EPD joins 12 other civil society organisations in a joint letter to Commissioner Breton, Vice-President Jourova, and Commissioner Reynders with calls to ensure our online public debate is moderated and curated in a more transparent and accountable way by social media platforms.
Online platforms play a major role in our democratic processes today. Many people form their political opinions based on the information and news they get from social media platforms and conversations they have with like-minded people on these channels. The integrity of the information environment is fundamental to a robust democracy.
But unlike offline news consumption through broadcast media, newspapers and radio, not everybody is consuming the same information. In addition, sensational and harmful information tends to go viral, amplified by algorithms that amplify such content. Algorithms decide who sees what information, without any democratic oversight into the way these automated decisions are made and their impact on democratic processes.
Therefore, this letter calls for the establishment of a regulatory framework for auditing the design of automated decision-making systems employed by platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Considering the impact of these systems on our democratic processes, we strongly urge algorithmic inspections at the level of content-hosting platforms.
Below, you can read the full text of the letter outlining our reasoning for this proposal.
EPD together with DEMO Finland, DIPD, NHC, NIMD, PIN and WFD took part in a consultation to inform the future Gender Action Plan (GAP III).
The EU Gender Action Plan II 2016-2020 (GAP II) paved the way for EU action on women’s voice and participation, with its focus on political and civic rights. The Gender Action Plan III 2021-2025 (GAP III) will need to build on these efforts and focus on some of the issues overlooked in GAP II, including the role of women in media, political parties, parliaments and democratic processes.
In this contribution, the members focused on the following areas:
social norms and stereotypes,
women’s leadership and participation
ending gender-based violence and harassment.
The full input paper can be read by clicking the button below.
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic requires crisis management by governments around the world. In these exceptional circumstances, lives will depend on rapid and effective government action. At the same time, it is essential that such action enjoys the consent and support of the people in each country who recognise that the government is acting to protect the public. A crisis is no justification for undermining democracy.
For authoritarian governments, a crisis can be an opportunity to consolidate power, legitimatising crackdowns by evoking an existential threat to the nation. For emerging democracies, there is a risk that legitimate measures to address public health will undermine progress in consolidating transparency and accountability.
We, therefore, advocate continued adherence to key democratic principles:
Emergency powers should be limited in duration and proportionate to the threat. At present, science gives a strong justification for limiting the movement of people, particularly the congregation of large groups of people. Such measures should be enacted only as long as they are necessary for public health, contain a sunset clause and allow for parliamentary oversight.
Measures taken to deal with the crisis must be continuously communicated to the public in a transparent manner. The crisis must not be taken as an opportunity to wilfully suppress information on the pretext of public health concerns. This transparency must also apply to measures taken in increasing surveillance of citizens. Democracies are at their most effective and robust when ensuring a flow of reliable information to the public – including to organised groups and local communities.
Privacy rights should be respected. Surveillance for the purpose of public health should not compromise the right to privacy or lead to unjustified restrictions on other human rights. Companies are sharing information with governments on an unprecedented scale posing a threat to the privacy of citizens. Citizens need to be presented with opportunities to seek remedies for violations of basic rights during the crisis and independent oversight of government must be ensured.
Transparency and accountability are critical. Experiences from other health emergencies show that there are real risks that, without strong oversight and transparency, the measures being taken will be less effective and corruption will rise. Exceptional measures must be checked by parliaments and other accountability bodies.
It is important to recognize and protect the crucial role of independent news media in the coronavirus pandemic. States must ensure that emergency measures to tackle the disease, as well as the fight against disinformation, are not used as a pretext to censor news and freedom of information on- and offline (including critical ones) or implement regressive regulations against media freedom.
