The EU Elections 2024: How to Build Resilience Against Disinformation Campaigns on Social Platforms

Looking at the 2024 EU elections, the fifth impulse paper in the series "Digital Platforms: Design Proposals and Alternatives" examines the tension between electoral processes and disinformation. How well prepared are governments, platforms, and civil society to ensure healthy public discourse in digital spaces?
 
The authors Charlotte Freihse, Cathleen Berger, Vincent Hofmann, Matthias C. Kettemann and Katharina Mosene sum up: While the European Union has taken some measures to combat disinformation, potentially much more needs to be done. For example, the European Rapid Alert System for Disinformation will be fully operational in time for the 2024 EU elections. In addition, the elections will reveal the extent to which the Digital Services Act (DSA) can effectively regulate the spread of disinformation. The platforms themselves have also developed election integrity policies that should be able to identify and remove fake accounts and illegal content. But given the volatility of public debates and the importance of electoral processes, much more may need to be done to curb disinformation that threatens democracy, say the authors.

Download Impulse Paper No. 5
 

About the Impulse Series and This Publication

The Bertelsmann Foundation's Upgrade Democracy Team, together with the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, is organizing a five-part Impulse Series from April to September 2023 on the topic "Digital Platforms: Design Proposals and Alternatives. "The focus of the series is an intensive examination of current challenges and problems on existing social platforms and the presentation and discussion of alternatives. The topics of participation and robust governance regarding the democratic design of the dominant social platforms are just as much in focus as questions about decision-making processes oriented toward the common good. The individual impulses intertwine thematically and aim to develop ideas, action and policy recommendations for sustainable platform and content governance in digital spaces.
 
All impulses take up ideas from expert workshops, in which provocative hypotheses and central questions are discussed in small, intimate groups and under Chatham house rules. Following each event, an impulse paper is published that summarizes the most important aspects of the discussion. The series was conceptualized by Cathleen Berger, Charlotte Freihse, Matthias C. Kettemann, Katharina Mosene, and Vincent Hofmann.
 
Hamburg, 28 August 2023