways in which Brazil is responding which might as the ambassador mentioned serve as an example not just for Brazil and the region but other countries around the world. This Brazil is a kind of laboratory for a set of issues that are being wrestled with from North America to the European Union across Africa and Asia. And I think what happens in Brazil offers some insights into the opportunities and the challenges of disrupting digital harms, the limits of government and judicial overreach, the practical difficulties of managing social media platforms debates over free speech and censorship and much much more. Next slide please. So looking sort of into the near term future, there's really no way to sugarcoat it, the incoming Lula administration faces a range of challenges in 2023, and these are just a few. We're looking at multiple intersecting risks across multiple sectors, we've got a deeply divided Congress, we have a second economy, we have high unemployment we have food insecurity, we have what the makings and perpetuation of environmental problems in the Amazon, and undergridding all these difficulties is a hyper polarized society, one where both sides feel the other constitutes a kind of existential threat. And rather than try and fail to address all of these challenges, I'm going to focus on one particular subset that I think amplifies the others, and that's digital harms. Next slide please. So what are these digital harms and apologies for this large matrix. What I'm going to say is that they're easier described than defined very very generically, they consist of a range of malicious online activities that run the gamut from digital divides to digital authoritarianism to digital surveillance all the way to cyber attacks disinformation misinformation and hate speech, and like just about everywhere else on the planet, Brazil is facing multiple types of digital harms occurring simultaneously that are often reinforcing one another. So we're focusing on all of them, but for the purposes of this presentation I want to narrow the gaze to just disinformation and misinformation. Next slide. Think of digital harms as the negative externalities of the digital comments, sort of the dark side of digital transformation. They are a byproduct of the internet, which as many of you know wasn't designed with security or privacy in mind. No doubt that the spread of connectivity digital devices and new platforms has transformed our politics or economics or social interactions. But along with these new efficiencies and economies of scale. They've also opened up a host of new threats and vulnerabilities. Digital harms and misinformation, including this disinformation misinformation aren't just a nuisance. They're potentially hugely damaging toward democracies, and to our wider development. We saw this very clearly with COVID related misinformation, which led to vaccine hesitancy and fed anti vax movements, especially in places like Brazil and the US which not coincidentally had the two highest death tolls. We're seeing it with climate disinformation, so many skepticism and doubt undermining the green transition, again affecting Brazil in the US when it comes to domestic policy. We're seeing with attacks against our democratic institutions and our elections, including undermining faith and trust in the systems of governance. Next slide please. Of course we need to be quite careful about over attribution. There are many factors that are contributing to what many describe as a 15 year low faith and democracy in Brazil and Latin America. As you can see here Brazil is somewhere in the pack when it comes to support for democracy as of 2021. But this is down from highs in the 70s to 80% in the 1990s and 2000s. Now there are many explanations for the overall downward trend in support for democracy. There's frustration with political elites, who many feel are failing to deliver. The persistent and nagging inequality and low wages unemployment that affect large parts of Latin America. There's a low economic growth, high rates of inflation. There's the corruption and crime and victimization, all of which tend to be proportionate higher. But some social scientists are starting to document the ways in which digital harms such as misinformation disinformation can amplify existing discontent sharpen biases and shift behavior. Digital harms are especially corrosive for democracy when they're leveraged by political leaders to target the very legitimacy and integrity of electoral processes and democratic institutions. They don't just reduce support for democracy, but they also reinforce and intensify anti democratic sentiment. As you can see here over 30% of Brazilians claim to be dissatisfied satisfied democracy in 2021, which is an increase I mentioned on previous years. And this can help explain in some ways why we're seeing rising support for alternative forms of governance, including more autocratic and authoritarian ones in Brazil and around the world. Next slide please. A more extreme effect of digital harms is to intensify support for non democratic transitions of power something the ambassador, be at to alluded to. As we saw in the US on January 6 digital harms can supercharge protest movements and empower those extreme and hateful voices including those opposed to democratic forms of government. We've witnessed this in recent years in Brazil, including a deepening tolerance for the pushing of the boundaries of democratic norms in the event of dissatisfaction with elected leaders. Brazil is already vulnerable of course with just under 40% of the population saying that coups were acceptable and certain conditions and circumstances of extreme and egregious abuse of power. Well of course many factors are play the spread of disinformation and proliferation of conspiracies and rising acceptance of non democratic solutions culminated in some ways with the January 8 insurrection. The point is that disinformation channeled by a tiny handful of influencers and