Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Thursday, June 06, 2019

Electoral Tribunal launches strategies to avoid digital disinformation during the last elections

Panama decided to engage in a frontal struggle against the manipulation of information and fake news on social networks: the measures taken by the agency allowed it to reach the presidential elections last May in a framework of certain information security.

On May 5, Laurentino Cortizo, candidate of the PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party), won the presidential elections with 33% of the votes. For the electoral process that led to these results, the Electoral Tribunal decided to implement digital strategies that counteract the distortion caused by fake news, a task that was conducted by the youngest of the three that make up the entity, Alfredo Juncá. "As Electoral Tribunal we have achieved to have a greater attention in social networks and how the Internet affects the democratic process for these elections," the magistrate said.

One of the measures taken was the creation of the Digital Ethical Pact, launched on June 27, 2018. It consists of each user of social networks, with their personal data, expressing the commitment to publish information in a responsible manner and at the same time report false accounts or "bots" that guide the voter maliciously.

The pact was presented at the headquarters of the Electoral Tribunal, in an act attended by political leaders and activists, media members and "influencers". Commitment campaigns were also carried out, such as the collective signing of university students, and an agreement was signed between the Electoral Court and the most used social networks to take immediate action in the face of false accounts and fake news reports. "Twitter has become a great ally. We have the support of Facebook and Instagram, whose legal teams expeditiously receive the complaints made by the Electoral Tribunal. Before, it took us three weeks, now 10 minutes," said Juncá about this joint work.

Another measure against misinformation in networks was the creation of a Digital Media Unit, in charge of monitoring the content of political information published on the Internet. The agency deactivated thousands of false news and also managed to dismantle seven call centers, one of them located in Peru, making calls to attack rivals and praise one of the candidates.

The Electoral Tribunal's concern about the impact of digital information started with a reality in the electoral roll: for the last elections the incorporation of more than 300,000 young voters was foreseen. This added to the background in Brazil, where the victory of Jair Bolsonaro was directly linked to using of fake news.

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