Event Overview
The Centre for Information Integrity (CII) Director, Jennifer Irish, had the great opportunity to have presented on “Protecting Digital Democracy” at the Ketagalan Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue in Taipei, organized by the government and Prospect Foundation of Taiwan. Panellists from the Baltics underscored a strong co-relation between narratives directed at Russia’s neighbours and those of the PRC. The panel presented opportunity for indepth discussions both with senior governmental representatives, and Taiwan’s civil society – including IORG, Co-Fact and the AI Academy. While the Canadian government is doing good work in the Disinfo space, Canada can learn much from Taiwan’s civil society-led approach which harnesses broader experience while ensuring public awareness and vigilance about the insidious threat Disinfo poses to democracy.
There is much untapped potential for democracies around the work to collaborate to combat disinformation and mitigate its impacts. Sustained responses need to be multi-pronged, including both inoculations and interventions, and ranging from measures aimed at individual citizens to international partnerships. Democracies should be pursuing more work collectively to share their knowledge, experiences, technical skill and to counter information manipulation. Effective collaboration needs to go beyond countering narratives, as authoritarian actors are increasingly sharing technology and techniques, enhancing their ability to suppress free expression and spread propaganda on a global scale. Democracies must find the political will and means to coordinate their approaches, work together to build mutual resilience and shape a digital ecosystem aligned with democratic values.
The video of the complete panel on protecting digital democracies can be found here: