Networking for Information Integrity in Asia and Globally | IGF 2023 Networking Session #172

Daniel Arnaudo

The first speaker discussed the InfoTegrity Network, whose objective is to organise resources for a democratic information space. InfoTegrity involves the collaboration of technical, policy, and civic organisations, with the goal of countering harmful content and promoting reliable information. The speaker emphasised that accurate and impartial electoral and political information is crucial for the functioning of effective democracies. The argument presented was that the InfoTegrity Network plays a vital role in ensuring citizens have access to trustworthy information, which is essential for making informed decisions during electoral processes. This promotes democratic participation and strengthens the integrity of democratic systems. By bringing together various stakeholders and combining their expertise, the InfoTegrity Network aims to address the challenges associated with misinformation and provide credible sources of information.

Moving on, the second speaker supported increased openness and acceptance in the internet space. They highlighted the need for assertive policies to protect marginalised groups, specifically women who are often targeted online. The argument made was that a more inclusive and accountable internet governance framework is essential for reducing inequalities and promoting gender equality. The speaker emphasised the importance of democratizing internet governance to ensure that policy decisions are made in a transparent and participatory manner. This would help establish policies that foster responsible behaviour online and protect the rights of individuals, especially those who are traditionally marginalised.

From the analysis of both speakers, it is evident that there is a shared focus on promoting democratic values and addressing challenges in the digital space. The InfoTegrity Network, as presented by the first speaker, aims to facilitate the dissemination of accurate and reliable information to support democratic processes. The second speaker’s endorsement of increased openness and acceptance in the internet space underscores the importance of developing policies that protect marginalised groups and ensure equal access to the opportunities provided by the digital world.

In conclusion, both speakers highlight the significance of information integrity and responsible internet governance in the context of democratic societies. Their arguments support the need for collaborative efforts across various sectors to build a democratic information space that is inclusive, transparent, and accountable. These insights shed light on the key considerations required to foster a digital environment that upholds democratic values and promotes equality.

Hyra Basit

The Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) is playing a crucial role in Pakistan by combating cyber harassment and disinformation. These disinformation campaigns have had a significant impact on the country, leading to social unrest and influencing legal changes. DRF recognizes the need to bridge the gap between the global north and south within online spaces to ensure equal rights and protection for all individuals.

To achieve its goals, DRF offers a wide range of services. They provide digital security assistance, legal support, and mental health services to those affected by cyber harassment and disinformation. Moreover, DRF conducts training programmes for journalists at all levels, equipping them with essential skills in digital security, media ethics, and fact-checking. Through these initiatives, DRF aims to enhance the capacity of journalists to navigate the challenges of online spaces responsibly.

DRF acknowledges the challenges they face in getting social media companies to prioritize issues in smaller countries like Pakistan. In this regard, Hyra, a prominent figure, criticizes social media companies, including Meta, for their inadequate attention toward these concerns. However, DRF has not shied away from pushing these companies by presenting consistent evidence and highlighting the offline consequences resulting from disinformation campaigns. Their efforts have compelled social media platforms to address these issues seriously.

The level of engagement with tech platforms varies, with mixed degrees of success. DRF has established channels of communication with platforms, but their effectiveness highly depends on personal connections and the willingness of individual employees to collaborate with organizations like DRF. The analysis highlights the existing loopholes in the current engagement mechanisms, emphasizing the need to fill these gaps for more effective collaboration between tech platforms and organizations working to combat cyber harassment and disinformation.

Notably, popular platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, and LINE play a significant role in disseminating information in Pakistan. During important events such as elections, these platforms are widely used, potentially amplifying the impact of disinformation campaigns. Recognizing this trend, it becomes crucial to monitor and regulate the information shared on these platforms to ensure accuracy and prevent the spread of false information that may contribute to social unrest or manipulation of legal processes.

In conclusion, the Digital Rights Foundation is at the forefront of combating cyber harassment and disinformation in Pakistan. Through their comprehensive approach, including digital security services, legal support, mental health services, and journalist training, they strive to create a safer online environment. However, challenges remain in gaining adequate attention from social media companies and improving engagement mechanisms with tech platforms. The analysis reinforces the importance of regulatory efforts to monitor the dissemination of information on popular platforms during crucial events.