bots can mobilize relatively large factions of partisans with devastating effect. Next slide please. As you might expect, trust in democracy and electoral process is also correlated with demographic factors. It seems that younger people across Latin America are typically less trustful, comparatively speaking of democratic norms than older generations. We see here that with just 30% of young people Latin Americans young Latin Americans between 1825 trusting elections as compared to 53% among seniors. Of course there are variations from country to country in Brazil, for example, was not always a case that it was younger people who are less more suspicious of democracy in fact older generations for that a steady diet of disinformation. This is work as suspicious of electoral processes anybody else trust. Next slide please. There's also growing evidence that the relentless spread of digital harms is damaging for fundamental democratic processes such as elections. To some extent we could say that disinformation and misinformation are banging on an open door in parts of the Americas. In Brazil just 33% of the population express trust and elections in 2021, one of the lowest proportional shares in the entire region. What that means is that attacks on the integrity of the electoral system from election polls to voting machines. They kind of resonate. And this is an insight that is being picked up not just by influencers on the far right domestically, but also non democratic regimes from Russia to China and Iran. Next slide. So back to Brazil. Of course digital harms didn't just spontaneously emerge during the elections of 2022 digital harms like disinformation and cyber crime have been around in Brazil and elsewhere as long as there's been the internet. But they really I would argue burst on the scene in Brazil about a decade ago, particularly between May and July 2013. Many of you might recall that Brazil was racked by the largest single mass protests since the pro democracy marches of the 1980s in 2013. Brazilians flooded the streets angered by a slew of economic issues, initially catalyzed by a minor increase in bus fares. But these protests metastasize and the demonstrations against everything from poor services to systemic corruption, particularly but not exclusively targeting the workers party or PT. Next slide please. One network that was quick to master social media enable protest was a group work, a set of actors, known notionally as the black block. And this isn't actually a particular group per se. It's actually set of means or tactics that respond in Germany in the 1970s and 80s, but the tend to target symbols of globalization. We saw small groups organizing online. And this is work that we did it again back in 2013, often targeted by the police and expanding their support by taping and sharing these targeted abuses online. The group that expanded its influence during the period was anonymous who also searched their activities online a genuinely global movement with with local chapters. So the internet and social media facilitated both legitimate and violent protests, but 2013 one could argue was one of the first instances of a mass spread of disinformation and misinformation in Brazil. Next slide please. The scope scale and intensity of digital harm started to industrialize from about 2017 onward. There's a considerable increase in the lead up to the 2018 presidential elections energized by support for the far right and deep anti PT sentiment. Now hyper partisanship and disinformation are very dangerous bedmates and researchers started seeing the use of inorganic techniques to spread digital harms tools that many of us now call bots. What you see here is not a painting by my rope. Instead of represents the formation of distinct communities fed news from a small number of human and automated accounts. And as hyper partisan channels and networks grew, they started changing the conversation into more extreme and divided communities. Hyper partisan outlets, including channels managed by the former president and his family were dramatically increasing the spread of fake news and biased information presented alternatively as truth telling. We saw this again and again, including during the municipal elections of 2020. And of course it reached new heights during and after the 2022 presidential campaign as we shall see. Next slide please. Digital harm scaled up at least in part because the country's national politics have shifted harder to the right, particularly since 2018. There's ample evidence and several ongoing investigations into how the previous administration use digital platforms to spread disinformation and discredit opposition actors from politicians to journalists to scholars. Some critics described some of these behaviors as denoting a sort of techno authoritarianism in the way that it arose democratic norms and supercharges executive power. I want to say that the left was not involved in spreading digital harms they did. But as we're going to see, there were significantly outperformed by the far right. Next slide please. Another structural reason for the expansion of these digital harms in Brazil, and other parts of the world frankly is that the digital ecosystem there is also changing quite radically. And if you spend time here, you will know that nothing if not avid users producers and consumers of digital content. There are over 145 million regular social media users in this country of roughly 216 million about two thirds of the population. Brazil is one of the world's top markets for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, as well as encrypted platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal. Many of these social media platforms, they simply don't apply the same level of scrutiny oversight and controls on content moderation in Brazil, as they do say in the European Union, or the United States for a variety of, I think, quite obvious reasons. In fact, researchers and activists here in Brazil