With the Parliamentary Elections fast approaching on 14 November, election monitoring missions such as the People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE), and Institute for Democratic Reforms and Electoral Studies (IRES) have expressed their intention to monitor digital media platforms, much like they did during the last Presidential Election.
This time, they plan to incorporate lessons learnt from their previous experience. Although the Election Commission (EC) is yet to establish a formal mechanism for digital media monitoring due to other priorities, the missions have indicated that they will rely on the same methods used during the Presidential Election.
EC and monitors’ preparation
Speaking to The Sunday Morning, EC Chairperson R.M.A.L. Rathnayake emphasised that while a formal plan for digital media monitoring for the upcoming Parliamentary Elections had not been arranged yet, the EC would adopt the same mechanism used in the last Presidential Election, in collaboration with the same monitoring groups.
“We will monitor it just as we did during the Presidential Election. We haven’t finalised the arrangements yet, but we’ll proceed similarly by collaborating with the same groups that helped us previously,” Rathnayake said.
When asked about possible challenges that may arise when monitoring digital media platforms, he stated that the commission would address these issues after the nomination process was complete. “Right now, we’re focused on finalising the nominations for the Parliamentary Elections. We’ll assess the situation regarding digital media monitoring once that phase is over,” he explained.
PAFFREL Executive Director Rohana Hettiarachchi highlighted that, continuing their collaboration with Hashtag Generation, they would proceed with monitoring hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, and election law violations in the digital space.
“We are planning to collaborate with Hashtag Generation, which is what we did in the past as well. We are focusing on hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, and violations of election law on social media.”
CaFFE Executive Director Ahmed Manas Makeen shared their plans for intensively monitoring social media platforms in the lead-up to the Parliamentary Elections. During this election, CaFFE will focus particularly on Facebook and YouTube, while also targeting content from influencers.
“We will deploy a separate team to monitor social media. They will randomly check Facebook pages and YouTube, especially focusing on influencers. In the last election, we saw memes and videos – not hate speech per se – that targeted candidates. This time, we will identify the hotspots where such content originates, and we will definitely file complaints with the EC with links to the Facebook or YouTube posts,” Makeen said.
Makeen further underscored the challenge of monitoring all content, especially given the influence of certain digital influencers who had played a significant role in shaping the narrative for some candidates during the last election.
“In the last election, digital media played a big role for several candidates. We identified many influencers on YouTube as well as videos that were problematic for the integrity of the election process. We will focus on these areas when monitoring again this time, but it will be difficult to monitor everything. Therefore, we’ll concentrate on hotspots most associated with hate speech,” he said.
Makeen explained that CaFFE was already working to identify potential hotspots for social media issues, with plans to intensify monitoring after the nominations were finalised. “We are currently following [social media] to identify hotspots. After nominations, we will deploy a separate division and our coordinators will begin monitoring WhatsApp groups and Facebook.”
Regarding collaboration, he noted that CaFFE had not decided on partnerships for the upcoming election yet. “We haven’t finalised any collaborations yet. We’ll have a discussion on Thursday (3) about the Chanda Salli Meetare (Campaign Finance Meter) and finalise plans then. As of now, we aren’t planning any collaboration specifically for social media,” he said.
IRES Executive Director Manjula Gajanayake outlined their previous monitoring efforts and the preparations for the upcoming election.
“During the Presidential Election, we monitored all newspapers, TV channels, and radio channels, as well as some aspects of digital media platforms. We assessed 19 TV channels and six radio stations. A key task we need to address is obtaining rate cards and amounts from media outlets, which we have just started,” he said.
As the electoral landscape evolves, the IRES is taking a more independent approach to monitoring digital media.
“This time, we will not collaborate with any other organisations. However, we are closely working with them. As an independent organisation, the IRES will monitor digital media platforms and report our findings separately to the Sri Lanka Police and the EC,” Gajanayake added.
Problems with reporting
Reflecting on their experiences from the process of reporting harmful content during the Presidential Election, the election monitors outlined the issues they had faced.