Ketty Chen

Taiwan faces significant difficulties in participating in international forums due to a lack of recognition. There is no option for Taiwan in the dropdown list of countries in the UN system, and Taiwanese citizens encounter challenges when attempting to register their institutions from Taiwan. These limitations prevent Taiwan from fully engaging in international discussions and hinder its ability to contribute to global initiatives.

However, Taiwanese civil society organizations are proactive in countering information warfare and disinformation campaigns, particularly from China. They have developed effective strategies, such as publishing reports to expose disinformation and creating civic tech groups to enhance communication between citizens and the government. These efforts strengthen Taiwan’s ability to counter false narratives and safeguard its democracy.

Taiwanese civil society organizations are also eager to share their strategies with international partners. Their willingness to foster collaboration and share best practices demonstrates their commitment to combating disinformation and promoting strong democratic institutions not only within Taiwan but around the world.

Taiwan has been persistently targeted by disinformation and information warfare campaigns, primarily originating from a foreign country. Nevertheless, Taiwanese civil society has responded by developing robust strategies and plans to protect its democracy. This highlights the importance of citizen-driven initiatives in safeguarding democratic values against the threat of disinformation and manipulation.

Engaging in civil society organizations within closed societies presents unique challenges, but it is more feasible at the regional level. This approach recognizes the importance of establishing connections and building relationships within a specific geographic area to promote civil society values.

Cybersecurity is crucial for civil society groups operating in closed societies, and Taiwanese organizations understand the significance of improving their cybersecurity measures. Adequate cybersecurity measures protect the integrity of their work and the privacy and safety of their members.

Overall, Taiwan’s struggle for recognition on the international stage hinders its participation in global forums. However, Taiwanese civil society organizations demonstrate resilience and a proactive approach in countering disinformation and safeguarding democratic values. Their willingness to share their experiences and expertise with international partners fosters collaboration and emphasizes the importance of cybersecurity in protecting civil society in closed societies.

Isabel Hou

GovZero is a decentralised civic tech community focused on promoting transparency of information and innovative strategies for citizen engagement in public affairs. With over 13,000 participants globally, the community has made significant strides in its mission. It has hosted 58 hackathons, resulting in nearly 1,000 proposals that offer creative solutions to societal challenges.

One of GovZero’s core arguments is the importance of transparency. By advocating for open and accessible information, the community aims to empower citizens and promote accountability in public affairs. This argument is supported by the development of projects such as News Helper, Cofact, and Zero Archive, which combat disinformation and ensure information integrity. These initiatives play a vital role in countering false information and manipulative tactics in public discourse.

Additionally, GovZero places a strong emphasis on collaboration and inclusivity. The community consists of members from diverse backgrounds, including computing, law, media, arts, and politics. By leveraging the collective expertise and perspectives of these individuals, GovZero fosters collaborative problem-solving and encourages innovative approaches to addressing societal issues. The platform serves as a space for professionals from various fields, such as engineers, designers, lawyers, and journalists, to contribute to meaningful change.

Furthermore, GovZero adopts an open-source model to promote collaboration and the sharing of ideas and resources. By harnessing collective intelligence, the community strives to find effective solutions for complex challenges. Its commitment to inclusivity is evident in its multi-disciplinary approach, as members from different fields work together in teams to develop innovative strategies.

In terms of data protection and access, GovZero recognises the importance of safeguarding data from unauthorised access and ensuring its integrity. While no specific supporting facts are mentioned, the text implies attention being given to platforms such as TikTok and Doin, which are praised for their strong mechanisms in preventing crawler access to their data.

Furthermore, GovZero acknowledges the value of information monitoring and data sharing. Strategies mentioned include pay-to-gather information, social engineering, building custom systems, and sharing datasets with other researchers. This highlights the community’s commitment to providing resources, including datasets and experiences, to enhance information monitoring and problem-solving.

In conclusion, GovZero is a dynamic and inclusive civic tech community that advocates for transparency of information and promotes innovative strategies for citizen engagement in public affairs. Through its open-source model, collaborative problem-solving, and multi-stakeholder engagement, GovZero strives to effectively address societal issues. Its projects, such as News Helper, Cofact, and Zero Archive, demonstrate a commitment to combating disinformation and ensuring information integrity. Additionally, GovZero recognises the importance of data protection and data access in the digital era, as well as the significance of information monitoring and sharing for advancing knowledge and problem-solving capabilities.