have routinely bypassed content controls to place election related disinformation directly on the platforms in a highly polarized environment. This is incredibly dangerous. So to understand these dynamics and support from Ireland, we partnered with a group called democracy in Sheke and the TSE, the Tribunal for Elections here, and particularly it's observatory for transparent elections to figure out how digital harms were degrading democracy in Brazil. So let me run through a couple of our findings. Next slide please. The first point I suppose, and I just underlined what I've already said, is that Brazilians are very significant users of Facebook. They're in fact the third largest market for Facebook in the world. And they are the principal way in which many people, especially in the lower income categories, get their primary news. And part of the reason for that is that Facebook came fairly early to Brazil, but it's also because it's cheaper to communicate on social media often than it is to communicate by telephone. Not surprisingly, Facebook continues to play a very outsized role in determining how people engage and think about elections, select candidates and decide to vote. So when we looked at the volumetric metrics of political content, what we found was that far right was not necessarily producing more posts in Facebook, as you see on the left side of your column, but they were certainly getting a lot more engagement, as you see on the right column in terms of engagement with their posts. They outpace not just the left, but the center and conventional media during the months leading up to and during and after the election. This is a trend we're going to see repeated across multiple platforms. Next slide please. Instagram is also wildly popular in Brazil, especially amongst young people. And again, what we see here is a Brazilian left actually consistently posting more content than the right between August and December. But as in the case of Facebook, generating less engagement than the far right in virtually every single month with the exception of September. What this means is the far right is not just more effective. They're more efficient in getting their material out to users. Next slide please. For me at least one of the most staggering results was on YouTube, a wildly popular platform here in Brazil. And what you see here is the far right were far more potent in both posting and gaining interaction through automated and human means. What you see here is a generated three times more views than all of the left center and conventional audiences combined. The y axis on the right hand side here is the most important, you can see the generated over 2 billion views over five month period. Obviously not all of this content is digital harm per se. There's of course legitimate news there's opinion they're sharing of ideas, but the point is is that the more content and interaction there is the more potential there is for exposure to fake news conspiracy and lies. Next slide please. And this is where we focus next. As part of our research that was supported by Ireland we focused our analysis on for dominant disinformation narratives. These are general categories in which we group multiple types of fake news conspiracy and lies. We focused on narratives seeking to reduce trust elections narratives targeting democratic institutions narratives discrediting and diminishing the influence of opponents and narratives seeking to influence supporters to mobilize to action on false pretenses. And we further divided these four narratives into over 20 sub narratives for classification purposes and then we subjected this to some of our analysis online. And with democracy and check it we focused on eight different platforms, including the ones I just mentioned, as well as tick tock Twitter, what's up telegram and quay a local platform here in Brazil. And each week we produce bulletins that we sent to Ireland but also to the TSC and the STF, the Supreme Court here in Brazil. We focused on the August to October period since this was essentially election campaign Brazil has a mercifully short election campaign cycle, which usually typically begins September. Next slide please. So when we disaggregate the narratives these four narratives cumulatively what we found is there's a fairly even distribution. I'm going to show you now as a representative sample of narratives to give you sense of their form and content but we found generally is that the narrative seeking to reduce trust in the electoral institutions, particularly going after voting machines and going after electoral processes tended to be the most dominant, what you see in green. This in some way makes sense, as I mentioned given the low relatively low levels of trust in elections that I noted earlier. Next slide please. These narratives were also quite persistent across the four months of interest that we looked at. As you can see the targeting of electoral institutions is generally the most popular narrative, and we saw significant growth in all forms of disinformation between the first and second round of the elections in October second and October 30. These are the yellow bars, the high volume and rapid expansion of this information often overwhelm the institutions and platforms working to remove offending content and came under extraordinarily heavy criticism which created a kind of negative cycle as people complained of action, this to resulted in more spreading of disinformation which continued this vicious cycle. Next slide please. As I mentioned we organized our monitoring of disinformation across more than 20 sub narratives. In the interest of time and your attention span I'll focus on just some of the top level findings. Let's start with the sub narratives, falling under electoral institutions. The most common targets we detected were against the TSE, the electoral the tribunal for for the elections against election machines per se as well as disinformation targeting Supreme