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Beware Disinformation in times of elections

22 Sep 2019

After months of speculation, the date for the next presidential election in Sri Lanka was announced this week. The Election Commission of Sri Lanka (EC) determined that the election would be on 16 November 2019, with nominations to be filed on 7 October. It is not yet clear how many candidates will enter the race. However, one thing is certain: This election will see a race of another kind – one between correct information and disinformation. We are not alone in this. Democracies around the world are grappling with the rise of disinformation, i.e. deliberate falsehoods pegged to election issues, candidates, and the entire electoral process. Both mainstream and digital media platforms are being used to spread such lies, and at stake is the very integrity of elections. Elections are meant to give voters a chance to make informed choices about their representatives. That basic premise is threatened by distortions, half-truths, fabrications, misinterpretations, and other abuses of facts. What can be done to prevent the worst forms of information pollution when nearly 16 million registered voters in Sri Lanka are trying to decide who is best suited to be the country’s next head of state? How can the scourge of disinformation be contained and countered while fully respecting the right to freedom of expression? Are there lessons from other (noisy and chaotic) Asian democracies that recently held elections? Indonesia experience The EC has already mentioned that they are looking at how India and Indonesia tackled the challenge. Indonesia’s multiple elections held on 17 April 2019 is of particular interest. That day, nearly 193 million registered voters had the chance to vote to elect the next president, vice president, and members of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) as well as local councils. In all, over 240,000 candidates vied for over 20,000 seats at various levels. Voter turnout was high at 81.93%. The most hotly contested was the presidency which the incumbent Joko Widodo, also known as “Jokowi”, won by a margin of 11% over his challenger Prabowo Subianto (55.5% to 44.5% of valid votes, respectively). International observers declared the election free and fair, and Indonesia’s General Elections Commission (KPU) formally announced the results on 21 May. But Subianto, a former General, refused to accept that he had lost, alleging election fraud. His allies called for a “People Power”-style protest, invoking memories of public agitations that led to the downfall of Dictator Suharto in 1998. The demonstrations on 21-23 May turned violent in Jakarta, and eight people were killed with hundreds more injured. According to Quinton Temby, a visiting fellow in the Indonesia Studies Programme at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, the post-election violence was fuelled, in part, by disinformation. A “disinformation cascade” followed the Opposition’s claim that the election had been “stolen” by President Jokowi, he wrote in an analysis. In his view: “The unrest was the first time in a democracy that social media-fuelled fake news and disinformation led to election riots.” (See: www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/ISEAS_Perspective_2019_67.pdf) Disinfo-fuelled violence “Many involved in the Jakarta street violence were motivated by misleading or false information,” he added. Militant oppositionists were mobilised by a cascade of fake news that culminated in a belief that their community was under attack. With the mainstream media largely sympathetic to the Government, those provoking the unrest relied on social media platforms – notably, encrypted chat applications such as WhatsApp and Telegram.” Indonesia’s internet user rate at the end of 2018 was 56%, which means around 150 million Indonesians are online. According to We Are Social, an agency that tracks digital media use worldwide, every Indonesian online uses at least one social media platform. Their most popular social media services (in descending order in 2018) are YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Line (a free app for instant communications on electronic devices). The largest number of users is between 18 and 34. The spread of disinformation during and after the election was not limited to social media or messaging apps, but it is much easier to share unverified reports and conspiracy theories on these platforms. Temby notes: “In the weeks preceding the riots, supporters of the Government and Opposition appeared to have inhabited almost completely separate information ecosystems. Opposition message groups…became deluged with paranoid fake news and misinformation. Most concerned the allegations of electoral fraud, but a high proportion also consisted of anti-Chinese disinformation and conspiracy theories.” China factor Two dominant themes in election disinformation were Islam and China, both appealing to deep-rooted community fears or antipathies. There were many claims of certain political leaders being “not Islamic enough” or speculations of Islam coming under siege (in a country that is 87.2% Islamic, making it the largest Muslim-majority country in the world). Not surprisingly, Islamic Defenders Front (IDF) was the lead organisation in post-election protests that turned violent. The China factor requires some context. Indonesians descending from various Chinese ethnic groups have lived in the archipelago from at least the 13th Century; the country’s 2010 census counted 2.83 million of them. Dislike of this minority, which has occasionally spilled over to physical violence, has been amplified in recent years by fears of Chinese investments in Indonesia and speculations of “Chinese colonisation”. From the time he was the Governor of Jakarta, Jokowi was the target of a rumour campaign that he had a Chinese grandfather. During the 2019 election campaign, the Opposition highlighted how Chinese goods and workers are flooding the country, sidelining local industries. While the 17 April elections were peaceful, communal tensions built up afterwards and ran up to the official declaration of results on 21 May. Temby has written how, during that time, instant messaging groups became filled with false claims that “soldiers from China had infiltrated the Indonesian National Police” and how they were “being allowed by the Jokowi Government to repress Opposition protesters”. As Temby noted: “Out-of-context reports of Chinese troops on the streets of Jakarta might sound implausible. But within the militant Opposition online echo chamber, they were the logical extension of months, if not years, of conspiracy theories on the theme of Chinese neo-imperialism. Other messages alleged Chinese troops had infiltrated police units deployed to counter the rioters.” The Chinese soldiers’ hoax was shared widely, along with images of masked Indonesian police as evidence of “Chinese troops on the streets of Jakarta”. These prompted the Police to hold a press conference on 24 May in which three officers whose images were used in the conspiracy theory unmasked themselves before the cameras and gave their names and birthplaces to prove they were Indonesian nationals. Countering disinformation Temby’s analysis underscores the need to have ongoing efforts to systematically counter disinformation. Countering should not be limited to election times because some campaigns cynically tap into long-simmering tensions, prejudices, and misconceptions in societies. In Indonesia’s case, he said: “A cocktail of false information and grievances created a fertile environment for political violence.” The Indonesian Government temporarily blocked access to key social media services for three days when violence broke out, saying it was aimed to stop the spread of disinformation. Many users, however, turned to VPN services to get around the blocking. Since then, the Government, tech industry, and civil society representatives have been discussing more effective and long-term strategies to counter disinformation. The need for stepping up digital literacy at all levels has been recognised. The Indonesian Anti-Hoax Society, known by its local name Mafindo, is an interesting civil society response to information pollution. We shall look at their efforts next week. (Science writer Nalaka Gunawardene has been chronicling and critiquing information society for over 25 years. He tweets from @NalakaG)

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