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Slovak Parliamentary Election 2020: Liberalism As a Threat, Facebook As a Battlefield GLOBSEC

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Slovak Parliamentary Election 2020: Liberalism As a Threat, Facebook As a Battlefield GLOBSEC Slovak parliamentary election 2020 Liberalism as a threat, Facebook as a battlefield Slovak parliamentary election 2020: Liberalism as a threat, Facebook as a battlefield GLOBSEC FB pages with problematic Table of content received half a million contents interactions More on the page 10 04 Introduction Who was 06 Key findings accused of election 08 Recommendations interference? for Facebook, national & EU authorities More on the page 12 10 Whose posts received the most interactions? Stories 12 Popular narratives promoting the far-right Election interference extremist ĽSNS 16 party were winning on open FB groups systematically shared on FB 20 Content amplification pages and on Facebook groups 22 Role of Facebook More on the page 20 in the Elections 18 24 Authors and methodology Facebook measures were highly inadequate Slovak parliamentary election 2020 Slovak parliamentary election 2020 Slovak parliamentary More on the page 22 2 3 Slovak parliamentary election 2020: Liberalism as a threat, Facebook as a battlefield GLOBSEC Online battlefield he period of election For five months prior to the campaigning is naturally elections held on February 29, Tcharacterised by fighting. 2020, the analysts from the Fighting occurring between team of GLOBSEC’s Strategic political parties, its leaders, Communication Programme candidates and their supporters, monitored the online information all of it for gaining more voters space. The monitoring results fall in and consequent power. While line with a growing global trend of in an ideal, rational world, the divisive, harmful and manipulative debate should be focused on narratives being spread on the programme, solutions and websites and social platforms. policies, the real world—full of As a result, we are witnessing an emotions and feelings—is more increasing polarisation, hatred about accusations, attacks and the against, and attacks on, different alienation of specific individuals groups of society, mainly the and groups in society. advocates for liberal principles, the representatives of standard media Elections in Slovakia have become and civil society. strongly influenced by these fights. Elections in Slovakia thus What had been previously often become a battlefield in considered as an absurd debate which many political actors select at the fringes of the political an (often imaginary) opponent spectrum has now become widely portrayed as an alleged threat to debated on TV. Liberalism has the country or nation. The political been labelled as “perverted”, discourse and electoral campaign “threatening”, “fascist” and is thus often a survival game of “us “alien to Slovakia”. Flooding the versus them”. information space with divisive and harmful narratives undermining the In the mid-2010s, it was the very basis of democratic systems supposed threat coming from and values securing fundamental migration. Earlier, in the 2000s, rights and freedoms has become it was the Hungarian and Roma the new normal in the 2020 minorities. Today, it is liberalism. Slovak Parliamentary election. The distribution of forces in the Building upon a larger newly elected parliament hints phenomenon of rising illiberalism that these trends will not fade in the region and beyond, these away, although the recent change elections have witnessed the of the government provides an phenomenon of antisystem opportunity to revive decency. narratives taking a firm foothold However, no transformative in Slovak mainstream political change will be possible without discourse. FB’s stepping up its efforts. Facebook (FB) was at the core of this phenomenon and thus played an important role in this debate, allowing the antisystem actors to Slovak parliamentary election 2020 Slovak parliamentary flood the information space with election 2020 Slovak parliamentary divisive and harmful narratives, while incapable of securing the compliance with FB’s own 4 community standards. 