Court Justice Alexander these tended to grow over the election period often response to decisions made by the TSE or fake revelations of impropriety. Next slide please. When it comes to the sub narrative of or the narrative of democratic institutions. The key targets for the judiciary as a whole, often accused of being biased or favoring the left, as well as the Supreme Court specifically. These attacks are consistent with similar narratives over the previous four years that targeted the SDF. Next slide please. When it comes to political opponents. We see not just the far left or far right but also the left using these kinds of attack attacks and tactics to target their, their nemeses. Many narratives on the left sought to discredit Bolsonaro and his allies accusing them of everything from fascism to corruption and genocide. Right there were far more active and spreading this information targeting opponents, including not just candidates but also the media, as well as activists, often accusing Lula of everything from authoritarianism to drug trafficking Satanism pedophilia and much, much more. Many of these accusations is the point we might want to pick up in the discussion period echo some of the slurs that we see in the United States with MAGA and QA not supporters, and that's not coincidental either. Next slide please. When it comes to narratives seeking to influence supporters and her false pretenses. We saw a fair bit of disinformation used to sway supporters. Some of these were cast as an existential struggle of good versus evil. They threatened the supporters, often seeking to support their supporters by threatening risks that Lula might introduce communism imposed dictatorships suppress religious freedoms and spread gender based and gender and identity based ideologies across primary schools. So we saw the weaponization effectively of culture wars used to prominent effect by the far right in particular. Next slide please. So what are some of the big takeaway messages from all of this. First, and I think this is fairly obvious from some of these images is that the far right vastly outperformed the left center and conventional media in the spreading of both content but also disinformation. The second is that the target has often been electoral institutions themselves. A third big finding is we saw digital harms accompanied with escalating violence against opposition candidates independent media and civil society on the street. As we shall see key institutions were were were were reasonably successful in pushing back appointed ambassador made at the outset. So why is this important. I think understanding the nuances in narratives can help craft strategies to prevent and disrupt the spread of digital harms. Next slide we're coming to the end. So let me conclude on a slightly less gloomy note describing some of the ways that Brazil is responded to the digital harms, including disinformation and misinformation. The first words obviously precede the 2022 elections. They also preceded the 2018 elections in fact, you have to go back almost a decade to see where Brazil starts engaging with many of these fundamental questions in a serious way. Arguably the most important first step was a piece of legislation a digital bill of rights known as Marco civil that was conceived in 2009 and passed in 2014 in the wake of the Snowden revelations. The expression of internet governance that echoed around the world that enshrined rights to freedom of expression and association privacy accessibility freedom information and access for development online. Marco civil also said in motion, a series of other legislative processes. Examples include the general data protection law, which actually unifies 40 separate laws to protect data and individual rights. Another is a fake news bill in 2020. That's actually undergone multiple modifications and has yet to pass. Another one is the Brazilian AI bill which started being negotiated 2020 and past 21. These legislative efforts are of course not without their critics they're being hotly debated in Brazil as they should be very generally some on the right see any form of content restrictions and moderation is unjustified censorship and constraining freedom of expression. Meanwhile, those on the left tend to believe these platforms expand their moderation policies, especially with respect to countering digital harms to wit in 2021 bull scenario unsuccessfully tried to push through a bill that would require social media companies to limit moderation content, an explicit challenge to fake news bill. The bill didn't pass. Next slide please. Over the past few years we've seen Brazilian institutions particularly the judiciary. But as the ambassador mentioned across the three powers, pushing back in many ways against digital harms, including disinformation and misinformation. One reason one could argue for this rather exuberant pushback is not just its destructive impact but also fact Supreme Court itself has been the object of many attacks. I would agree with the ambassador the resilience of Brazilian institutions and I think sends an important message to governments around the world about how to react. There are many, many examples. I don't have the time today to go through all of them, but here are just a couple of examples of ways in which different modalities and mechanisms were created by Brazilian authorities to address some of these challenges. The program to combat disinformation set up in 2019 actually launched in 2020 during the municipal elections to help people identify and verify information and unified more than 50 public and private entities together in a joined up effort. We have a permanent program to combat disinformation set up in 2021 launched by the TSE that brought together 150 partners including all eight major social media platforms to sign an agreement to fight election related disinformation. An election transparency commission set up again by the TSE, tasked with improving electoral