Gajanayake explained the process followed by IRES: “Hashtag Generation only informed directly regarding the posts. We reported directly to the EC, which had the chance to complain directly to Meta and TikTok – not YouTube and Google. Once it informed those platforms, they took some action. Our role was primarily to inform the EC.”
Discussing the results of their reporting efforts, Gajanayake revealed insights into the effectiveness of the EC’s actions regarding content removal. “When we discussed the results with the EC, it indicated that maybe only 40-50% of the reported content was addressed. Although the EC reported using Sri Lankan laws, it attempted to handle it according to its own guidelines.”
Gajanayake highlighted the difficulties in addressing harmful content that arises from the mixing of languages in digital communication.
“When they are mixing languages – ‘Singlish,’ or Tamil and Sinhala – we can identify it as harmful to other communities or individuals, but according to their community guidelines, the platforms are not identifying it as harmful content.”
He further emphasised the significant challenge posed by language barriers in monitoring and fact-finding efforts.
“Language barriers make it difficult to achieve proper results; we don’t know how many language monitors or fact-finders they have. When it comes to the Tamil language, it poses a major challenge,” he said.
Hettiarachchi also highlighted delays in addressing these violations on social media platforms. “When we submitted reports to the EC and it passed them on to social media platforms, there was a delay in action as the platforms prioritised their community standards over local election laws,” he said.
Highlighting their process, he noted: “Hashtag Generation monitored social media platforms and shared its findings with us. Two of our lawyers reviewed the documents and confirmed whether those social media messages misled the public or fell under misinformation and disinformation, categorising them by the type of legal violation.
“We then sent the reports to the EC, which forwarded them to the relevant social media platforms. However, there was a slight delay in their response.”
In contrast, Makeen emphasised that CaFFE had submitted over 400 complaints during the election, resulting in the removal of most of the flagged posts within one to two days. “Most of the posts we complained about were removed within 1-2 days after we reported them to the EC,” he explained.
However, he also noted that while their complaints had led to the removal of many posts, certain reports – especially those related to hate speech – had not always been acted upon if the content had not violated Meta’s community standards. “If the posts didn’t go against Meta’s hate speech regulations, they weren’t removed even if we reported them,” he explained.
Lessons from the Prez Poll
When asked about the lessons learnt from Presidential Election monitoring and how these insights would be applied to the Parliamentary Elections, Rathnayake emphasised that the EC was still compiling information and had requested reports from the groups in charge of monitoring efforts. After reviewing these reports, the EC will finalise its approach for the Parliamentary Elections.
“We are still arranging it. We have asked the groups which were in charge of monitoring to hand over a report. We will have to go through it and decide on how we are going to plan for the Parliamentary Elections,” he said.
He added that the EC had yet to receive these reports due to the groups’ other responsibilities and reiterated that the commission’s current priority was the nomination process.
“We have not received the report yet because they are occupied with other tasks. When we go from one election to another, there are various bigger tasks than this. What the EC is primarily overseeing now is the nomination work.”
Hettiarachchi reflected on the recent Presidential Election, noting that, contrary to expectations, there had been fewer significant issues related to hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation on social media compared to the 2019 election.
“We didn’t face major issues. We had anticipated more problems, based on experiences in countries like Pakistan, but we were satisfied with the outcome. There was less hate speech and misinformation than in 2019,” he said.
However, he pointed out that violations of election law, particularly regarding paid advertisements during the cooling-off period, had been prevalent. “Violations, especially paid ads during the cooling period, were quite high. We reported thousands of such cases in collaboration with Hashtag Generation,” he said.
Challenges for Parliamentary Polls
Hettiarachchi noted that the Parliamentary Elections, with around 3,000 candidates, were likely to see a significant increase in social media-related issues. “The number of candidates will be much higher and the competition within parties will be intense, so we expect many more social media-related problems,” he said.
However, he believes that social media platforms may pose fewer challenges in terms of voter confusion due to the simplicity of the voting process for Parliamentary Elections. “I don’t think there will be significant issues because, for Parliamentary Elections, voters mark a cross for up to three candidates. It’s a simple process compared to the Presidential Election,” he explained.