Leave no one behind. Public health measures impact different groups in different ways. In every society, emergency measures can combine with existing vulnerabilities to cause real harm. Women can be at greater risk of violence and have worse access to formal healthcare; groups in conflict with the government can be excluded from care; minority communities can be victims of racist, xenophobic treatment, and subject to restrictions in access to healthcare; people with disabilities can be pushed down the priority list for treatment and refugees or IDPs can be left particularly exposed. Public health measures should take careful account of these and other vulnerabilities.
Europe needs new safeguards to guarantee transparency in digital political advertising that allow regulators to oversee who is funding what online. The self-regulatory Code of Practice that the European Commission adopted with tech companies is an important first step. Yet, the Code does not foresee clear enforcement or sanction mechanisms. This project aims to strengthen European level policy so as to guarantee transparency in digital political advertising.
The Virtual Insanity project aims at strengthening European level policy that guarantees transparency in digital political advertising. This will be done through research and multi- stakeholder policy dialogue at the national and European level, followed by coalition-based monitoring and advocacy efforts towards an EU-level policy on digital political advertising transparency.
Overview
Research funded by civitates and carried out by EPD and its partners shows that the first attempts to regulate online political campaigning at the EU level, through the EU Code of Practice on Online Disinformation have failed to ensure the transparency of online political advertising campaigns. Read the full publication by clicking here.
The research focused on three case studies in Italy, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. Throughout these three case studies, researchers examined the extent to which Facebook, Google and Twitter fulfilled their commitments outlined in the Code of Practice on Online Disinformation regarding enhanced transparency of digital political advertising, in the context of the 2019 European Parliament elections.
The researchers interviewed key stakeholders from political parties, civil society, national regulators and digital platforms to assess the extent of meaningful transparency, and the interplay between the EU Code of Practice and national legislation. Following this, the researchers submitted a series of recommendations to the European Commission, and the EU Member States, and held multiple multi-stakeholder policy dialogues in Brussels and Member State capitals
Main findings
Our research identified the following issues with regard to increasing the transparency of political ads:
1. Defining political ads
While establishing a unanimous definition of what classifies as a political ad is difficult, the lack of a clear definition within the Code of Practice was detrimental to its application. Without a clear definition, tech companies were forced to come up with their own definitions of political ads, which resulted in inconsistencies through platforms on what was labelled as a political ad and was subject to scrutiny, and what bypassed the verification systems set in place by the tech platforms to verify content and transparency. Particularly affected were issue ads (e.g. campaigns on environmental issues, migration, and encouraging voter turnout) which were either completely overlooked or intensely scrutinized.
2. Ads labelling and verification of advertisers
The ad labelling system provides insufficient information on the reasons for targeting users and the data used to make these decisions. Meanwhile, the verification procedure for political advertisers is overly burdensome and lengthy, and the platforms could not deliver in verifying all advertisers who had embarked on the verification process in time for the European Parliament elections. Particularly, the verification system failed to account for third parties, proxy advertisers and social media influencers, thereby failing to provide transparency on such political advertising practices and the advertisers themselves. Through this, it failed to identify and avoid inauthentic behaviour through both verified accounts and fake accounts.
3. Ad Libraries & Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
Ad libraries were created by the three platforms as the main transparency tool that was newly rolled out for the EU Member States ahead of the European Parliament elections in 2019. These ad libraries were supposed to provide a user-friendly overview of all political and issue ads. However, the different ad libraries showed a number of shared as well as platform-specific shortcomings. A major shared shortcoming is the lack of meaningful, complete and accurate data provided in the libraries, including targeting criteria, data on the intended and reached audiences, exact spending, ad performance, and targeting mechanisms. These libraries were also found to be missing content depending on the time and location of the user, and there is no comprehensive repository of all paid content, which makes it impossible to verify the accuracy, completeness and consistency of political ads libraries. Tech companies were found to be reticent to allocate enough resources to ad labelling. The platforms failed to put in place adequate control mechanisms, with insufficient manpower allocated to issues such as identifying political (or issue) ads that were not labelled as such and political advertisers who had not been verified.
