28 Jun 2024 | Europe and Central Asia, European Union, News and features
While the outcome of the 2024 election is yet to be finalised, results at the time of writing show that Eurosceptic conservatives are on course to win an extra 14 seats (taking them to 83), while right-wing nationalists will gain nine seats (to 58). Overall, the right, including centre-right politicians of the European People’s Party grouping, has done well, largely at the expense of the liberal and green party groupings. With just five nations out of 27, including Italy and Estonia, remaining to publish their final results, the overall picture is unlikely to change dramatically.
The move to the far right is evident across Europe. France, which elects 81 members to the European Parliament (EP), was perhaps where this was most evident. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party is projected to receive around 31-32% of the vote, against President Macron’s centrist party, which is estimated to reach around 15% of the vote. Macron was so concerned about his party’s poor showing that he has called an election in the country. Belgium’s prime minister also handed in his resignation after the nationalist New Flemish Alliance emerged as the big winner after regional, national and European Parliament elections were held in the country on Super Sunday.
In Germany, Eurosceptic parties are projected to secure over 16% of the EP vote. The AfD tripled its support from voters under 24 from 5% in 2019 to 16% and gains six seats to reach 15. The Greens lost nine seats from 21 last time around. Austria’s far-right Freedom Party gained nearly 26% of the vote, gaining three seats, while in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’s anti-immigration Party for Freedom gained six seats with 17% of the vote. A similar story played out in Poland, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria and Croatia.
But what is driving Europe’s veer to the right?
There is some evidence that the success of the far right comes from millennial and Gen Z voters shifting towards these parties. A third of French voters under 34 and 22% of young German voters favour their country’s far right, while in the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom has become the largest party among under-34s.
Young Europeans, mainly those aged 18-29, overwhelmingly rely on social media for daily news consumption. In Italy and Denmark, nearly three-quarters of young adults use social media for news daily (74% and 75%). A recent German youth study found that 57% of youth prefer social media for news and political updates.
There is growing concern that external actors, particularly from Russia, may have influenced the elections.
Media reports reveal that EU leaders were so concerned about foreign interference in the elections that they set up rapid alert teams to manage any serious incidents. Officials told the Guardian that disinformation has reached “tsunami levels.”
The evidence points to Russia.
Last December, France’s VIGINUM group, which is tasked with protecting France and its interests against foreign digital interference, published a report revealing a network of nearly 200 websites with addresses of the form pravda-xx.com or xx.news-pravda.com, where xx is the country identifier.
The sites, which generate little new content themselves, instead amplify existing pro-Russian content from state sources and social media, including posts from military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk. Pro-Russian content relating to the Ukraine war is a particular favourite.
Thirty-four fact-checking organisations in Europe, showed that the Pravda network had spread to at least 19 EU countries. Fact-checking organisation Greece Fact Check, in cooperation with Pagella Politica and Facta news, has since noticed that the Pravda network has been attempting to convey large amounts of disinformation and pro-Russia propaganda to sway EU public opinion.
The organisation said that “minor pro-Russian politicians who run for the elections are quoted by state media such as Ria and then further amplified by the Pravda network, in what seems an attempt to magnify their relevance”.
A report by EDMO on EU-related disinformation ahead of the elections found that it was at its highest ever level in May 2024. Ministers for European affairs from France, Germany, and Poland cautioned about efforts to manipulate information and mislead voters. Across the EU, authorities observed a resurgence in coordinated operations spreading anti-EU and Ukraine narratives through fake news websites and on social media platforms Facebook and X.
Among the false stories that emerged and covered were reports that EU President Ursula Von der Leyen had links to Nazism and had been arrested in the European Parliament.
In Germany, there were stories circulating that the country’s vote was being manipulated, ballot papers with holes or corners cut were invalid and that anyone voting for the far-right party AfD would follow stricter rules. Other stories attempted to trick voters into multiple voting or signing their ballot papers, practices that would invalidate their votes.
The report also noted that around 4% of such disinformation articles have been created using AI tools.
