Disinformation

A recent report by high-level experts’ group under the European Commission has defined all forms of false, inaccurate, or misleading information designed, presented and promoted to intentionally cause public harm or for private profit as disinformation. The Ethical Journalism Network (EJN) bulletin dated May 17, 2018 carries the salient features of the report.

Most of these salient features mentioned in the EJN bulletin could be applicable to Pakistan’s media scene as well. In fact, the All Pakistan Newspapers Society, Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors, Pakistan Broadcasters Association, Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists and local social media experts need to set up a mutually-agreed panel to study the European Commission report and develop one of its own specifically for Pakistan to tackle disinformation that has started affecting our social, economic and political life, including the current election season.



The reports’ analysis on Fake News and Online Disinformation starts from an understanding of disinformation as a phenomenon well beyond the term “fake news”. The report advises against simplistic solutions while stressing to avoid any form of public or private censorship.

The recommendations aim to provide short-term responses to most pressing problems, longer-term responses to increase societal resilience to disinformation, and a framework for ensuring that the effectiveness of these responses is continuously evaluated, while new evidence-based responses are developed.

The multi-dimensional recommendations are based on interconnected and mutually reinforced responses resting on five pillars designed to:

1. Enhance transparency of online news, involving an adequate and privacy-compliant sharing of data about the systems that enable their circulation online;

2. Promote media and information literacy to counter disinformation in digital media environment;

3. Develop tools to empower users to tackle disinformation while engaging with fast-evolving information technologies;

4. Safeguard the diversity and sustainability of the news media ecosystem,

5. Conduct research on the impact of disinformation to evaluate the measures taken by different actors and constantly adjust the necessary responses.

The report also calls for introducing a code of practice, with national centres established to fight disinformation, promote media literacy and, importantly, to find resources to pay for more investigative journalism.

The report however does not demand the tech companies to end the secrecy over the way they work, although the EU experts’ panel suggests social networks “to ensure transparency by explaining how algorithms select news.”

However, given that social media makes money by attracting the attention of users, it’s unexpected of it to reveal the dark arts of robotic information processing anytime soon.

Although it’s widely accepted that the algorithm-driven business models of groups like Facebook and Google’s Youtube as well as politically-motivated government propaganda are widely accepted as responsible for disinformation, the report says the motives for putting out false information must be determined before labeling something as 'disinformation'.

However, the experts failed to examine the avalanches of disinformation that comes from governments making no mention of how to deal such spread of blatant propaganda and disinformation. But perhaps most importantly the inquiry failed to follow the money trail that explains how social networks operate.



Lastly, without fully understanding how falsehoods, propaganda and potentially abusive communications trigger profits for advertising companies like Google and Facebook it is impossible to understand the extent to which commercial interests are an obstacle in the way of controlling the spread of disinformation.

Nevertheless, the report makes a number of positive recommendations including: setting up centres to combat disinformation, improving media literacy, increasing funding for investigative journalism, and providing tax breaks to encourage more reliable streams of information.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 19^th, 2018.

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