4. Policy Context at National Level
Our research revealed that National Regulators tend to have little to no guidelines for online political advertising. Because of this, the Code of Practice taken for the European Parliament elections in 2019 was significant in the sense that it raised awareness on the lack of regulation regarding party finance and political advertising transparency. Researchers also found that national regulatory authorities generally lacked the sanctioning mechanisms and mandates to hold political parties and platforms accountable to the transparency measures outlined in the Code of Practice.
5. Policy changes by the platforms since the European Parliament elections
Following the EU Parliament election, tech companies, under public pressure, took some initiatives to improve transparency. Facebook adopted some transparency tools, expanded the ad library to new countries, and is creating an oversight board. Meanwhile, Google limited the targeting of political ads and Twitter decided to apply a ban on all political ads.
Recommendations
Considering the above findings and recognizing the importance of transparency within the digital sphere, in order to protect democracy, we recommend the following:
1.Co-regulatory approach: The EU and EU Member States need to develop a uniform, clear co-regulatory framework – beyond self-regulation – for digital political ads. The framework shall apply equally to all dominant platforms and set the rules for meaningful transparency and provide accountability and oversight mechanisms;
2.Transparency of all ads: The EU and the EU Member States need to make complete ad repositories, including political and commercial ads, a requirement for dominant platforms (such as Facebook, Google and Twitter). By expanding transparency requirements to all ads, such an approach would overcome the problem of defining ‘political ads’ and ‘political issues’. These libraries must meet a set standard such as the same level of granularity in information on targeting criteria and practices as advertisers see, including the data source, inferred profile, lookalike audiences, custom audiences, and A/B testing practices;
3. An additional layer of transparency for political ads: All political ads should have a clear ad labelling and a verification procedure for advertisers. For this, the network of European electoral management bodies needs to jointly agree on a basic definition of political advertisements that the dominant platforms can use. An actor-centric approach would be sufficient for this additional level of transparency. This additional labelling system would also allow the complete ad library to be queried by political ads only, so users have an overview of political ads in their country.
4. European platform regulator: Appoint an independent European platform regulator that would hold the platforms accountable to their requirements for enhanced transparency, in close cooperation with the network of national electoral regulators regarding issues of political advertising.
5. Cooperation between national regulators: National electoral regulators remain essential for enforcing political parties’ transparency requirements and campaigning regulations, both online and offline. National electoral regulators need to cooperate with the dominant platforms for ensuring online enforcement of national electoral and campaigning legislation, with close support from the European network of national electoral regulators as well as the European platform regulator. The European Commission needs to continue to invest in the cooperation and support of the network of national electoral regulators, including capacity building on digital advertising, mediation between national regulators and the platforms, and support in adapting national legislation to the digital era.
EPD believes that these recommendations, while not exhaustive, will bring us closer to the goal of increasing transparency in online political campaigning. Through close cooperation between the EU Commission, National Electoral Regulators and tech platforms we can create a system that ensures transparent political advertising and levels the playing field for all political actors.
EPD is hosting a workshop and a conference in Brussels, to discuss ways to guarantee transparency in digital political advertising. This is a topic that has received a fair amount of attention in recent years, specifically because of its role and impact in the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election in 2016, but in other elections as well. The tension between the integrity of electoral systems and a vastly unregulated digital sphere has arguably become an inherent danger to democracies worldwide.
It is essential to keep the conversation going by evaluating the methods taken so far to tackle this issue and put forward new proposals on how to move forward. EPD has been overseeing research conducted in three countries, the Czech Republic, Italy and the Netherlands, monitoring the level to which tech platforms comply with the Code of Practice against disinformation on matters related to digital political advertising – bringing new conclusions to light.
The workshop(13 November 2019, 13:00-17:00) will serve to have an interactive discussion on digital political advertising, with the following objectives: a) to present and discuss research findings on digital political advertising during the EP campaign; b) identify the main achievements and shortcomings of the Code of Practice against Disinformation; and c) discuss concrete policy proposals for the announced European Union level legislation on digital political advertising. Former President of Slovenia, Danilo Türk will provide introductory remarks.