The tsunami of disinformation looks unlikely to fade away any time soon. The Guardian says that the EU’s rapid alert teams have been asked to continue their work for weeks after the election.
A senior official told the paper, “The expectation is that it is around election day that we will see this interruption of narratives questioning the legitimacy of the European elections, and in the weeks around it.”
13 May 2024 | Asia and Pacific, India, News and features
It has less than six months since Divyendra Singh Jadoun, the 31-year-old founder of an artificial intelligence (AI) powered synthetic media company, started making content for political parties in India. Within this short time he has risen to be known as the “Indian Deepfaker” as several political parties across the ideological spectrum reach out to him for digital campaigning.
Jadoun’s meteoric rise has a lot to do with the fact that close to a billion people are voting in India’s elections, the longest and largest in the world, which started last month. He says he doesn’t know of a single political party that hasn’t sought him out to enhance their outreach. “They [political parties] don’t reach out to us directly, though. Their PR agencies and political consultants ask us to make content for them,” said Jadoun, who runs the AI firm Polymath, based in a small town known for its temples in the north Indian state of Rajasthan and which has nine employees.
In India’s fiercely divided election landscape, AI has emerged as a newfound fascination, particularly as the right-wing ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vies for an unusual third consecutive term. The apprehension surrounding technology’s capabilities in a nation plagued by misinformation has raised concerns among experts.
Jadoun says his team has been asked many times to produce content which they find highly unethical. He has been asked to fabricate audio recordings that show rival candidates making embarrassing mistakes during their speeches or to overlay opponents’ faces onto explicit images.
“A lot of the content political parties or their agents ask us to make is on these lines, so we have to say no to a lot of work,” Jadoun told Index on Censorship.
Certain campaign teams have even sought subpar counterfeit videos from Jadoun, featuring their own candidate, which they intend to deploy to discredit any potentially damaging authentic footage that surfaces during the election period.
“We refuse all such requests. But I am not sure if every agency will have such filters, so we do see a lot of misuse of technology in these elections,” he says.
“What we offer is simply replacing the traditional methods of campaigning by using AI. For example, if a leader wants to shoot a video to reach out to each and every one of his party members, it will take a lot of time. So we use some parts of deep-fakes to create personalised messages for their party members or cadres,” Jadoun adds.
Pervasive use
India’s elections are deeply polarised and the ruling right-wing BJP has employed a vicious anti-minority campaign to win over the majority Hindu voters- who roughly form 80% of the electorate. The surge in use of AI reflects both its potential and the concerns, amidst widespread misinformation. A survey by cybersecurity firm McAfee, taken last year, found that over 75% of Indian internet users have encountered various types of deepfake content while online.
Some of the most disturbing content features various dead politicians have been resurrected through AI to sway voters. Earlier this year, regional All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Party’s (AIADMK) official account shared an audio clip featuring a virtual rendition of Jayalalithaa, a revered Tamil political figure who passed away in 2016. In the speech, her AI avatar aimed to inspire young party members, advocating for the party’s return to power and endorsing current candidates for the 2024 general elections.
Jayalalithaa’s AI resurrection is not an isolated case.
In another instance, just four days prior to the start of India’s general election, a doctored video appeared on Instagram featuring the late Indian politician H Vasanthakumar. In the video, Vasanthakumar voices support for his son Vijay Vasanth, a sitting Member of Parliament who is contesting the election in his father’s erstwhile constituency.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), known for its use of technology to polarise voters, has also shared a montage showcasing Prime Minister Modi’s accomplishments on its verified Instagram profile. The montage featured the synthesized voice of the late Indian singer Mahendra Kapoor, generated using AI.
Troll accounts subscribing to the ideology of different political parties are also employing AI and deepfakes to create narratives and counter-narratives. Bollywood star Ranveer Singh in a tweet last month cautioned his followers to be vigilant against deepfakes as a manipulated video circulated on social media platforms, where Singh appeared to criticise Modi. Using an AI-generated voice clone, the altered video falsely portrayed Singh lambasting Modi over issues of unemployment and inflation, and advocating for citizens to support the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC). In reality, he had praised Modi in the original video.