Daniel Arnaudo:
Okay, welcome to our session, Networking for Information Integrity in Asia and Globally. Thank you for joining us. It should be a kind of combination, hybrid, interactive session, so we’re looking forward to this. We are here in Kyoto, and we are joined by friends from around the world online. I am Dan Arnaudo, Senior Advisor for Information Strategies with the National Democratic Institute. We work globally to observe elections, strengthen legislative processes, and support a more democratic information space, and that’s what we’re here to talk about today. The session was specifically to discuss methods of organizing to support a healthy information space, and particularly through our InfoTegrity, or Information Integrity Network, which is a group of organizations and individuals in Asia and from around the world that work on these democratic and digital issues. So to start, I’m going to talk a little bit about the network and the session, and then we’ll introduce some of my colleagues here, who will talk about some of the resources from groups within the network, including from GovZero, which is a civic technology community in Taiwan, and Pakistan’s Digital Rights Foundation. You’ll have an opportunity to ask some questions after that, and then we will move to breakout groups if we have – we’re starting to get critical mass here, so hopefully we will have a good turnout, both online and in person. And then we will use this online brainstorm to discuss approaches to various aspects of internet governance and information integrity and that relationship, and that will feed into our session report and our contributions. So hopefully get some good feedback from you all. So just to start with, I mean, in terms of our overall approach and InfoTegrity as a concept, we developed this as an initiative, and specifically to support the development of networks and training and other resources around informational issues, and we have regional working groups on these issues that include technical, policy, and civic organizations that collaborate and communicate on these issues. And we really have a goal of building healthy information environments overall versus countering inauthentic information or harmful information. I think a lot of these approaches that you hear talked about are often focusing only on countering disinformation or only on looking at influence campaigns. And I think it’s more than that. It’s not only countering harmful content, but also about promoting the flow of reliable information and building that healthy information environment that’s layered on top of a lot of the governance and infrastructure issues that are being discussed here. From our perspective, effective democracies require that citizens have access to accurate and impartial electoral and political information in particular, and how that plays a role in those societies. We consider critical stakeholders that we want to work with, so this is a component. I think this group particularly focuses on civil society, but you also want to consider election management bodies, the public sector, governments, mass media, I think certainly is playing a huge role, and obviously technology companies and social media in particular. I think we really need to work collectively, and this is where kind of the word that’s bandied about for the whole week is important in terms of multi-stakeholder engagement. I think in this case, it is where we all have pieces of this, and it’s not like a simple problem where one actor can unilaterally decide how things are going to work. And despite, I think, the efforts of certain actors, particularly within the public sector, governments to reassert that control, it’s something that is not going to be simple to place in that way, because platforms and even we within civil society, I think, have a huge voice and role to play. We must work in tandem, I think, to fight against information manipulation campaigns that seek to spread cynicism about democratic processes, distort even people’s basic concepts around institutions, and hinder citizens’ abilities to make political decisions. Some of the approaches that we at NDI engage in through this initiative and InfoTegrity Network include building on that knowledge base. How do we build resources? How do we create training materials, curricula on these issues? Obviously, with us being a democratic organization, I think elections are a critical component of this, so we want to consider the elections monitoring piece. How do elections happen online? How are they influenced? How can we monitor that, and how can we help groups contribute to a more positive information environment in that sense? And then I think a piece that is important here to think about is how do we build civic engagement and democratic technology norms? So certainly here at IGF, I think this is one of the principal concepts that we’re thinking about here in terms of influencing normative ideas around how the Internet should be governed, but also considering other mechanisms, the EU Code of Practice on disinformation, national frameworks, even party frameworks, codes of conduct for diverse actors, whether you’re a journalist, whether you’re a member of a party, a political candidate. How are you approaching these issues, and can we come to some agreement that will create stronger informational boundaries and understanding of what is acceptable for political speech within this space? I think we’ve had a lot of practice and time establishing those normative standards around, say, traditional journalism standards or traditional political campaigning standards, but we’re still catching up, frankly, from the invention of the Internet in terms of how political actors should operate online. And then finally, I think we seek to really consider ways of addressing online violence against women and other marginalized groups, gender disinformation, so that we can really build a healthy information space for all, because I think women and female candidates are often more targeted by these practices, and so I think a lot of our programming and work integrates that idea and works to build systems to promote an open space that is open and accepting to different and diverse voices. So you see we have a wide range of topic areas, advocacy, digital literacy, supporting marginalized groups. These are all kind of areas that we talk about within the network and want to focus on. The goal is to build societal resilience to harmful content, but also to promote strong ideas that promote a positive, open, free, rights-respecting, and democratic information environment. I think that’s in the name of our organization, and a lot of the groups we work with focus on this concept, but I think democratizing Internet governance, democratizing the information space, and keeping it democratic and open is something that we really want to focus on. This network that we’ve built is intended to be a coordination mechanism to help address these issues, and we’re looking to discuss and demonstrate how it operates, specifically with this session and some of my colleagues here. We have training and connection opportunities. We have roundtable discussions, particularly looking at elections and some of the topics I mentioned earlier. I think content moderation, challenges to research, these are some issues that we want to workshop on with you here, as well, in terms of understanding how you view these issues and how we can elevate them within the IGF community in different ways. So that will be part of the breakouts and that component there. We also have discussions with guest speakers, whether they’re tech companies, donors, research tool demos, and we have a couple people here in person today that are going to give versions of that, talking about some of the resources they developed. Also, if you’re interested in joining going forward, you will have an opportunity to share your organization’s contact information and request to join during this session. So to get started, I want to pass it on to my colleagues here. We’d like to demonstrate some of the resources from the network and from colleagues here from Pakistan and Taiwan. But to start, I have here Dr. Ketty Chen, who is the Taiwan country representative for NDI and the head of its Taiwan office. Prior to assuming her post, she served as the vice president of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2016 to 2023. So please, Ketty, the floor is yours.

