2018-06-27
"In a period of just six years, social media outlets have experienced a transformation, going from a tool for strengthening democracy to being used to attack democracies.” The statement by Ambassador João Gomes Cravinho from DELBRA (Delegation of the European Union to Brazil) sums up a concern shared by all attendees in the Brazil-EU International Seminar “Fake News: Experiences and Challenges,” which was in favour of strengthening authoritative media and journalism as the primary tool to combat the spread of false news.
The seminar was held at the TSE (Superior Electoral Court) and had the support of the EU-Brazil Sector Dialogues Support Facility. During the opening ceremony Cravinho stressed that in order to maintain an open democratic system it is important that the government, private sector and consumers work together to fight disinformation.
“Governments should foster digital literacy and robust professional journalism in their societies. The news industry must provide high-quality journalism in order to build public trust and to correct fake news and disinformation without legitimising them. Technology companies should invest in the development of tools to spot Fake News, reduce financial incentives for those who profit from disinformation, and enhance accountability on-line,” he said.
Emmanuel Colombié, Head of the Latin America Desk at Reporters Without Borders, agrees that the media should get involved in the search for a solution. He discussed the Journalism Trust Initiative, a partnership between the RSF and European news agencies intended to establish new standards for media quality based on rewards, not punishments.
"It would be a sort of white list of trusted media outlets. The idea is to come up with a multi stakeholder competitive economic advantage model: the public authorities would prefer to invest funds in bona fide and better-ranked media outlets; advantages would include advertisements and more advertisers; and platforms could also offer algorithms to favour the trusted media outlets in a Web-based search engine, for instance. Instead of enforcing punishments, we would set up a certification system.”
German specialist Martin Emmer, Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin, believes that digital platforms have a key role to play in the fight against Fake News. He thinks that this debate is a necessary step before developing regulations. “These actors have just emerged, and no one has yet really outlined the responsibilities of these platforms compared to traditional media outlets."
Emmer also says that the monopoly should be dealt with. “If Facebook deletes content, this is at the global scale, and that's not how it should be. If on the one hand Facebook is not a publisher, but simply a platform for content sharing, on the other, it interferes a great deal with the way information is presented. Algorithms meddle with what gets to be displayed more prominently and what does not. In that sense, they are “quasi editors,” and this raises tremendous challenges from a merely legal perspective. We need to rethink the very basic role played by the media as we know it,” said Emmer.
French expert Christophe Leclercq, founder of EURACTIV and a member of the European Commission's High Level Group on Fake News, believes that it is crucial to restore the balance between the media and digital platforms. Quoting Justice Luiz Fux, President of the TSE, "it takes more journalism and more media to counter fake news."
“Supporting the media also means investing in executive education for journalists. Billions of euros are invested in international scientific programmes, but only a tiny fraction goes to the media. That needs to change,“ said Leclercq, who is also in favour of investing in fact-checking and fact checkers as a key weapon in the fight against disinformation.
Indeed, Danilo Montesi, a professor at the University of Bologna (Italy), mentions precisely the lack of information checkers on the Internet as one of the reasons behind the proliferation of fake news. “Social media platforms are conducive to the easy spread of Fake News because all users can play a bit of a journalist’s role and there are no independent parties in charge of fact checking.”
Montesi is studying means of content protection as a response to disinformation. "In one end you have cryptography as the primary or strongest of these. In the other end of the spectrum, you have open content platforms. Between the two levels digital rights management and the possibility for use of digital watermarks (i.e., hidden or embedded digital information). But they do not work on social media because of filters. So we decided to develop a new method for inserting watermarks in texts – a solution called homoglyphs for text content protection. Homoglyphs are unique symbols that can replace other similar symbols with the same rendering, but with a different underlying code "ASKA". It is suitable for digital news, which can be applied and reapplied and will still be protected and identified.”
Gianluca Liva, a scientific journalist and member of the Fact checkers Association of Italy, thinks that the fight against Fake News requires raising awareness of citizens in order to instil a sense of criticism in them. The solution found by this association was to develop a game that encourages young people to check the truth behind the news by searching information on-line. "Completion of the game does not mean the solution itself, but rather each student learning to establish their confirmation or denial bias.”
This is very similar to the day to day life of a fact checker reported by David Fernandez, responsible for the technological tools of Maldita.es. “We have a very strong network in web pages and on social networks. Every day we meet up with 30-40 journalists, reporters who bring news that may be false and someone is designated to lead the search to disprove or validate the information. Team members can ask questions that support the assessment and leave no loose ends. We analysed and decided as a group by a majority in the agency when we finally publish our feedback,” he said.
EU-Brazil Partnership
Justice Luiz Fux, who chose tackling Fake News in the 2018 elections as the main initiative in his tenure as president of the TSE, said that this international seminar with representatives from various sectors and countries in attendance provides for a healthy, diverse debate, and is fundamental to provide insights and food for thought and to help learn from the experiences with other electoral systems.
Along these lines, Brazil’s Attorney General Raquel Dodge stressed that cross-national dialogues should be celebrated because the exchange of ideas is conducive to solutions. She pointed out that only well-established democracies view Fake News as an issue. “Anticipating the risk of fair and free elections being affected by malicious practices of social disinformation is an illustration provided by this court, like the European Union, of foresight and zeal, as well as an explicit demonstration that Brazil’s democracy is based on the full exercise of freedom,“ she said.
Also speaking at the opening session of the seminar, President of the OAB (Brazilian Bar Association) Claudio Lamachia argued that “bringing civil society into the discussion on Fake News and the exchange of experiences between Brazil and European countries are relevant initiatives so we can move ahead”.
23/10/2020
Study addresses regulatory and governance challenges to decarbonize and digitalise the energy sector
16/10/2020
Joint press release - 8th EU-Brazil High Level Political Dialogue on the Environment Dimension of Sustainable Development on 16 October 2020 (virtual meeting)
03/08/2020
Webinar discusses the importance of data protection in the COVID-19 pandemic
22/05/2020
European Union and Brazil decide to cooperate in projects to fight COVID-19
Founded UE. © Diálogos