EU elections, Gori: In many countries there are disinformations even for voting mode

Elections in the European Union, expected to be held in June, have been affected by disinformations, says Paula Gori, European Digital Media Commissioner (EDMO).

In an interview for The Geopost, Gori says in many EU countries there are also disinformations for the way they vote.

What we saw in many countries is that there are disinformations even for voting mode. So that means that it's actually not only the right to be informed of what's affected, but also the right to vote influenced by dezinformation”, she says.

Total interview:

The Geopost: What's the situation with dezinformation in Europe?

Gori: Europe is taking dezinformation very seriously. In the last year, there were many political developments and, of course, technologically. So, as you may know, in Europe we now have the so-called Practice Code on disinformation. This is a self-regulated tool that has many signatories, including platforms, fact controllers, civil society organizations, advertisers, etc. And the idea there is really to work together to make sure there are actually actions that oppose dezinformation. This is a self-regulation tool that will become co-disposition, because, as you may know, in the EU we now have the Digital Services Act. And according to this regulation, the platforms have to carry out the annual risk assessment to see if in fact the way their services function can be used to divide, among other things, dezinforms. So this is the current situation in the EU, very quickly at the political level. Let me also say that any solution that concerns dezinformation should respect fundamental rights, and that's why we have started in the EU, not with the regulation of content, for example. This is also very important, because at the EU level, dezination as such is legitimate. It is not illegal content, such as child pornography or copyright violations, and so on, which is illegal. But it is very important when it comes to disinformation to respect fundamental rights.

And that's why in the EU, we tend to go to what is called the approach of all society. So all experts and all parties involved in the information field and dezinformation work together and jointly to cope with the phenomenon.

The Geopost: Now we have elections in Europe, who's fighting your organization, what kind of disinformation is coming and attacking Europe?

Gori: So of course, now in June we have the EU elections and this is also a very important moment, because we saw how artificial intelligence is being used more and more. We can also count on some of the experiences we have in the last national elections in some countries. What I can tell you is that there are, of course, specific measures. For example, the European Commission recently issued instructions on the integrity of the elections, there is a Digital Services Act as I was saying, the EBMO itself has built a working group that is actually focusing only on these upcoming elections.

And so everything is getting ready to deal with the disinformative power that will certainly spread and focus on content as at the core of the elections but also on procedures. What we saw in many countries is that there are disinformations for the way we vote. So that means that it's actually not only the right to be informed of what's affected, but also the right to vote influenced by dezinformation. So it is very important that citizens be aware of this. The biased disinformive urativa, they're connected to the information. So if there is some information on a certain subject, dezinformation follows.

So what we expect is that deinformation for EU elections will in any case be a link to local agendas. If there is anything important in a certain location, dezinformation will be for that. As for the actors behind, of course we can expect external influence. This is for the European Foreign Action Service to see it, but let's also mention that EU elections have a clear and strong national impact, so we can also expect internal dezinforms in terms of EU elections.

The Geopost: If I can ask you about dezinformation in Ukraine and Russian dezination, what is your strategy to fight this?

Gori: So what we did when we started the invasion is we built a database that was first updated every day with fact-checking articles from all our networks and we have data checks on all member states. And on the basis of that, we were also producing for a long time, even monthly reports that essentially summarized the main nanorates of deninforms. It is clear that when it comes to dezinformation regarding conflict, it is the whole section of the sanctions imposed by the EU and that's something that goes beyond if you want dezinformation. But it's very important to know what the narativa are, to also know what the techniques are used to exchange deninforms in order to protect yourselves from them. So, as I said before, it's not just a matter of discovery, but it's a lot more, it's creating flexibility in society, it's explaining how dezinforms are produced. Let me also say it's very cheap to produce dezinforms, because a photograph outside of the context is often enough to spread dezinformation. What we did at a certain moment as EMMO, we had a task force for conflict. And the working group, consisting of a number of experts, very well-known experts, had the mission to understand, in fact, whether the whole environment was prepared and ready to deal with a situation like this. And the answer was yes and no, in the sense that we need, for example, more research infrastructure to understand the phenomenon, we need to have much more coordination among all the organs that deal with dezinformation.

We should have more protection for journalists, because journalists and fact controllers (fact-checkers) psychologically can be very influenced by seeing, for example, conflict-related images, so we have to make sure they are protected. So there are a number of recommendations that this task force has issued, which we hope will be implemented because this will make us more flexible in the event of other conflicts or other crisis situations.

The Geopost: And for the end, what is your message to organisations, media and journalists in the Balkans?

Gori: The first thing is to keep doing the work you're doing, we need independent journalism, we need quality journalism, we need quality journalism, we know that media business models have been affected in recent years, but the quality has to be there, because the quality that expresses “click-bait is not an option, citizens have the right to inform, and I really want to encourage journalists to continue doing their job in the most independent and the most important way, because this is also very important for all the people who work in the background, really have a strong information, and I really want to urge them to keep doing the job in the news, and I don't think that the facts are very important, and that's the facts are not going on. Rather, they can be truly complementary.