Social Media Misinformation During Elections.Varoon Bashyakarla, Mikheil Benidze & Rafael Goldzweig

PANEL: Misinformation on Social Media During Elections
HATE NEWS vs. FREE SPEECH: Polarization & Pluralism in Georgian Media
December 12 2020
Varoon Bashyakarla (Data Scientist, Tactical Tech’s Data & Politics Project, DE), Mikheil Benidze (Chief of Party, Georgia Information Integrity Program at Zinc Network, GE), Rafael Goldzweig (Research Coordinator, Democracy Reporting International -DRI, DE). Moderated by Eka Rostomashvili (Advocacy and Campaigns Coordinator at Transparency International, GE/DE).
By and large, Georgians are prolific social media users. Facebook, in particular, has been a key platform for politically engaged people to come together and organize. But it has also become a battleground for political groups to influence public opinion, especially when they’re campaigning for votes. During the high-stake 2018 presidential election runoff, divisive narratives quickly spread on social media through sponsored posts by anonymous Facebook pages. Ahead of the October 2020 parliamentary election, Georgians were again bombarded with sponsored political content - also on Instagram and TikTok - as people increasingly stayed home to contain the spread of COVID-19.
This panel will break down what we know about the ways that information is manipulated on social media in Georgia and elsewhere. Panelists will also debate the trends Georgian activists and election monitors should watch out for in the years to come and suggest the most promising avenues for future advocacy.
Varoon Bashyakarla, data scientist at the Tactical Technology Collective, will explain how the abundance of personal data generated through social media profiles is being leveraged by political interest groups around the world to influence voter behavior and what’s at stake. Mikheil Benidze, chief of party for the new Georgia Information Integrity Program at the Zinc Network, will share observations on how social media has been weaponized for electoral purposes and how Georgian civil society has risen up to the challenge. Rafael Goldzweig, research coordinator at Democracy Reporting International, will compare and contrast trends observed in Georgia with those seen elsewhere, and offer an overview of regulatory approaches and initiatives - particularly those debated in the European Union - for making the online environment more resilient against disinformation, hate speech and other challenges.
22th Event of the Disruption Network Lab.
Read more: www.disruptionlab.org/hate-news-vs-free-speech
Twitter: @disruptberlin
Facebook: /disruptionlab
Credits:
Disruption Network Lab Berlin - www.disruptionlab.org
Live stream: Boiling Head
Video: Gonzalo Rofso, Gabriel Rodriguez Alfaro, Ángel García Giménez.
Live stream: Boiling Head
Graphic: Jonas Frankki
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