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You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.<\/p>\n
JEREMY MAGGS: South Africa\u2019s political parties and candidates are facing tougher rules on what they say and share ahead of the local government election on 4 November. Now, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has introduced a new disinformation code requiring false or misleading campaign material to be corrected within, as I understand it, 36 hours of being identified.<\/p>\n
The rules are also going to target fake accounts, automated bots and manipulated content, while artificial intelligence-generated material must be clearly labelled. But I guess policing political truth without restricting legitimate debate is a difficult line to draw.<\/p>\n
Janet Love is with me, vice chair of the Electoral Commission. Janet, a very warm welcome to you. Why is the IEC going this route? What are you worried about?<\/p>\n
JANET LOVE: I think over the years, certainly since about 2016, we\u2019ve all seen in our own lives and in the lives of the country as a whole, digital media, social media platforms and other forms of digital media are really playing a central role in determining people\u2019s understanding of things, people\u2019s views, and enabling communication, both in a positive way, but also very often in a negative way.<\/p>\n
The big concern about digital media is the speed. So it\u2019s very important to be able to deal with things at speed.<\/p>\n
There is, of course, now the additional concern about the fact that things can be manipulated using AI and generative AI. So that\u2019s also added a lot of concern into the mix.<\/p>\n
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JEREMY MAGGS: I\u2019m glad you mentioned the word speed. Why 36 hours? Why is that the right deadline when, as you\u2019ve just referenced, false information can spread within minutes if not seconds?<\/p>\n
JANET LOVE: Our putting a cap on 36 hours is not to say please wait until the 35th-and-a-half-hour. If you can report something within the first five minutes, so much the better.<\/p>\n
I think the reason for the 36 hours is that sometimes even people who are senior within political parties are not always able just from seeing something that is received on their own mobile devices to be certain as to what it\u2019s about, where it comes from.<\/p>\n
So there is a certain amount of follow-up that needs to be done in order to ascertain whether or not the intent is deliberate disinformation, in other words, purposeful harm, or not. So the response, of course, has to be moderated in that way. I think that\u2019s why the extra time is granted.<\/p>\n
JEREMY MAGGS: That adjudication can be difficult. How are you going to decide whether a disputed political claim is disinformation?<\/p>\n
JANET LOVE: I think the first thing that we really recognise in the digital world is that behind a digital communication, there is a lot of technology that needs to be unpacked in order for us to ascertain what it is that we actually are looking at. Is it something that has been manipulated? And that\u2019s not always very easy to tell.<\/p>\n
Secondly, is it something that is part of, as you were saying in your intro, some generative device like a bot and so on, and to some extent even to be able to think about source and so on.<\/p>\n
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So I think our first hope is that the digital potential harms, disinformation, misinformation are things that will be reported online, partly because that enables us then to have people with sufficient expertise who\u2019ve been assembled in a partnership grouping, which involves about 30 different experts who are from organisations, from academia and so on, who can actually do some of this forensic stuff.<\/p>\n
So when the issue is identified with that kind of background information, it also gives us a way of understanding what the problem is that we\u2019re dealing with.<\/p>\n
The commission itself would then have to be able to apply its mind to what we see as the next step, clearly engaging with any political contestant around something that has been put out in his or her name or that organisation\u2019s name, could be a way, or it could be an approach to court.<\/p>\n
A determination about whether or not something falls squarely [within] the breach of the code of conduct is something that is a judicial decision. So the Electoral Court, of course, would have to also be furnished with the wherewithal to make decisions.<\/p>\n
JEREMY MAGGS: There\u2019s always the danger, I guess, whether it\u2019s in this country or anywhere in the world, about retrospective risk. In other words, the damage might have already been done before any kind of correction appears. Do we just have to live with that?<\/p>\n
JANET LOVE: Again, the idea of correcting, not just reporting, but correcting within 36 hours is we are hoping that our political contestants will recognise that in order for this to work in their favour as well in terms of their own competition, for want of a better word, they would need to also behave responsibly to those who they are competing with.<\/p>\n
So the idea of 36 hours to correct is, again, not to say wait for the 35th hour and 55th minute, but within the first five minutes, if possible.<\/p>\n
I think the reason that we\u2019ve been working as closely as we have, both with the platforms and other structures within the digital media space, as well as with Sanef (South African National Editors\u2019 Forum), is to ensure that we are able to use those kinds of collaborations as well to ensure that where posts are providing disinformation or providing incendiary kind of views, that even then those things can be attended to by other journalists picking up stories in a way that\u2019s responsible, by platforms understanding their own duties in terms of their own respective policies.<\/p>\n
Listen: 4 November set: IEC prepares for crucial local vote<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s part of the collaboration as well. We\u2019re at the moment in a whole programme, a second round of a programme of training, both people in the media space, some of whom are digital media activists and others who are in print and electronic media, precisely for this reason. But then also working in our framework with the major platforms like Google, Meta and so on.<\/p>\n
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JEREMY MAGGS: And of course, compounding the problem is when disinformation comes from anonymous accounts or actors outside South Africa. That\u2019s where you would need, as you\u2019ve suggested, to engage with external parties and platforms.<\/p>\n
JANET LOVE: Exactly. So that\u2019s something that has been set up specifically to deal with malfeasance around elections. So we have not just established the framework with the platforms, but we have then, together with MOCs (municipal outreach coordinators) and Sanef and so on, established the reporting platform.<\/p>\n
Behind that reporting platform, for the purposes of elections, we have the Partnership on Information Integrity in Elections (PIIE), together with a team of attorneys who\u2019ve been made available to help us to process stuff so that we have the necessary information to know how to deal with it, how to approach whoever it is to take various actions, including the possibility of the courts.<\/p>\n
JEREMY MAGGS: Janet, just a final one and a quick answer, if you don\u2019t mind. The challenge, of course, is to protect robust political speech from overzealous complaints.<\/p>\n
JANET LOVE: Absolutely. For us, digital media is also a huge opportunity. So it\u2019s also not to condemn and shut down that space, as it is not to shut down the voice of many different people and their different views. But I think it\u2019s just to get people to understand the truth is important.<\/p>\n
JEREMY MAGGS: Janet Love from the Independent Electoral Commission, thank you.<\/p>\n
#Political #parties #face #tougher #rules #disinformation #ahead #elections<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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