security, increasing transparency, and encouraging participation of specialist public institutions and importantly civil society in monitoring elections. We had the observatory of election transparency set up by also by the TSE of which you get the institute as a part along with many other organizations committed to improving transparency and deepening knowledge about the Brazilian voting system and safeguarding democratic integrity. And it goes on there a whole series and most recently, as of 2023, we have the new department for the defense of democracy created by presidential decree and set up by the Attorney General's office, which essentially bans disinformation and other content that promotes attacks against public powers, not surprising this and other efforts, especially the AGU department are sparking fierce debates in Brazil. There are concerns legitimate concerns about government overreach, as well as censorship from opponents on the far right and the right as well as amongst digital activists. We can say that all these measures are still very much work in progress, but I think as the ambassador mentioned in a robust democracy, this kind of dialogue and discussion is absolutely critical. And simply by saying, digital harms cannot be prevented and reduced through digital means alone. For sure it will require more engagement from the executive judiciary and legislature, at a minimum we're going to need more accountability from platforms, which of course implies more regulation. But more fundamentally, reducing digital harms to disinformation and misinformation requires addressing underlying polarization, and the structural factors that are driving it from economic inequality to social equity issues and so much more. What is more tackling these digital harms is going to require a step change level of engagement in awareness building in education in an oculation strategies, and here I think the experiences of other countries including Finland are extraordinary relevant. There's no doubt that Brazil's political system has been degraded by profound polarization after 2013 and particularly in the period of 2018 2022 Brazil is very much in a vulnerable moment. I think now is the time, as was mentioned by the ambassador to revitalize pro democracy alliances, including parties from the center right the center the center left to safeguard democratic institutions and international support will be key, including locking the key democratic processes and institutions. So with that, I'll end and hand back over to the chair to continue the conversation. Thank you very much, Dr. Muga for your presentation. We, we now have some questions for you, and I'd like to start with one of my own. If I'm allowed to. So, I, I understand that the health of a liberal democracy depends quite often on the level of education of a society of its citizens because citizens must know rules and debate them and, you know, participate in the of the rules themselves the making of the rules themselves. So what do you think is the connection between the level of education of Brazilian society and its vulnerability to digital harms. Do you see a relation in that a dangerous relation between these two things. One of the lessons we're seeing across Europe across North America, and of course, in Brazil is that all societies, whether experiencing high levels of tertiary secondary education or not are subjected to risks and threats of digital harm so I'm not entirely convinced that it's a function of alphabetization or or or even necessarily of awareness of democracy and the rules the game. It's particularly. What really fundamentally changed, however, as was mentioned earlier is that that the digital environment which people are operating, especially new generations of people who are reared and raised on digital products and digital connectivity digital platforms and spend an amount of time means that we need to get much savvier and smarter about our own practices of engaging with content that's online in a way that's critical, just as we were taught as young people, those of us who were born before the internet in a world to be critical of what we read in the newspapers and not to treat everything as fact. We need to be increasing our digital literacy with engaging on online content in a much more profound fashion. And I think the speed and pace and scale of digital transformation has been taking place including in Brazil. I mean, literally in a generation, we have a transformation society where there's more mobile phones per individual where two thirds of the population are engaging for more than 67 hours a day online that we need a commensurate effort to start educating a kind of resilience tolerance and a critical thinking towards content online. And so, you know, this is easier said than done. I think, often we've looked at this as sort of punctual interventions let's focus on those who are more likely to be radicalized, or let's focus on those who are more susceptible for X, Y and Z reasons. But what we need to start thinking about is how do we integrate this kind of education into our primary education systems into our secondary education systems into our primary education systems? How do we start taking what's content online and subjecting the same level of critical scrutiny. Now, that's part of the demand side. We also need to get much savvier and smarter about the supply side in terms of the nature of how content distributed what counts what is and that's where the regulatory stuff comes in and a lot of the solutions are being introduced in Brazil I think emphasize supply side constraints. So Finland really does stand out. Finland comes out number one in a ranking of over 40 countries in Europe, according to Open Society Institute, in terms of its digital resilience. And one of the reasons for that is that Finland, in addition to having a very strong and robust education system that's lauded all around the world, also is introduced for the least last decade, education