“AI has permeated mainstream politics in India,” said Sanyukta Dharmadhikari – deputy editor of Logically Facts, who leads a team of seven members to fact-check misinformation in different vernacular languages.
Dharmadhikari says that countering disinformation or misinformation becomes extremely difficult in an election scenario as false information consistently spreads more rapidly than fact-checks, particularly when it aligns with a voter’s confirmation bias. “If you believe a certain politician is capable of a certain action, a deepfake portraying them in such a scenario can significantly hinder fact-checking efforts to dispel that misinformation,” she told Index on Censorship.
Selective curbs
Amidst growing concerns, the Indian government rushed to regulate AI by asking tech companies to obtain approval before releasing new tools, just a month before elections. This is a substantial shift from its earlier position when it informed Indian Parliament of not interfering in how AI is being used in the country. Critics argue that the move might be another attempt to selectively weigh down on opposition and limit freedom of expression. The Modi government has been widely accused of abusing central agencies to target the opposition while overlooking allegations involving its own leaders or that of its coalition partners.
“There needs to be a political will to effectively regulate AI, which seems amiss,” says Dharmadhikari. “Even though the Information Ministry at first seemed concerned at the misuse of deepfakes, but gradually we have seen they have expressed no concerns about their dissemination especially if something is helping [PM] Modi,” she added.
Chaitanya Rohilla, a lawyer based in Delhi, who initiated a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) at the Delhi High Court concerning the unregulated use of AI and deepfakes in the country believes that as technology unfolds at breakneck speed, the need for robust legal frameworks to safeguard against AI’s emerging threats is more pressing than ever.
“The government is saying that we are working on it…We are working on rules to bring about or to specifically target these deepfakes. But the problem is the pace at which the government is working, it is actually not in consonance with how the technology is changing,” Rohilla told Index on Censorship.
Rohilla’s PIL had requested the judiciary to restrict access to websites that produce deepfakes. The proposal suggested that such websites should be mandated to label AI-generated content and be prohibited from generating illicit material.
But Indian courts have refused to intervene.
“The information Technology Act that we have in our country is not suitable; it’s not competent to handle how dynamically the AI environment is changing. So as the system is unchecked and unregulated it (deepfake dissemination) would just keep on happening and happening.”
22 Mar 2024 | News and features, North Korea, Opinion, Romania, Russia, Ruth's blog, Rwanda
By international comparison, Putin’s ‘win’ in the recent elections in Russia was practically marginal.
Forget the ruthless despots of yesteryear; Putin’s victory could put him in the running for the title of “Worst Dictator Ever” securing as he did, just 87% of the vote and struggling to convince a whole 13% of Russia’s population that he deserves their vote.
Putin’s efforts to reach the dizzying heights of previous autocratic excellence is not without precedent.
Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Romanian maestro of self-delusion, once claimed a staggering 98.8% approval rating from voters who seemingly found his continued leadership irresistible.
And, of course, the multiple successes of Saddam Hussein, who, not content with anything less than perfection, treated himself to not one, but two elections where he waltzed away with a cool 99% of the vote, leaving the remaining 1% presumably too busy planning their escape routes to bother casting a ballot.
Even by recent standards, Putin’s election efforts fall into the ‘must try harder’ category. Take Paul Kagame – head of state in the unquestionably safe state of Rwanda – secured an impressive 98.8% of the vote in 2017. By coincidence, his two challengers were deemed not to have met the nomination threshold by the Rwandan Electoral Commission.
And even by Russian standards, Putin is an under-achiever. The absolutely above board and beyond reproach referendum in 2014 that took place in Crimea saw the Ukranian peninsula experience a collective outbreak of Russiophilia, with a jaw-dropping 96.77% of voters deciding that annexation was their number one wish.