Ketty Chen:
Thank you very much, Dan. Good afternoon, everybody. I’m Ketty Chen. I am the new Taiwan representative for the National Democratic Institute’s Taipei office. And it’s really wonderful to be able to join all of you here to discuss some of these really important topics that Dan had mentioned. As the NDI office in Taiwan, we work with quite a few Taiwanese civil society members covering a series of different issues, such as media literacy, information integrity, gender equality, LGBT rights. And also, we work with Taiwanese civil societies and civil society in the region to secure and safeguard the basic rights of citizens, not only the basic rights, but also their rights in the Internet space. We also have been creating network and alliances of civil society members in the region. So it’s really important. And I’m really grateful to be able to come here and continue networking and meeting new friends where, in the future, we can move forward into safeguarding some of these rights that Dan already mentioned. So from the perspective of Taiwan, I would like to mention that under the UN system, it is not easy for Taiwanese civil society members to join forums like this, because they have difficulties registering as institutions from Taiwan. If you recall, when you have to pick where you’re from on the dropdown list, there’s no option of Taiwan. So just as the difficulty faced by Taiwanese citizens, if you do not click on the option of China, there’s no options for them to be able to successfully complete registration. So I’m actually very happy that we have a colleague from Gov Zero here on the panel, because as a result of these difficulties, quite a few, actually the majority of Taiwanese civil society organizations in Taiwan who are from the civic tech community, civil society members that work on countering information warfare and disinformation, they’re not physically here today. So I think for us, it would be very useful to leave our contact information with you, or for you to leave your contact information with us, so moving forward, we could pass on the information from your organizations and the issues that you’re interested in working with Taiwanese civil society on, so we could move forward after this really important forum. And just a little bit about disinformation and information warfare campaign from China targeting Taiwan, unfortunately, but also it is fortunate that Taiwan has been, in the past decades, the number one country in the world that’s been under the distribution of disinformation from an entity outside of Taiwan or a foreign country. But because of that, Taiwanese civil society organizations, they work amongst themselves to develop strategies to counter not only information warfare campaign, but also the authoritarians’ intrusion on how to affect Taiwan’s democracy. For example, we are right smack in the middle of the national campaign of 2024. I think in one of the panels yesterday, I think, Dan, you were on there, that next year is going to be a very busy year for Democrats like us, because there are several important national elections happening around the world, and Taiwan is one of them. And so what Taiwanese civil society had developed is that they have strategies of publishing reports, and especially bilingual reports on the behavior of disinformation targeting election or even between elections. And also, the civil societies convened together to create civic tech groups to try to bridge the Taiwanese citizens and its government and bring on issues that’s important for citizens to discuss amongst themselves and then reflect to government officials. So I think that it’s rather amazing that civil society in Taiwan, upon arriving at critical junctures of political history within the country, that they always managed to come up with strategies and plans that works to safeguard Taiwan’s democracy. And also, they’re very eager to share that with partners from the region and from around the world. So I think I will pass the mic to Isabel, who is a representative of GovZero, and she has developed a civic tech handbook to share with people who are interested and using the Taiwan model. So I’ll give the floor to her.

