250 recommendations on how to stop “infodemics”
November 12, 2020
Image: Forum on Information & Democracy
Throughout the past eight months, we have witnessed the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and with it, an infodemic which has permeated everyday life, spread false information, and overlooked hate speech, threatening human rights and democratic systems in its wake.
“How to end infodemics,” a new report released by The Forum on Information & Democracy’s working group on infodemics outlines 250 recommendations for governments and digital platforms on how to end the current digital informational crisis. The working group adopts a framework in which information and communication spaces are public goods and proposes a platform governance shift from self-regulation to public regulation. As Marietje Schaake notes in her foreword, “Through a global democratic coalition, a meaningful alternative should be offered instead of the two dominant models of technology governance: the privatized and the authoritarian.”
The steering committee, created in June 2020, is co-chaired by the Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy (MTD) advisory board member and CEO of the Rappeler, Maria Ressa, and Marietje Schaake, the director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center and president of the Cyber Peace Institute.
“Social media, once an enabler, is now the destroyer, building division—‘us against them’ thinking— into the design of their platforms. It’s not a coincidence that divisive leaders perform best on social media.” – Maria Ressa, co-chair of the steering committee
The working group consisted of a team of rapporteurs, led by Delphine Halgand-Mishra, who categorized and drafted recommendations based on more than 100 contributions made by an international team of researchers, jurists, and experts, through community workshops or online contributions.
Included in the team of 100 experts consulted for recommendations was Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy advisory board member Anya Schiffrin, and our Research Director, Sonja Solomun.
The report has twelve main recommendations for four structural challenges:
Moving forward, the working group envisions a greater focus on interconnected issues including “providing more funding to independent journalism and independent academic research on the impact platforms make, expanding media and information literacy, and fact-checking.”
This report is a monumental step towards creating a global governance framework for platform governance in which democracy is at the forefront of the agenda.
Read the full report at the link below.