The conference(14 November 2019, 09:00-13:00) will bring together researchers, civil society representatives and policymakers to discuss the need for transparency in digital political advertising. Commissioner Jourova will give the keynote speech, after which a panel of EU policy-makers will discuss the Code of Practice against Disinformation, the Electoral Package and future regulatory solutions to ensure the transparency of digital political advertising.
Please use this form to register for the conference on 14 November, and email [email protected] or [email protected] to request your participation in the workshop on 13 November.
Prague is always beautiful, but it is particularly stunning when the autumn leaves start falling and it is 25° Celsius. Last week, the annual Forum 2000 brought together activists, academics, civil society, policy-makers and politicians to discuss current issues pertaining to democracy – and the EPD team was lucky enough to attend. With the theme Recovering the Promise of 1989, this year’s forum reflected on the hopeful and tumultuous year of 1989 in light of today’s challenges to democracy. How can we renew the spirit of solidarity of 30 years ago?
As part of the reflections on dealing with today’s challenges to democracy, EPD organised a Coffee Table Conversation on digital political advertising in Eastern Europe. The gorgeous River Hall at Zofin Palace provided the perfect location for a conversation with Jan Lipavský, Vitalii Moroz, and Miroslava Sawiris, moderated by Pavel Havlíček.
The Czech Member of Parliament (MP) Jan Lipavský, Pirate Party, and AMO researcher Pavel Havlíček provided insights on digital political advertising and disinformation in the Czech Republic. In addition to chain emails with sensational disinformation, the Czech European Parliament elections showed a problematic lack of transparency in the financing of digital campaigns, at a time when selfie videos on Instagram prevailed over offline campaigning.
“Political parties must be responsible for the messages they convey to the public, online and offline,” stated MP Lipavský. “Transparency is key.” However, Pavel Havlíček noted the lack of regulation of the online sphere, in which political parties can easily avoid following campaign financing rules. In the face of a lack of legal remedies provided by national law, another way by which the Pirate Party has attempted to counter disinformation and smear campaigns is by creating its own counternarratives.
Miroslava Sawiris, Research Fellow at Globsec, likewise recognised the regulatory vacuum and resulting lack of transparency and rise in disinformation from the Slovak case. Her research on disinformation in the Slovakian Presidential election campaign showed how digital political ads may be used for disinformation and character assassination campaigns posturing as genuine political opinions. In Slovakia, political campaigning clearly moved into the digital sphere during the recent elections.
The same observation was made in Ukraine by Vitalii Moroz, Head of New Media at Internews, Ukraine. Despite the relatively small number of 13 million Facebook users in Ukraine, stunning amounts of money were used on Facebook campaigns. He stressed the close linkages between digital political advertising, disinformation, algorithmic transparency and the business model of digital platforms.
As MP Lipavsky said, “Czech politics won’t change the way the platforms work. We should start working with our current laws to regulate digital political advertising.” Likewise, Ms Sawiris called for a European response, as single countries are unable to negotiate with the tech giants. Mr Moroz also stressed the limits of self-regulation and called for co-regulation, through constructive cooperation with the platforms. A key question there is platform liability, algorithmic transparency and legal recourse.
The Coffee Table Conversation brought up some interesting insights from Central and Eastern Europe in an ongoing discussion that is currently unfolding at the national and EU level. The EPD team took note of the different issues raised by the speakers and audience, which it will take to the EU level in an upcoming conference on digital political advertising. The session was organised within the framework of the Civitates-funded project Virtual Insanity, alongside two other upcoming national-level dialogues on the topic. More information on the project report available here or the project dedicated webpage here.
A joint statement has been issued by EPD and 40 signatories, putting forward 5 recommendations on how to improve European leadership on democracy.