5 Slovak parliamentary election 2020: Liberalism as a threat, Facebook as a battlefield GLOBSEC Key findings #1 #4 The rise in support for the The key target of the attacks far-right extremist ĽSNS in the coming from the problematic polls and elections was also sources was “liberalism”. #5 evident on the internet. ĽSNS An effect of the systematic #3 was the most-mentioned During the election promotion of the “liberalism An important role in the pre- party on the most-viral campaigning, FB was not as a threat” narrative by election campaign was played posts by both standard and capable of securing a unified the problematic side of the by webpages and FB pages problematic sources within implementation of rules to information spectrum is the and groups that promoted the five months of monitoring. increase the transparency transition of the attempts to #2 the interests of particular of political advertising and undermine liberal democracy The most popular theme political parties but without compliance with their own as the most appropriate on open FB groups sharing any official attribution. As community standards. political system for Slovakia problematic content was the such, they developed an The establishment of an (with the help of key political warning against potential elaborate web of supporters independent Slovak fact- officials) into the mainstream election interference. A range and content amplifiers who checker a few weeks prior to political discourse. of actors were accused of systematically and repeatedly the elections had no effect alleged interference and thus shared specific narratives. on the amount of problematic demonised on the platform, content spread on FB. from NGOs to opinion poll agencies to media to the so- called “liberals”. Slovak parliamentary election 2020 Slovak parliamentary election 2020 Slovak parliamentary 6 7 Slovak parliamentary election 2020: Liberalism as a threat, Facebook as a battlefield GLOBSEC Recommendations for Facebook, national & EU #4 Develop a complaint system for cases when authorities social media fail in removal of content sharing hate speech, extremism or targeted bullying of individuals. The complaints #1 should be promptly taken over by relevant state Create a designated and EU institutions with contact/office for each competences to issue a EU member state, which financial penalisation of the will be responsible for: social media platform for such a) communication with failures. state institutions, delivery #6 of comprehensive databases about political #3 Provide reasoning behind advertisements, as well as any account deletion or reported and deleted content; Accelerate and increase the post removal to prevent the b) posting advance notice effectiveness of the removal spread of conspiracies about of planned modifications to of problematic content Facebook censorship. In addition, we fully endorse the community standards on reported to Facebook by a #2 recommendations put forward by the a specific social medium verified trusted flagger. EEAS for the implementation of the in order to consult with Ensure the enforcement #5 Action Plan Against Disinformation, relevant authorities about the of rules that secure the Hire more local experts such as the development of a proposed modifications prior transparency of targeted to oversee the quality of system of indicators determining the to their implementation. ads and thus increase the users’ awareness. At the same content-moderation and trustworthiness of individual websites time, task Facebook with provide data about the in cooperation with media to help the automatic and regular competency to resolve internet users distinguish between delivery of information about individual cases to trustful and distrustful content, as well all paid ads to national independent institutions as the employment of independent institutions supervising and analysts for auditing auditing of the functioning of the financing of political purposes. algorithms. campaigns. Slovak parliamentary election 2020 Slovak parliamentary election 2020 Slovak parliamentary 8 9 Standard vs. problematic content GLOBSEC Total interactions of the most viral content across the online information space, from Who went October 2019 to March 2020.1 1 Five-months monitoring period was divided into three rounds of data collection- October 1 – November 15, 2019; November 16, 2019 – January 26, 2020 and January 27 – March 2, 2020. For each monitoring period, we analysed a database of up to 250 entries based on the highest number of interactions on Facebook. After merging them we arrived at a total number of interactions viral? for each category. 312,351 FB pages of standard media outlets Facebook pages Websites 539,323 FB pages with problematic content 407,911 Websites with problematic content 24,539 This is big, my friends! This is a bomb! interactions WHAT WAS OĽANO’S CAR DOING IN FRONT OF THE AMERICAN RESIDENCE? I just received a picture of Trnava self-governing The post with the highest number region’s car which is under the political control of of interactions belonged to Ľuboš OĽaNO... See more ebsites of standard Blaha, MP for SMER-SD, whose media have the highest long posts are often based on Wreach on FB and “whataboutism” and use belittling, governing region is Jozef Viskupič, maintain their role of being a key ad hominem attacks. a member of OĽaNO). Based on source of information with more 1,238,238 this parked car, Blaha went as far than a million overall interactions Standard media websites His most popular post was as to blame the party’s leader, Igor in five months. The reach of the published just after
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