Isabel Hou:
Thank you, Ketty. It’s my great pleasure to be here. And first, let me share my screen. Here? Okay. Oh. You get it. Okay. Great. Okay. I’m Isabel Hou. I’m a lawyer, and I contribute to GovZero community in the past 10 years. But however, I’m not a representative of GovZero community, because it is a decentralized community, and it’s difficult to say someone can represent this community. But I was chairperson of a very important task force in GovZero. a community which organised the bimonthly hackathon in the past 10 years So I’m also the Secretary-General of Taiwan AI Academy Foundation So what is GovZero? Actually, it’s a group of people who has like two jobs One is a regular job and the other one is they use their free time like Saturday and Sunday and maybe after work to contribute to the community project It is a decentralised civic tech community We advocate the transparency of information and build tech solutions for citizens to participate in public affair from the bottom up So GovZero means substituting the O with zero in Gov We want to use the internet and digital thinking Zero and one to change the traditional government And it’s kind of like a concept of nerd politics So it’s a group of people Many of them come from the background of computing, law, media, arts, politics and they work in teams And this small group of team members mobilise the crowd They provide the tools to invite people to, more people to join their actions In the GovZero manifesto, we share the core value of this community We come from everywhere We are citizens collaborating to bring about change We are polycentric community and self-organised and motivated And we use open source model to try to find a solution for challenges of society And we have fun because you need to have fun to do this for 10 years and to change the status quo And we are you You can just click, join the Slack So it’s a dashboard of the GovZero In the yesterday morning, we have more than 13,000 people in the Slack users They come from many different parts of the world, including Silicon Valley I think we have participants from many parts of Asia And we have hosted 58 hackathons and almost 1,000 proposals And we celebrated one 10th anniversary last year And so this is backgrounds of GovZero participants There are many engineers, they’re coding And we also have students called Learning Together And NGO organisers, educators, writers, designers, lawyers like me, and journalists So these are three keywords of the GovZero participants There’s a big part of Python But there are also iOS, design, project management, backend, blockchain So in the GovZero, I think it’s not a multi-stakeholder forum It’s kind of like a platform for multi-stake collaboration You can collaborate with people from many different kinds of backgrounds So it’s a very short introduction about GovZero If you are interested, you can find this online I shared the 10 years of GovZero last year in open source summit It’s an open source beyond code development It’s an experiment to use open source model to solve the social issues I think that works And so about information integrity, as Katie just mentioned Taiwan faced this kind of challenge very early Like in 2013, we have this project called News Helper It’s a small program which you can just add it in your computer Then it will remind you if this news is sceptical And in 2016, there’s another project called Cofact It’s a light bot which you can add it in your online application And then you forward the sceptical information to the bot And there are group community members there to do the fact-checking things for you And in 2020, we have this in the community There’s a proposed project called Zero Archive And the project owner is here, Zhihao And I think this project is to try to collect a lot of… systematically to collect a lot of data on the web And try to figure out the information environment in a much more large context And this project is sponsored by, I think, NDI and those other institutions And so, this year, Zhihao’s organization, IORG, they deliver a report about this narrative U.S. scepticism narratives and where they come from So it’s not only about a certain individual disinformation content But now we are looking more like how they try to manipulate the whole public discourse in Taiwan And the report is adopted by economists last month to report how China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation So these are some of projects about info integrity in our community And now I want to share with you our summary of how we do this different kind of projects So you can scan the QR code is online and you can just… It’s still in progress, but with the open-source spirit, we release early, we release often So you can just check it And in the handbook, we just analyze the different stage and the flow of how the project can be built up From come up with ideas and what kind of resources and checkpoints you should notice And it is very, very important to have a good English name So you can share with people who don’t know Chinese And what kind of things you should do And try to find the findings And so it’s… And then you can release your results We do this in the community and by hosting bi-monthly hackathon People are not only collaborate online They can come to the same place to do face-to-face discussion I think this is a very important thing to do So people get connected when they talk in person And except this, we also analyze the elements of what should be included in this… In this GovZero community First, you need contributors You need people who are willing to contribute And you create a space for them to collaborate together The space could be a physical space, but also online space like providing collaboration tools online And then people will propose, bring their own proposal and create a repost And then invite people to join their project With the results of the source code or documentation This will empower the contributors to do more contributions I think these are the important elements of GovZero community And in the content, chapter one, we share what is GovZero, how GovZero works And also in chapter two, we share about how to build up a community And I think you might want to check chapter three first Because we have a lot of different cases here And then, like this is the Cofact project I just mentioned It analyzes the backgrounds of project owners And how they set up the goals of the project And the complicity, modularization, digitalization, and how open it is We have several, more than 10 project cases in the handbook And also with NDI sponsor, we share the draft of this handbook With communities in Southeast Asia, in Chiang Mai this last May And also with Japan and Korean community in Jeju Island And then we collect a lot of cases How the current status of civic tech projects and community around Asia countries So I think this might be very informative for all of you And this is my sharing, and thank you

