Disinformation or what is now called “Democratic disorder’ poses a serious threat, particularly during the times of social media where news with a malicious intent to harm can spread like wildfire as we speak on the need to protect the entire democratic process of countries and set in today’s context of Russia-Ukraine war, Covid pandemic or infodemic gaining an upper edge. Fake news has been omnipresent whether on digital media channels or Whatsapp for quite some time now where many argue on the visible enemy impacting democracy set against a growing need to tackle manipulative news becoming increasingly complex in a polarised world.
Case in point remains the strategic and coordinated use of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) as revealed in the European External Action Service (EEAS) Report 2022 on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) threats hinting at the war to prepare and execute aggression on the European soil and dubbed as years long information manipulation, disinformation, and censorship.
In this context, the European Union (EU) hosted a round table “Beyond Disinformation” on March 9 focussing on the Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) encompassing disinformation where 15 participants including national authorities, media outlets, academics, and members of the EU-Mauritius Youth Forum were present and facilitated by two European experts hailing from the European External Action Service and the Cybersecurity for Development programme. Earlier both experts Policy Officer at East StratCom Task Force, Mr. Siim KUMPAS, and Indian Ocean Region Coordinator for the Cyber4Dev programme Mr. Hannes Krause, hosted a Training workshop on disinformation on March 7-8. The roundtable presentation made by the experts focussed on: Conceptual introduction to the current information environment and information disorder; The role of social media platforms and digital service providers in information disorder and countering disinformation; Building resilience against disinformation using a whole-of-society approach – The case of Estonia.
European Union Ambassador His Excellency Mr. Vincent Degert in his Talking Points emphasised the need to understand disinformation whereby calling it a form of Information Disorder whereby false information is being knowingly shared to cause harm, referring to the 2017 Presidential elections where a duplicate version of the Belgian newspaper, “Le Soir” (The Evening) was created coupled with a false article alleging that Emmanuel Macron was being funded by Saudi Arabia.
The ambassador underlined: “There are different motivations of those responsible for disinformation campaigns. It can be either economic or political and there is a myriad of state and non-state actors involved, using diverse tools and manipulation techniques to achieve their harmful goals. During the coronavirus, for instance, there has been an increase in information consumption, leading to data overexposure, ushering in a spike in “fake news” and conspiracy theories, breeding distrust in public institutions.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) observed that owing to the fact that global victims became prey to both the pandemic itself and the ‘infodemic’ that was built around it whereby the direct and indirect impact of disinformation is difficult to assess where we are only at the earliest stages of understanding its full implications.
In this context, the European Union will strengthen access to credible information, with free and independent media across the union through its Cyber Resilience for Development project in lending support to like-minded partner countries, such as Mauritius, to enhance their capacity to counter the spread of disinformation. The EEAS has created a specific unit – the Strategic Communication, Task Forces, and Information Analysis Division to address foreign information manipulation and interference, including disinformation.
Policy Officer at East StratCom Task Force Siim Kumpas defined Disinformation as misleading or the spreading of false information created and shared to cause harm while Misinformation implies misleading or false information but intentional at times being someone’s honest mistake in being misinformed or a misconception about things. He underlined: “Both Misinformation and Disinformation can be harmful and what differs is how we respond to it at the policy level set against the context of disinformation being intentional and something that we must be more serious about. There is a need to look at the entire ecosystem where our mandate is to look at the external threat within the EU as we speak about the bullet fired coupled with Disinformation must be seen as not just a communication issue where for quite some time it was mainly addressed from a communication perspective.
Among the key findings of the February 2022 report on Disinformation, it posits that such spread of false news was done in several languages not limited to English but also in French and some other key languages, including 60 European Union ones, and innovative ways to monitor information in terms of Tactics, Techniques and Procedure (TTP).
On the other hand, Indian Ocean Region Coordinator for the Cyber4Dev programme Hannes Krause spoke about the recent training workshop conducted in Mauritius where discussions were held on disinformation that aims to deceive people, lies and rumors done cheaply and easily in the times of social media. “There is a crisis of confidence rising and putting democracy at stake with the relativization of trust and expertise as we have seen during the COVID pandemics coupled with the spread of too much information as available,” he underlined.
The expert enumerated several enumerative actions such as fact-checking, debunking, counter-messaging, and attributing disinformation to its creators and disseminators while proactive actions would include raising threat level of awareness, boosting media and digital literacy supporting the pluralistic, independent, and media landscape. The expert also gave some ideas for Mauritius, including Information Manipulation to be assessed with care in line with advocacy in the FIMI report, and a national consensus is needed on the nature of information manipulation on the local shores as an essential pre-condition for any type of solution.