This comes at a time of fundamental technological change, climate crisis, demographic adjustments, inequalities and power shifts between continents, in which the EU must promote and protect its founding principles of democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Europe and abroad.
The 2009 coup d’état was a watershed moment for Honduran politics that sowed the seeds for several challenges in the years to follow. The relative stability of the two-party system has been replaced by a more diverse political landscape but, paradoxically, a more polarised society. This polarisation plays out in government, political parties, civil society and the media. The serious violence after the most recent elections in 2017 bear witness to the dangers of the profound difficulties of dealing with these divisions but also of the lack of trust in state institutions. It should come as no surprise that the weakness of the rule of law has been a major concern for Honduran citizens for many years.
While European states play a much smaller geopolitical role in Honduras compared to the United States, they remain important donors and supporters of political reform. The temporary halt to cooperation efforts after the 2009 coup was an important political signal from European actors (and others) regarding the political situation. Generally speaking, the analysis and designation of resources and areas associated with EU support is perceived as balanced and coherent by Honduran actors. As a result of a good interpretation of the country context, support is well prioritised, with varying opinions about the real and practical effectiveness of each intervention – particularly in the justice sector.
In order to assess European democracy support it is important to highlight the political and socio-economic context in Honduras, which has influenced the nature, volume and priorities of European support programmes. The first section will therefore list a number of key democracy-related events and turning points of the past decade. The paper then looks at the relevance, complementarity, consistency and impact of European democracy support in separate chapters. It ends by offering up conclusions and recommendations for the future of European efforts to support democratic governance in Honduras.
Armenia has in some ways been a classic example of a country caught in a grey zone or hybrid regime, with its mixture of features of democratic and authoritarian systems. In concert with the rest of the Eurasian region, Armenia had been viewed in recent years as a country subject to the gradual advance of authoritarian governance. The current government led by Nikol Pashinyan is in a remarkably dominant position – similar to those that came before, albeit with significantly higher levels of public support.
The 2018 Velvet Revolution could be seen as an entirely unexpected event but it was also possible thanks to the multitude of protests in the country in recent years that received significantly less international attention. The elements of political competition within the system were vital in allowing for change. While the shadow cast by the revolution conditions any contemporary analysis of Armenian politics, it is vital to recognise that the fundamental challenges still remain the same. It is highly unlikely that democratic development will flourish without a greater dispersal of political and economic power.
The paper outlines a series of recommendations for updating and improving European efforts to support democracy in Armenia. It was commissioned by the European Partnership for Democracy in the context of a ‘Review of European democracy support’. Armenia was chosen among a series of country cases due to its geographical location (in the EU neighbourhood), ties to a major power (Russia) and the changes brought about by the 2018 revolution. The recommendations from the paper are split into four thematic areas, each containing specific recommendations. These are:
Strengthening the political and financial cooperation between Armenia and the EU.
Complementing successful ongoing efforts of political coordination with an increased focus on programmatic cooperation between European states.
Developing the necessary knowledge to properly understand the fundamental drivers of political change in Armenia.
Increasing support to non-state actors, such as independent media, political parties, parliaments and civil society.
Dedicate greater resources to manage coordination.
On 18 June 2019, EPD was proud to present its findings and recommendations on European democracy support to the Finnish government, EPD members and democracy support practitioners and academics at the Political Party Peer Network Conference in Helsinki.
Over the last 18 months, EPD and its members conducted a participatory review of European democracy support. This review process has included several stand-alone papers on democracy support and numerous multi-stakeholder meetings with academics, activists, civil society, donors, experts, policy-makers and think tanks.
Three questions have guided the research:
How successful has European democracy support been until now?
How to consolidate and enhance European democracy support today?
What key features could a new democracy support policy be built upon?
There were some things we expected to find in this review and there were also some surprises.
You can read the summary of the findings and key recommendations below.
This executive summary will be followed by a more detailed final paper, as well as country case studies on European democracy support in Tunisia, Armenia and Honduras.
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