in schools bringing in content online rather than ignoring it and having young people engage with it, challenge it, scrutinize the integrity of it, reflect on its origins, talk about what it means and what the biases might be inherent in it. Like we used to do with newspapers, which sadly have been obliterated in the course of this digital transformation. So I think that we need to start looking not just the supply side on the regulatory front, which is no debt important and we're going to have to get more sophisticated and more intelligent about our solutions, but also start reflecting harder on the demand side around awareness education. What some people call inoculation, creating strategies for critical thinking to engage with content, and much like a virus to be able to treat it understand the pathogen and treat it appropriately. Thank you very much. We have a question here from Dare Lollor senior research at the IIEA. He asks, to what extent do you feel the spread of this information was organized or coordinated, such as by far right groups acting in a coordinated manner to propagate this information. And secondly, did you see evidence of foreign interference in Brazilian elections. Great questions. Absolutely, I think on the first question in terms of organization. There is no doubt that there was a high level of organization coordination around, not just the messaging and the content of messages, but in the strategies tactics and methods deployed by actors to spread information. There is an ongoing investigation into the Bolsonaro family, notably one of his sons who was alleged to be involved in a so called hate cabinet, which was a group coordinating online to be able to send out mass messages, often including disinformation and other forms of hate speech that would circulate not just on the public facing side of the net, that's to say Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or tick tock but also more importantly, on the encrypted messaging platforms like what's up and most recently telegram. And so there isn't an abundance I think of evidence information circulating suggesting that a relatively small group of, let's call it far right politicians of influencers who also were sympathetic to the far right, as well as automated accounts, which have surged in over the last couple of years that we're seeking to mobilize information and I think this, in a way, deepened during the COVID pandemic period as well. Many people were left in isolation, often had only their phones, with which to engage with the outside and across Brazil if you speak with families, many have experienced great fractions and ruptures as a result of sort of parts of families drifting to one side or the other and it's created an enormous amount of pain and I think suffering in addition to political polarization, which has shaped the elections. So there's absolutely evidence of relatively small group and I think in a lot of our work we're able to identify and pinpoint who are those so called super spreaders that have been disproportionately involved in shaping the information space. One additional point to mention is that I've alluded to this earlier in the presentation is that some of these tactics and methods were bored, really quite literally out of the Trump playbook. There's, again, widely available information and evidence indicating the relationships between many in the Trump camp, notably Steve Bannon and James Miller and others, as well as those in the Bolsonaro camp, including one of both narrow sons Eduardo in discussing methods and methodologies and ways of spreading information and certain kinds of messages that land well. And so it was very interesting in doing some of this research, not just over the election period but but also before to see the arrival of made in USA means that really didn't make a lot of of sense in the Brazilian context but that were somehow Brazilianized transformed and and and spreading. So as to agitate individuals. So in a way Brazil became both a laboratory for testing out new memes as well as a, a landscape or an ecosystem in which these means were being distributed. We have another question by Sheamus Allen, a digital policy researcher, and he asks what parallels are there between disinformation campaign, the disinformation campaign of Bolsonaro, and between disinformation campaigns used by the Brazilian military regime as a tool of social control between the 1960s and 1980s. Do you see some parallel between those. I, I could I haven't it's a great question I haven't looked in detail at the kind of propaganda that was being used during the 6485 in Brazil to sway people in one way or another but I think a couple of parallels are there I think for sure we have the good versus evil narrative. And often positioned as the sort of the good nationalists against the dangerous communists. And that was very much overdue in the 1960s and 70s with the during the military regime in in seeking to position large segments of society against the infection or the cancer that is communism and socialism in Brazil and I think we see a lot of that same rhetoric, emerging under the previous administration, using and leveraging these kinds of narratives and memes as a way of pitting good versus evil. I think that the similar to that is the sort of conservative family values debate, you know, discussions as well as the good Christian model and again I think during the 1960s and 70s and 80s. There's perhaps more of an emphasis on traditional values and this idea of strong family units and moving against deviancy writ large, including from the left and the artistic communities. And I think we saw that again reinforced in a lot of the disinformation misinformation put out during the most recent campaign as well as in 2018. So there are definitely echoes and those echoes maybe are not that surprising, given that as everyone knows Bolsonaro himself was once an army captain and many of those within his inner circle. They were brought