But of course, when it comes to precarious polls, poor Putin is but an enthusiastic amateur of electoral absurdity when compared to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un whose 2019 flawless victory saw him win 100% of the vote. Imagine that, Putin. A leader so popular that no-one felt the need to vote against you.
So, at Index on Censorship, we offer our commiserations to Putin on an election which will inevitably cause him to struggle to look his fellow dictators in the eye. But he should take heart, for in the grand tapestry of dictatorial hubris, he may have fallen short of the coveted triple-digit approval rating, but he’s certainly earned his place in the hall of shame. Bravo!
But in all seriousness, dictators yearn for legitimacy but equally cannot resist inflating their egos with absurd election results. Putin’s 87% victory is merely the latest in a long line of autocrats entangled in their own delusions. For them, the allure of unchecked power is intoxicating, and the illusion of overwhelming support is irresistible. So they manipulate, coerce, and fabricate, all in the name of bolstering their image and maintaining their iron grip on power.
Yet, in their desperate pursuit of approval, they only reveal the hollow emptiness of their rule and the farcical nature of their so-called “elections.”
In the grand theatre of autocracy, where dictators vie for the title of “Most Absurd Electoral Farce,” Vladimir Putin may have inadvertently claimed the crown as the reigning champion of underachievement.
His inability to secure a unanimous victory serves as a glaring reminder of the limitations of his power and the resilience of those who dare to defy his iron grip.
While we chuckle at his inflated ego and his desperate grasp for legitimacy, let us not forget the sobering reality faced by millions of Russians who lack the freedom to express dissent without fear of reprisal.
We can poke fun at Putin’s absurdity but we must also reaffirm our commitment to democracy and freedom of expression, values that remain elusive for too many in Putin’s Russia.
And we stand with the 13%.
19 Feb 2024 | Asia and Pacific, News and features, Pakistan
The media in Pakistan, a 240-million strong nation, has seldom been free ever since it removed its colonial shackles from the British Raj in 1947. Spates of draconian laws to curb the press were imposed in the three martial law periods, as well as during the democratic governments, spanning the 77-year life of this South Asian nation. These attacks reached new heights in recent weeks, as Pakistan voted in a tense general election. Critical voices from press and civil society were strangled. The military establishment tried to control the media narrative, while internet blackouts became commonplace. And yet despite this, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) backed independent candidates bagged the largest number of seats in the national and provincial assemblies, in an upset for the military establishment.
“This is peoples’ reaction against the actions,” Mazhar Abbas, a senior award-winning journalist and anchor, told Index. “This is an eye-opener for those who think the suppression could serve their purpose.”
Independent candidates backed by the PTI, the party of Imran Khan, won 93 seats in Pakistan’s National Assembly or lower house of 264 seats, but will not be allowed to form a government as they were forced to run as individuals. Parties of thrice-prime minister Nawaz Sharif secured 75 seats followed by the Pakistani Peoples Party (PPP) with 54 seats. Given these votes the most likely outcome is a coalition government.
“This is a people’s rebellion against the establishment that keeps curbing the media to promote parties of their own choices,” Aziz Sanghur, a senior journalist and author, said. “This is the 21st century and the age of IT, we must not forget.”
Facing fierce clampdowns on their social media accounts, as well as attempts to impede their election campaigns, the contesting candidates had to be on their toes. They managed to outmanoeuvre the censorship through a variety of means including using all of the social media platforms to their advantage.
“Our social media and IT team kept struggling against the closure of data services and our social media accounts, [by] creating VPN connections and using other means,” Yasir Baloch, a PTI candidate for the Sindh provincial assembly told Index.
Members of his constituency extended their help to Baloch.
“On the election day when data service and mobile phone service was switched off, the people in our constituency volunteered to give our team access to their home wi-fi connections. That was a huge favour for us,” he said.
Conventional canvassing methods also had to be re-assessed.
“We managed to hold our meetings [within] the compound wall instead of open places as we had to face the police crackdowns on our rallies,” he said. “We carried our campaign door to door and women played a leading role.”
But it will be hard for Pakistan to establish media freedoms.