Despite the simplicity of the process, he said that PAFFREL, along with the EC, would still conduct voter education to ensure the public was clear on how to mark their ballots. “It’s straightforward, but we’ll conduct education campaigns to remind the public. The EC will make public announcements and we’ll also contribute to voter education. I don’t expect a large number of invalid ballots in this election,” Hettiarachchi noted.
Makeen highlighted that the Parliamentary Election system differed from the Presidential Election, with candidates focusing more on campaigns centred around preferential voting.
“The Parliamentary Election system is normally different from the Presidential Election. All candidates will campaign on how to vote because each candidate is assigned a preferential number. Once candidates receive their preferential number after the nomination process, they typically campaign through house-to-house visits, poster campaigns, and digital media,” he said.
Gajanayake highlighted a few pressing challenges that the IRES faced. “One crucial aspect is fundraising; we are collecting funds again this time and it is proving to be challenging. We aim to secure a considerable amount to support our efforts.
“Additionally, while we do have staff, we will need to train them again for the Parliamentary Elections. I hope we can resolve these issues within a week. After that, we will begin our preparations for media monitoring. Nominations will end on 11 October and we will officially initiate our observations from that date,” he stated.
According to Gajanayake, one of the main challenges in the current electoral landscape is the legal framework regarding political funding.
“According to the legal background, political parties or candidates are not allowed to obtain any donations or funds from foreign entities, organisations, individuals, or dual citizens. However, even if you are not Sri Lankan, you can still handle social media advertisements. In fact, you can sponsor advertisements for any political party or candidate while residing outside the country, even if you are not a Sri Lankan citizen.
“The problem is that it is difficult to track whether someone is a Sri Lankan citizen or not. While it is technically not permitted to obtain funds, they can still gain support indirectly through political advertising,” he explained.
He further added: “The process of identifying a contributor’s citizenship through IP addresses is lengthy. Political campaigns occur within a very short timeframe, and if it takes too long to ascertain someone’s citizenship and IP address, it creates significant delays. This is the primary challenge we face.”
Gajanayake highlighted that the prevalence of misinformation remained a critical concern that impacted the integrity of the electoral process.
“Misinformation poses a serious issue. While there are trusted partners associated with Meta and Instagram, many posts shared during the Presidential Election contained false information. To find accurate details, we often had to log into the EC website or a few other reliable sources” he noted.
Another significant challenge according to him is the accessibility and timeliness of accurate information. “The major challenge here is that, although the EC website is accurate, it does not provide real-time information. There are very few websites available for obtaining correct information, making it difficult for voters and monitors alike.”
Gajanayake expressed concerns about the potential for manipulation in voter education related to preferential voting. He noted that only approved election monitoring organisations were permitted to conduct voter education.
“There were some explanations from the EC stating that only election monitoring organisations and those accepted by the EC can conduct voter education. Because of this, there were predictions that some organisations and individuals might manipulate this opportunity.
“We observed instances of such manipulation and reported them to the EC, which also took action by notifying Meta about these posts. Although these posts did not go viral, we noted attempts to mislead voters on how to vote and utilise preferential votes,” he said.
The role of AI in elections
Gajanayake highlighted the limited use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent elections, noting that while there had been predictions of its significant impact, the actual influence had been minimal. He also pointed to the small-scale use of AI to undermine candidates but emphasised that this was not widespread.
“During the Presidential Election, we were predicting that AI would play a major role. However, we observed that certain candidates used AI and some individuals leveraged it to undermine specific presidential candidates, albeit on a small scale.
“Ultimately, AI did not play a significant role during the Presidential Election; we encountered very few posts utilising this technology. We anticipate a similar trend at the upcoming Parliamentary Elections, as we do not expect to see a substantial amount of AI-generated content. Historically, we have noted very few instances of negative campaigning through AI,” he said.
Hettiarachchi also expressed PAFFREL’s concern about the potential impact of AI on the election, although he noted that it was too early to predict its full effect. “We are quite concerned about how AI might affect the upcoming elections, but it’s still too early to tell.”
Similarly, Makeen expressed concern about the increasing use of AI technologies. “While AI hasn’t been used extensively for campaigns yet, we have seen it used against candidates and parties. Moving forward, AI will be a challenge for election monitoring,” he added.