in were also some of either connected to the military reserve or police or themselves have been connected to the previous administrations, going back, at least a generation or more. So it's not that surprising that those tropes and those ideas were also reflected in in contemporary disinformation campaigns and perhaps have some resonance with past but I'd be curious to hear more from our colleagues who are also on the panel about that. That's excellent. There's also like the the religious content of the discourse that there was very president throughout the elections and then throughout Bolsonaro's government you mentioned the good versus evil tactics right and but we see as well like a shift between what this good versus evil mean from a society was predominantly Catholic to a society that's now increasingly becoming more intercostal. So to speak. There's a question here by King Fitzgerald, the IEA foreign policy researcher, and he asks to what extent could far right penetration on the state security services linger in Brazil. What is now pose a long term threat to Brazil's political stability in your estimation is Brazilian defensive democracy capable of tackling far right penetration in state organizations. That's an excellent question and a very challenging one. I mean, this was for lack of a better expression one of the most militarized governments in the democratic era, I mean, you had over 1000 military and reserve that were put into federal level civil civic positions. You had thousands more involved state municipal level, either as politicians, you had, or as civil servants. You had a very high level of military, ex military involved in cabinet level positions, and you had a high level of interaction, as you might expect, perhaps more than one might expect between the executive and military and policing institutions in the federal, parts of the federal police highway police as well as, you know, connections with with notionally connections with with state level police as well. So, so we're talking about a very fundamentally different kind of government in the previous administration that we've had since 85. And there is a fair bit of evidence to suggest that there are some high levels of sympathies amongst parts of the military parts of the federal police parts of some of the the intelligence services as well as certainly although they follow the governor's state level military police and civil police for Bolsonaro and many aspects of what Bolsonaro stood for. And so amongst the most avid consumers in some cases even producers of some of this information were those more militant and hardcore supporters of the past administration. So there's undoubtedly a fair bit of residual lingering frustrations anger and sympathies amongst large countries and we saw this in the lead up to the election and during the election itself when parts of the federal police were accused of having slowed potentially slowed the access of of voters to polling stations and areas that might have been more sympathetic to the PT. We've seen this most recently with parts of the GSI services supports the executive that is accused of having been perhaps nearly as proactive as they should have been in in preventing the events that led to the January 8 insurrection attempt. We've seen it also in state level police who fall under governors who are more sympathetic previous administration. And so, I think there is no doubt that this is an enormous challenge is put civil military relations back on the table firmly and squarely in Brazil, after a long period of time when many felt that many of these issues have been resolved. And so, I don't think that necessarily a cool threat is what we should be talking about but we are talking about the role the military is a subordinate authority to the three powers and the role that the current government will have to remake in some ways for the relationship or the remake with these institutions. President Lula has already taken some fairly aggressive steps to start beginning to address some of these lingering sympathies. There'll be a very concerted effort I think to replace many of those who've been appointed from the military or reserve by both Bolsonaro in the upcoming months. There will be a concerted effort I think to maintain a dialogue and a positive and constructive dialogue to manage some of these tensions and to keep them from overflowing. But I think one of the big lessons of the last month or two is that even without Bolsonaro being in the country. Bolsonaro and Bolsonaro continues to be a force to be reckoned with in the same way that even with Trump out of power as president. His legacy and jurors and many of his supporters continue to to express great frustrations and reject frankly Biden as president, while also pushing many of the genders that that the previous president had had supported. And this is not a problem it's going to go away. It's an issue that I think is being very rapidly addressed. I think Brazilian institutions are strong. And there'll be an ability I think to tackle this but it's going to, I think, be a major preoccupation for this administration and one of the challenges I think of these digital harms that have contributed Lent support to the instruction January 8 is that this is going to be a significant focus of this administration at the expense of incredibly important issues to do with the economy to do with social development to do with environmental justice and the fight against environmental crime and getting to zero deforestation. So it's going to be a distraction a necessary one, but it's going to be very front and center I think in the coming years for this term of President Lula. Thank you, Dr. Muga. Now we have one last question by Nora Owen, former Minister of Justice in Ireland. She asks, you have a very impressive menu of actions and laws available to defend democracy in Brazil. However, fear of retaliation often prevents complaint. Are there projections built into