In her essay, Amélie Heldt argues that we should not focus on technology only when it comes to fixing the information disorder. Over the past four years, there was no evidence of successful disinformation campaigns against elections in Europe. Instead, we are witnessing a global rise of populism and polarization, which should result in building technology with a stronger focus on diversity and civility.
You can download the essay here (PDF)
Abstract
One can hardly talk about disinformation and Europe without mentioning Brexit and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. However, the last four years have shown that blaming only technology for the information disorder is illusory. After Brexit, Europe feared disinformation campaigns would affect the French and the German elections in 2017. Until today there’s no evidence of such, either from foreign actors (e.g., so-called troll armies) or as a result of content curation systems on platforms.
Heldt, A. (2020): Don’t Über-Blame the Algorithms – Lessons from Europe. In: Knight Foundation, 17 December 2020. online: https://knightfoundation.org/news-and-information-disorder-in-the-2020-presidential-election/