Daniel Arnaudo:
Thanks very much, Isabel Very interesting Thank you And I think finally we’re going to move to our final speaker here Hira Bassett, who is a Senior Program Manager at the Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan And oversees the cyber harassment helpline there and gender disinformation projects And another critical election coming up in the next year So, over to you

Hyra Basit:
Hi everyone As Dan said, my name is Hira Bassett I’m here from Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan We’ve done a lot of work regarding information integrity And I’m just going to give you a brief overview of everything that we’ve done So it’s just bits and pieces of a lot of our projects So just starting off In 2016 we started the cyber harassment helpline Which came about as a response To a lot of complaints and cases that we were receiving from young girls and women And we saw that there was no real awareness or support system that they had And so the helpline came about as a solution Or a potential solution actually To all of the complaints that we were getting There was a space, a gap that we saw And we tried to fill it as best as we could So the helpline has been established since 2016 And we provide digital security services Psychological or mental health support To women and young girls Especially because it’s such a taboo topic To be facing online harassment of any sort You know, facing tech-facilitated gender-based violence Intimate image abuse If their accounts are hacked Or if they’re being impersonated It’s such a taboo that you cannot talk to your friends and family about this Or you’re going to be victim blamed The other thing that we do Is we provide legal services So we actually do have The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act in Pakistan Which addresses cyber crimes Part of which is Abusing or harassing women It doesn’t cover everything But it does cover some of it So our aim is to provide pro bono legal services Or legal awareness and legal knowledge To everyone who calls us But since then It started out as a focus on women and girls But since then We have expanded our services Or we’ve concentrated some of our services To focus on providing services to vulnerable occupations Particularly journalists and human rights defenders So in that goal We establish escalation channels With social media platforms In order to directly raise Those cases to them And bridge the gap between Western or global north Social media and tech companies And the kind of context Or regional problems that we see In Pakistan Or generally in the global south We see that there’s no real understanding Of why their policies Don’t really work for us Necessarily in Pakistan Or their implementation Rather And so what needs to be done In order to actively address The kinds of problems that we’re seeing Or the solutions that we need So again For journalists and human rights defenders We take those cases as a priority We try to flag them Especially And this includes Meta, Twitter or X TikTok, Google These are all platforms That are very actively being used By journalists and human rights defenders To spread Or actually Build their professional capacities Or reach out to their audiences But in addition to this We have also started to focus Particularly on disinformation We have our elections coming up And we’ve seen in the past That disinformation campaigns Have been actually pretty active Disinformation campaigns have been Actually prevalent and very successful In creating Mass unrest And protests As well as Sometimes even slightly affecting Legal changes These Disinformation campaigns have targeted Women journalists in particular And Everything that comes along with it Sexualizing them, focusing on Trying to discredit them As journalists but also women Or their personal integrity And we’ve also seen A very strong A very recent example Of these disinformation campaigns Targeting the transgender community In Pakistan We worked very hard with social media companies, especially Meta, to address these. I won’t go into much detail about our engagement with them. I get very angry when I start to think about how unresponsive they were, even now. But it’s something that we have to keep highlighting with social media companies, because it just seems like they don’t really want to focus, the global south or Pakistan isn’t really a focus area for them. And so we have to keep on providing them with evidence, or show a consistent pattern or consequences in the offline world for them to actually take those cases seriously. So again, about disinformation, that’s something that because we have seen in the past, because we have seen active campaigns in the past, very coordinated campaigns, mostly primarily that focus on, in online spaces and using