protecting individuals or groups who make a complaint about breaches of these laws. It's interesting question. I think one thing to stress about Brazil and Brazilian institutions in my decade plus of working here with colleagues at the federal state level. Is it, especially since sort of the 90s and really amplify the 2000s, there is a very strong commitment to participatory democratic decision making and the involvement of civic actors in the formulation and oversight of legislation and new policies. And so I think we've seen this also in the despite the challenges of the last four years in the development of institutions together the TSE to try to bring in specifically the concerns and considerations of civil society including and even minorities and those who might be suffering disproportionately from the kinds of misinformation just information I've been describing. So in that long list of and frankly it's a short list. But in that relatively long list that I put up earlier in the presentation which signaled a few of the kinds of initiatives that are underway. Very much has been built in to those processes under the Supreme Court under the TSE processes for redress processes for alert processes for complaint and whistleblowing to facilitate more popular and public engagement participation in the fight against disinformation and misinformation. So, I'm not saying it's perfect, but I am saying that there is this tradition of bringing in large segments of society. To be actively involved in the propagation promulgation and ultimately the enforcement of many of these kinds of initiatives. And I, like I said we've seen this, most recently in the case of disinformation. So I think we can expect more of this in the current administration. The previous administration went some length to take apart and dismantle many of these mechanisms for civic engagement civic participation precisely to address some of those concerns you're raising Nora. So I hope to see an expectancy more in the coming four years. Thank you very much Dr Muga. I'd like to thank everyone who made questions here in the seminar. And I'd like to thank Dr Muga again for his excellent talk, and also Ambassador Beato for his opening remarks, which were very informative and I'd like now to ask Ambassador Huy to give his closing remarks for the seminar. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr Albuquerque and to everybody who's been involved in today's event. Sorry, can you see me now. So, just to thank, thank everybody that has been involved today in the event. I'm based here in Brazil. I was here on the 8th of January. And I think just to follow on from the remarks by Dr Beato. What we have to do is that the institutions have certainly been tested, but they've held strong. And that's, you know, within Europe and within Ireland in particular, it was very important for us to express our solidarity. And as noted the tonnage there was one of the first to use social media in a positive way to rein, to reinforce our solidarity with Brazil. And last week we had Vice President Timmermans from the European Union visit here to do exactly that. And this week the Chancellor of Germany is here in Brazil and there are many others coming in and Ireland fully supports these visits. And we're also very welcoming of the fact that President Lula will travel to Europe and engage with us. And I got one or two comments just on the importance of Brazil and the importance of Brazil re-engaging with the world, because in 2024 Brazil is going to chair the G20. And we're at a time where the world is polarized. So we've talked a lot today about polarization within countries, but the role of Brazil and President Lula as the chair of the G20 is very important. In 2025 Brazil will chair the BRICS and this could become a much more important group as this involves Brazil, Russia and China. And as we know, India and South Africa. So these are, these are very important realities and they give real context to our engagement here. We also have 70,000 Brazilians living in Ireland and their views are on social media and they do inform our engagement here and I believe that is very positive. But I think we have to accept that Brazil is 100 times bigger than Ireland and that our role is to support Brazil to recognize the institutions and to support them where they're working. You know, tomorrow I've been invited to the reopening of the Supreme Court, which was one of those institutions that was attacked on the 8th of January, and I believe we will all be there in large numbers. This is a part of the world that Ireland is focusing more strongly on than we have in the past. In 2022, we launched our first ever Latin America and Caribbean strategy, and that's, you know, this gives us a real agenda to engage and Brazil, which is 50% of the landmass of South America is a very important part of that. And later this year we'll have the first ever Latin America Ireland Business Forum, and that will include a high level visits we hope from governments in South America, Latin America, the Caribbean, and business as well. So I think I'd like to, you know, end this engagement on a positive note. This exchange has been very helpful. It helps us understand the context better, and that I hope helps us to in become more effective partners, Ambassador Biaccio and I talk regularly, and this agenda will only help us engage in further issues. I'd like to, you know, I'd like to thank the IIEA to Barry, Kean and Lorcan in particular, Dr. Robert Muga. I'd like to thank you, Dr. Juliana for chairing this session, and Ambassador Biaccio for the opening remarks. And the contribution met by our consulates in Sao Paulo, Owen and Rachel, because then I did initial contact with the Garapay, we've had a good outline of the result of that project. And everybody has had a very meaningful role, and I hope we all finish today a little more educated and with the ability to ask more relevant questions, I think. So thank you all very much.