-
On the 14th of June 2018, The Institute of National
Security Studies in Sri Lanka (INSSSL) organised a symposium on ‘Media and
Democracy: Misinformation, Fake News and its Impact on National Security’. This
was held at the Ministry of Defence with most stakeholders present. INSSSL has
so far developed 13 policy recommendations and briefs. We look at the long term
and gather public opinion and expert thinking from discussions to develop
policy briefs for the Government. The objective of this forum was to make an
independent observation by gathering perspectives from government, private
sector, media, and plural sector on reforms to current media practices.
Summarized in this press release are the salient points of the discussion.
Spread of misinformation
Themed session moderated by Mr. Asanga
Abeygoonasekara. Speakers Present were: Professor Gihan Dias from University of
Moratuwa, Mr. Harindra Dissanayake, from President’s Media Unit, and Dr. Harinda Vidanage from Bandaranaike Center for International Studies. The points of discussion were:
·
Discerning truth from fact in fake news.
·
‘Attention Economics’ and ‘Information Overload’.
·
Developments in technology to create
fake news such as video and audio synthesizing.
·
Wide circulation of poor versions of
political engagements of citizens.
·
Declining trust in social media as a
source of news.
·
Dangers of weaponised narratives leading
to political polarization and highly partisan news sites.
How to regulate Social Media?
The Second Session on ‘managing misinformation’ was
moderated by Mr. Yasas Abeywickrema from the Computer Society of Sri Lanka.
Speakers included: Professor Rohan Samarajiva of ICTA, Group Captain MDAG
Seneviratne, Mr. Roshan Chandragupta of CERT.
“There are 6 million Facebook users in Sri Lanka and
Facebook doesn’t pay taxes here. Also lack of country specific data makes it
difficult to analyze and get a comprehensive picture into Sri Lanka’s Facebook
activity. Among the corpus of Facebook users Sinhala language is a minority
community which makes content moderation an issue against Facebook community
standards” – Harindra Dassanayake
Regulation can happen several ways:
·
Looking into international law,
standards and best practices.
·
Domestic laws of countries.
·
Social norms to fight fake news which
can be more resilient in the long term than just laws.
·
Administrative remedies such as ‘Norms
of journalistic Conduct and Code of Ethics’ and ‘Broadcasting Standards’.
International regulatory efforts to draw
lessons from:
·
Germany’s
‘Facebook law’.
·
Estonian
Defence League’s Cyber Unit.
·
Chinese
approach of governing its social media space.
·
Malaysian
Anti-Fake News Act.
“Regarding
the option of criminalization: in the case of Sri Lanka, Article 14 (1) (a)
grants every citizen the right to freedom of speech and the need to balance
this right with regulating fake news, hate speech, and incitement to violence
via media platforms” – Rohan Samarajiva
Who should be Arbiters of the truth?
·
Government - The possibilities of
co-regulation of social media by an independent commission such as the
constitutional council.
·
Self-regulation.
·
Fact checking mechanism on fake news is neither
a difficulty nor time consuming. Fact checking can be done fast if a proper
mechanism is set up.
Group Captain MDAG Seneviratne brought in the
Military
Perspective: “misinformation directed at the
military is a national security concern… Regulation is needed on misinformation
in the public domain. There has to be a long term solution to censorship.
Inter-agency groups, Defence Ministry’s Cyber Security Unit, Filtering
mechanisms on harmful content are options that should be explored” Mr. Roshan
Chandragupta from CERT brought in the Technical Perspective: “It
is difficult to identify individuals
behind certain accounts on social media, track IP addresses and obtain court
orders to do so. We need to balance data privacy and privacy of users against
the need for regulation”
Most of the discussion revolved around
politicization of narratives on media; some narratives on ethnic, racial and
religious frontlines can be dangerous to democracy. While accessibility and
speed of information has increased, accuracy and objectivity has declined. In
the event of unrest, there was a general agreement by participants that temporary
social media blocks are not a permanent solution. It was concluded,
long-term resilient solutions must be in place that balances regulation with
the right to free speech and privacy of users.
Press Release of Institute of National Security
Studies Sri Lanka- writer is Natasha Fernando (Research Assistant)