“There have been many draconian laws that governed the media and press, but this time ‘invisible’ hands unleashed gagging censorship, which is unprecedented,” said Tauseef Ahmed Khan, a professor and author of several books on Pakistani media and a media practitioner.
Khan was referring to the constant interventions from the powerful military establishment. Many journalists working for the national television channels spoke to Index on the condition of anonymity. They confirmed the practice of daily intervention by the media wing of the military, known as Inter Services Public Relations or ISPR.
“When they [dictated to] us the news packages in the beginning, I predicted that the days were not far off and that they would dictate the whole rundown,” said a senior journalist, who works with Geo TV, the country’s top private television channel.
“My fears came true as now we get dictation from ISPR on a daily basis, with the advice that the news must be broadcast without attribution,” he said.
Empirical surveys with senior journalists at many independent news channels confirmed this, including ARY, Neo News, Abb Takk, Aaj TV, Hum TV, 92 News, KTN, Express TV, 24 News and Dawn News. These are all top-ranking television channels, watched widely across Pakistan.
“We are obliged to run that news to protect our job,” one journalist said.
The party that won the last general election and was in power from 2018 until 2022 remained a pivotal target of the censorship. Imran Khan, the former cricketer turned politician, led his PTI party. Coming into power for the first time in 2018, Khan had a strong backing from the military establishment, a channel that inherently matters more than popular votes in the country. Catalysing the military support, Khan made full use of censorship and media clampdowns to suppress independent journalists as well as political opponents. Legal cases were registered against media houses, journalists and social media commentators for raising voices against his policies and political discourse.
“Khan in fact torpedoed the financial structure of the media industry, [which] was a fatal blow to the free press,” Tauseef Ahmed Khan said.
Geo News, the most influential TV channel in the country which was critical of Imran Khan and supportive of Nawaz Sharif, was cast out of government sponsored advertisements in 2020, the biggest source of revenue to the industry. It was taken off air in different cities and parts of the country, including the cantonment areas, administered by the military.
But the tables turned when Khan was ousted in 2022 in a no-confidence vote after a fallout with the military. He was jailed for corruption, and later for leaking state secrets.
Tit-for-tat censorship ensued under the new under-the-radar sanctions. Khan’s party was declared proscribed and naming it or Khan on television channels was banned by the military-backed coalition government of the Pakistan Democratic Movement.
No let-up was seen in censorship by the care-taker government appointed in August 2023, which only had a mandate to hold general elections in Pakistan. The caretaker government under Prime Minister Anwar ul Haq Kakar took more stringent measures to black out Khan and his party from the mainstream media.
The undeclared news boycott of Khan’s party continued until the election day on 8 February 2024, while its supporters ran a robust campaign on social media. His party was denied the opportunity to contest the election under the pretext of the party’s failure to hold intra-party elections, a constitutional prerequisite for a political party to become eligible for general election participation.
Frustrating the party’s social media ‘warriors’, the authorities clamped down by switching off internet networks countrywide repeatedly over recent years, usually targeting social media or messaging services.
“Curbing internet access during elections strikes at democracy’s heart, betraying human rights,” Surfshark, a media watchdog said in a statement.
On the very day of elections on 8 February, a complete shutdown of mobile services crippled journalists in the field who were covering the elections. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the state-regulator, said it had decided to do so in view of the worsening law and order situation.
“The decision to suspend telecommunications and mobile internet services on election day is a blunt attack on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” Amnesty International reacted.
The failures of the mainstream media alarms media pundits, who see an ominous trend in the coming weeks.
“This is very unfortunate that the mainstream media seem to have lost its credibility against the social media in the country,” said Sohail Sangi, a veteran journalist, who has served imprisonment in dictatorial regimes for raising his voice for press freedom.
It is feared that propaganda will replace factual news.
“We know that on social media, largely unauthentic info goes viral and its impact is huge,” Tauseef Ahmed Khan said.
“This might transform the media landscape in the country if things are not fixed.”
