India faces highest risk of disinformation in general elections: World Economic Forum

Apart from India, many other countries go in for elections in 2024. The report assesses their risk of misinformation as well.

It is the sixth-highest risk in the United States, eighth-highest risk in the European Union, 11th in the United Kingdom, and 11th in Mexico. In South Africa, which heads for a general election this year, the risk is ranked a distant 22nd.

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Defining disinformation

The report defines disinformation as someone purposefully misleading their audience. Misinformation is described as information spread out of genuine belief, but can be just as harmful.

The report emphasises the role of risks and the nature of risks during general elections.

It says that, in the next two years, “Close to three billion people will head to the electoral polls across several economies, including the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Indonesia”, and the “presence of misinformation and disinformation in these electoral processes could seriously destabilise the real and perceived legitimacy of newly-elected governments, risking political unrest, violence and terrorism, and a longer-term erosion of democratic processes.”

It observes that technological innovations will make it difficult to track and control misinformation flows:

• The capacity of social media companies to ensure platform integrity will likely be overwhelmed in the face of multiple overlapping campaigns.

• Disinformation will also be increasingly personalised to its recipients, targeted to specific groups, such as minority communities, and disseminated through more opaque messaging platforms such as WhatsApp or WeChat.

• The difference between AI- and human-generated content is becoming more difficult to discern, not only for digitally literate individuals but also for detection mechanisms.

• The line between malign and benign use of AI-based information is getting blurred. For example, an AI-generated campaign video could influence voters and fuel protests or, in more extreme scenarios, lead to violence or radicalization, even if it carries a warning by the platform on which it is shared that it is fabricated content.

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What disinformation can do

The report presents a general prescription of situations and conditions in the election-bound countries in 2024, including India, without naming any country specifically.

Here are the verbatim pointers that, according to the report, apply to these countries, including India:

• Some governments and platforms aiming to protect free speech and civil liberties may fail to act to effectively curb falsified information and harmful content, making the definition of “truth” increasingly contentious across societies.

• State and non-state actors alike may leverage false information to widen fractures in societal views, erode public confidence in political institutions, and threaten national cohesion and coherence.

• Trust in specific leaders will confer trust in information, and the authority of these actors — from conspiracy theorists, including politicians, and extremist groups to influencers and business leaders — could be amplified as they become arbiters of truth.

• False information could not only be used as a source of societal disruption but also of control by domestic actors in pursuit of political agendas.

• The erosion of political checks and balances and growth in tools that spread and control information could amplify the efficacy of domestic disinformation over the next two years.

Global internet freedom is already in decline, and access to more comprehensive sets of information has dropped in numerous countries. The implication: Falls in press freedoms in recent years and a related lack of strong investigative media are significant vulnerabilities set to grow.

Role of governments

On the changing or evolving roles of governments in these countries and the greater leveraging of misinformation and disinformation, the report points out:

• The proliferation of misinformation and disinformation may be leveraged to strengthen digital authoritarianism and the use of technology to control citizens.

• Governments will increasingly be able to determine what is true, potentially allowing political parties to monopolise the public discourse and suppress dissenting voices, including journalists and opponents.

• Exporting authoritarian digital norms to a wider set of countries could create a vicious cycle: The risk of misinformation quickly descends into the widespread control of information, leaving citizens vulnerable to political repression and domestic disinformation.

The run-up to general elections, according to the report, may witness a combination of risks — misinformation and disinformation, censorship and surveillance, and erosion of human rights. Here are the cautions listed:

• In those countries facing upcoming elections, a crackdown on real or perceived foreign interference could consolidate existing control, particularly in flawed democracies or hybrid regimes.

• More mature democracies could also be at risk, both from extensive exercises of government control or due to trade-offs between managing mis- and disinformation and protecting free speech.

• In January last year, Twitter (now X) and YouTube agreed to remove links to a BBC documentary in India.

• In Mexico, civil society has been concerned about the government’s approach to fake news and its implications for press freedom and safety.

The report concludes by warning that the implications of these manipulative campaigns could be profound, threatening democratic processes.

If the legitimacy of elections is questioned, “civil confrontation is possible — and could even expand to internal conflicts and terrorism, and state collapse in more extreme cases”.

However, it notes that to combat growing risks, “governments are beginning to roll out new and evolving regulations to target both hosts and creators of online disinformation and illegal content”.