The impact of disinformation on debate in the European Parliament
Risks for Democracy and Tools to Fight it
Last Monday, March 4, the event "The impact of online disinformation on electoral campaigns: risks for democracy and tools to combat them" was organized by the Spanish MEP Ramón Jáuregui at the European Parliament's headquarters in Brussels.
Cristina Frutos López, Director of European Operations of Minsait and José Antonio Rubio Blanco, Director of Onesait Democracy of the Electoral Solutions Area of Minsait, participated in the workshop about the phenomenon of misinformation in the context of the upcoming elections to the European Parliament.
The event was attended by the European Commission, Silvio Mascagna, member of the Cabinet of Commissioner Julian King for the Security Union and the Director of Digital Society, Trust and Cybersecurity, Despina Spanou.
With the support of experts from academia and the technology sector, this meeting sought to shed light on the risks that disinformation can pose for democracy and some of the tools and strategies to deal with this misinformation. The three main cyber threats were addressed in the electoral context: the attempts to manipulate the votes, the attempts to manipulate the voters and the maneuvers of destabilization and generation of chaos.
Jaume Duch, spokesman for the European Parliament and Director General of Communication highlighted the risk to democracy that the spread of misinformation implies, since "they prevent citizens from taking free and informed decisions" and provoke the "polarization of society"
As quoted by Duch, "the misinformation has become more sophisticated and dangerous" and "have moved from the media to private messaging applications, such as Facebook and WhatsApp." However, "We have seen few significant actions by these companies to try to end this problem".
On the cyber attacks that increasingly suffer electoral processes around the world, Duch said that cybersecurity is a responsibility that must face the Member States of the European Union because "if you can not trust the results obtained in one of the countries, the set of European elections will be compromised"
As pointed out by David Luengo, Director of Indra in Brussels, the conclusion on which a clear consensus was reached was the urgent need to invest in electoral security since the credibility and reputation of democratic systems are at stake.
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