Joint ECAS/GLOBSEC Side Session (1 September 2024)
Exploring successful (collaborative) approaches to building resilience to disinformation and other phenomena undermining democracies across Central and Eastern Europe.
This year, ECAS had the pleasure of participating at the GLOBSEC forum held between 30th August and 1st September in Prague, Czechia.
In partnership with GLOBSEC, ECAS organised a joint roundtable discussion (side session) with the participation of experts from civil society organisations, academia, and the public sector, who discussed the main challenges and opportunities in combatting disinformation. Guest speakers were Tomasz Chlon, the Plenipotentiary for Countering International Disinformation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Poland, Lukas Kutil, data analyst in the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO) hub, Charles University/CEDMO and Petko Georgiev, journalist, ProInfo Foundation, Bulgaria. The discussion was moderated by Desislava Ivanova, Program Director of ECAS for Central and Eastern Europe.
Petko Georgiev, journalist, ProInfo Foundation, Bulgaria /Desislava Ivanova, Program Director of ECAS for Central and Eastern Europe
During the event, ECAS presented its “Framework for Civil Society Action Against Disinformation” – created on the basis of its experience in building coalitions against disinformation in 2022 – 2023 in Bulgaria, Slovenia, Hungary, Czechia and Poland. The ensuing discussion presented an opportunity to look into possible actions and narratives to counter disinformation attacks in CEE and promote network building in the post EU-election period.
Key takeaways from the discussion:
Developing and supporting independent media.
Reactive measures, such as fact-checking, are not enough: proactive actions need to be prioritized. Fact-checking has not been found to be effective in fighting disinformation, as nowadays “facts don’t mater” – emotional responses do.
Giving out the “real” news first prevents the spread of fake news. This includes online outlets. There are very few examples where state media is the biggest supplier of online news – this is the case only in a few countries such as the UK and Germany. This is something we need to work towards. Ensuring media independence is a prerequisite here, in order to avoid a situation, like in Hungary, where state media is in fact responsible for much of the disinformation.
In Poland, a coalition against disinformation has been setup recently, which includes state institution, CSOs and media. It is a new initiative.
Fostering media and tech literacy and critical thinking is important but not enough – even highly educated people are also often victims of disinformation narratives.
A key factor in fighting disinformation is motivation. Academic research shows that people do not want to be told what is right and what is wrong, but are willing to learn for themselves. The question is how to motivate them to look for the truth and not become an easy victim to disinformation narratives.
Disinformation cannot be cut at the core, because there is no core. Any counter measures must use a targeted approach to address different population groups.
The target of disinformation attacks are the democratic values – such as equality, rule of law, respect for human rights. Efforts must therefore be put towards reinforcing these values.
AI can be helpful – it can reduce bias, and help cleverly divide labour – but it needs to be regulated. The BBC guidelines on how to use AI are particularly useful.
A comprehensive approach is the only way to effectively tackle disinformation and must include:
o Effective storytelling promoting narrative change
o Critical thinking training (for children and adults)
o Setting up task forces comprising of different organisations from the public,
private, non-profit, academic sector to monitor and quickly react to fake
news. Cross-border alliances need to be set up too – international action is
needed but is currently missing
o Developing and supporting independent media.