social media companies. WhatsApp, I forgot, is one of the most prevalently used platform as well. It’s not a social media company, it’s a messaging platform, but still, it’s something that’s very widely used. But because of this, we know that with the upcoming elections, it’s just going to increase. We’re very apprehensive about the kind of disinformation that it’s going to be spreading, particularly gender disinformation, and how it might affect, how it might not just sway the elections, but also bring certain individuals or communities to harm. So to address these problems, what we have done is, we’re trying to highlight these, this as a very strong topic or a focus with the journalist community. So we’re conducting diligent trainings all over the country with not just mainstream media personalities, but also local journalists who work in local languages. Print, media, print, broadcast, online journalists, everyone. We try and engage with them in order to build their capacity for fact-checking. Well, first of all, actually, to bring into their consciousness that disinformation is a thing, that it’s something that they need to be aware of, and they need to actively bring media ethics into, or address media ethics whenever they’re doing their work, because it seems like even that isn’t something that they’re aware of. Some journalists work at such grassroots level that it’s not like they’ve had very extensive training, that they went to university for it. Sometimes they just start working when they’re teenagers, so it’s not, sometimes it’s not just in their daily practice. So that’s something that we try to bring into focus for them. And we try to give them trainings that address digital security, that address media ethics, and focus on fact-checking, what they can do, what tools they can use, and differentiating or addressing disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, not just within their own, if they’re freelancers, not just within their community, but also to their wider media groups, because sometimes it seems like it’s not really a focus for them because it’s not what brings in the money to be addressing these sorts of small issues. And our aim is also to bridge the gap between local media and social media companies. So we actually try to actively engage, we try to bring each other’s complaints forward. And again, like I said before, sometimes it seems like they don’t want to pay, social media companies or tech platforms don’t really want to pay attention to smaller countries like Pakistan. And so we try to bridge that gap between, so that there’s no, so that it doesn’t seem like civil society organizations or DRF is just making things up, that they get to hear from actual individuals on the ground about how their policies or how they’re implemented affect their daily work, and sometimes even their personal security. We’ve also developed many toolkits that again focus on the same, about addressing disinformation, about the tools that they can use, about digital security, because it seems, because it is a fact that digital security can play a very integral part in information integrity, I guess, and securing themselves online in order to be able to do their work even better. But we also recognize that within all these trainings, there is also, or within the, when we’re talking about disinformation, we sometimes forget to address mental health concerns, especially with, again, local reporters and journalists, especially communities and individuals that face gender disinformation within a very conservative environment like Pakistan. So we have also developed mental health toolkits in order to address those concerns. Our helpline also particularly focuses on trying to offer psychosocial support, even sometimes when people don’t feel like they need it, because again, it’s just something that, our people aren’t very used to asking for, asking for support or asking for, I’m not feeling well, it’s just not something that people are used to saying. I think that’s about it. We’ve also been working on gender disinformation, but our research is ongoing, so I don’t know how much, how relevant it would be to talk about that right now. But we’ve been trying to engage with social media companies to address the gender disinformation, cases that we’ve received, which has been in the hundreds over the past year. Like I said, there was a whole online campaign against the transgender community in Pakistan. We had some success with that, but our research in particular is still ongoing. So I think we had, I was attending a session in the morning, and some of the things that they were saying was that there’s not enough research to identify whether disinformation is harming democracy and so we hope to actually address some of those key answers. Thank you.

Daniel Arnaudo:
Thanks, thanks, Hyra. So I think given we’re a little bit behind schedule and I want to have time for everyone to contribute to the breakout sessions, I think we have a good critical mass here so we can do this properly. We wanted to get your feedback on a couple of different issues for our contribution. First of all, if you would like to join the network, this is a Jamboard. I’m gonna share it here on the screen briefly and then I’ll put up a QR code so you can take a look and get a sense of how this works yourself. But we’ll do physical breakouts here and then there will be a virtual one for folks online if you want to contribute. We have our colleague Sirat from Pakistan who is online there. But basically we’re gonna break into four groups. To start with, I think if you would like to share, I think is that up on the screen or no? I shared it in the Zoom chat. Oh, there you go. Yeah, if you’d like to just drop your name in, you can drop it in there, name and organization, an email, and we can, if you would like to join the network, just mark it with an X. Then from there, I mean, this is what we’re gonna be breaking out on. I think we wanted to look at closed societies and challenges working on those issues there. So that would be one piece of it. Another piece to discuss in breakout would be looking at social media, data access for research. So challenges within social media companies, how we can develop systems or resources for groups that wanna get into those social media spaces that are increasingly restricted. Kind of related, some of what we’ve been talking about, coordination with technology platforms around trust and safety concerns. Internet governance for information integrity, obviously critical for this area here. So we’re all gonna be moderating each of these breakouts here. I think within the room, maybe we can split, and have, let’s see here, to start with, the four kind of groups within the session kind of go to separate corners, depending on what you’re interested in. So let’s start, I think we have, Ketty, you’re gonna be talking about closed societies, so maybe start here if you’re interested in discussing that. Platforms and tech company issues, maybe here.Hyra’s gonna discuss that. Isabel will be enabling research access, maybe in the back right-hand corner there. And then I’ll go to the back left-hand corner and discuss internet governance and information integrity. And we’ll share the QR code and the link in the chat for those online who would like to participate, and we have a moderator there. So we will be there in a minute. Let’s just reorganize, and then we’ll come back for five minutes for summaries. Yeah, it’s tough. I think, yeah, we’ll maybe like 13, something like that, and try to come back with at least two or three minutes. No, we got like two minutes, so let’s just. Okay, everybody, the moderators, come on back up. We can summarize. I guess I’ll go backwards and say I guess I’ll go backwards since I have the mic and just summarize quickly and then pass to my fellow moderators the breakout so we can quickly summarize. If you want to jump into the Jamboard and plus one certain aspects or add new ones that came to your mind afterwards, feel free. We’ll pop up the QR code quickly or share it in the chat. But I mean, I think around internet governance for information integrity, we’re looking at multi-stakeholder approaches, as we’ve kind of been discussing already, I think, particularly around information integrity issues. We were thinking about tools for enabling access for people with disabilities to access these debates and developing strategies for local internet governance coordination on disinformation issues. And I think thinking about kind of a human rights approach on these issues, we’re looking at kind of how training for different aspects or different groups within societies would look like. How can we build trust with the election process? And we even had an additional piece looking at what are the missing technology pieces in elections and an additional question that came around that we were kind of working on some. So thinking about systems outside of the traditional information space, systems for tracking disinformation efforts outside of the internet and thinking about digital ID and systems for verifying people within elections processes. Maybe over to you for the next quick review. Yeah. You were, that one, right?

Hyra Basit:
That one, yep. Okay, I can’t read that anyway. So we started off our discussion with, we had participants from, again, Pakistan, the US, Netherlands, Iraq, and yeah, I think that’s both, and Japan, yes. So we talked about the kind of platforms that we’ve been using in our respective countries and WhatsApp, X, Instagram were some of the top ones, but we also talked about TikTok and LINE being used to disseminate information, especially in the context of more integral moments like elections. Then we talked about, we sort of diverted from the discussion a bit a few times, but we talked a bit about how to better engage with tech platforms and what has worked for us before, how we do it currently in our respective situations. And again, it seemed like the escalation channels that we’ve established with them, sometimes they work, sometimes not. They’re not completely perfect. There are loopholes to them or there are gaps that need to be filled out and there needs to be more engagement. But the kind of engagement that we’ve seen with those platforms sort of depend on either personal connections or individual employees’ willingness to actually connect with CSOs or organizations like ours. And yeah, I think that’s all.

Daniel Arnaudo:
Thank you. Yeah.

Isabel Hou:
Okay, here, tools and strategy to use to monitor information, there is a pay-to-gather information, social engineering, build up your own system and share the datasets with other researchers. And according to the participants’ experiences, TikTok and Doin has the most strong mechanism to prevent crawler and access to their data. And the resources we want to share is datasets and also the experiences handling this kind of issue and also maybe some comparison of historical data would be very useful.

Ketty Chen:
Very quickly. Engaging in civil society organization in closed societies can be done. However, it is more feasible at the regional level but when it comes to globally, it really takes time for different regions to understand the working of these closed society and how to get in touch with each other. And also, cybersecurity is really important for these civil society groups. Near Taiwanese organizations that could help improve the cybersecurity of these groups so that working in closed society, it’s more feasible and easier.

Daniel Arnaudo:
Great, so we’ve got a lot of feedback. This will contribute to our contribution. Really thank you everyone for coming and for our moderators, we’ll… Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.