Social Media Monitoring During Elections

SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING DURING ELECTIONS CASES AND BEST PRACTICE TO INFORM ELECTORAL OBSERVATION MISSIONS AUTHORS Rafael Schmuziger Goldzweig Bruno Lupion Michael Meyer-Resende

FOREWORD BY Iskra Kirova and Susan Morgan

EDITOR Ros Taylor

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Cover photo: © Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Bloomberg/Getty opensocietyfoundations.org Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

CONTENTS

3 FOREWORD

5 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

7 INTRODUCTION

9 CONTEXT 9 Threats to electoral integrity in social media 9 The framework of international election observation 10 The Declaration of Principles of International Election Observation

12 WHAT ARE INTERNATIONAL OBSERVER MISSIONS DOING ON SOCIAL MEDIA DISCOURSE?

14 WHAT ARE EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS DOING?

17 WHAT ARE CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS DOING? 17 European civil society 19 A glimpse beyond Europe 21 Non-government initiatives: Europe & beyond 23 Topics/objects of analysis 24 Platforms 26 Monitoring tools

1 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

27 GUIDELINES FOR EOMS 27 Monitoring of social media vs traditional media 29 Cooperation between actors and information exchange partnerships 29 Dealing with data 29 Working in different contexts 31 SWOT analysis for EOMs in social media monitoring

32 RECOMMENDATIONS

35 ANNEX 1: SURVEY OF INTERNATIONAL ELECTION OBSERVATION ORGANIZATIONS

36 ANNEX 2: BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE INITIATIVES ANALYSED (based on interviews) 36 a. Non-governmental initiatives 40 b. Governmental/inter-governmental initiatives

2 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

FOREWORD

Concern over online interference in elections is now parties can easily become manipulative too – whether widespread – from the fallout of the Cambridge it is the use of bots and paid trolls to engineer false Analytica scandal to the pernicious effects debates and narratives, the misuse of personal data messaging apps have had in elections in Kenya or or the targeting of political advertising at voters. Brazil. Yet regulatory and monitoring efforts have Some of this activity might be illegal, but much of it is laged behind in addressing the challenges of how unregulated – to the detriment of our electoral rights. public opinion can be manipulated online, and its impact on elections. As the authors of this report point out, freedom from manipulative interference of any kind is a The phenomenon of online electoral interference is core element of the right to vote and participate global. It affects established democracies, countries in political life, and enshrined in the International in transition, and places where freedom of expression Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. and access to information are tightly controlled. Until recently independent election observation At the Open Society Foundations we have supported missions and their assessments represented the research looking at a wide variety of electoral most authoritative voice on the conduct of elections. contexts – ranging from the last German federal Not any more. Traditional election observers have elections to the Brazilian presidential election, the found themselves entirely unprepared to address American midterms and the European Parliament these new challenges, particularly since there has elections. As this experience revealed domestic and been little rule setting in this new field. international, state and non-state actors manipulate information online in order to shape voters’ choices The regulatory gap between online and offline or simply confuse and disorient citizens, paralyze political communication and elections is stagering. democratic debate and undermine confidence in Even as monitors track broadcast media and electoral processes. These players often act in ways advertising, elections are manipulated online. that are indistinguishable, with some direct and indirect cooperation taking place. Initial responses by recent international electoral observation missions in Kenya, Georgia and Nigeria – The result is detrimental to the quality of our public as described in this report – have aimed to highlight debate and our ability to deliberate issues and seek false information or hate speech disseminated during common solutions as societies. election periods. This approach follows a similar focus by regulators and platforms on uncovering and Much attention has focused on foreign threats, removing false or harmful content online. Germany’s following the revelations of Russian interference NetzDG and the UK’s white paper on Online Harms in the US 2016 presidential elections, or on the are examples, as are content oversight boards such hyperactivity of the far right online which pushes as the one established by Facebook. These types of anti-establishment views into the center of debates. measures can harm free expression and offer only Yet digital campaigning by mainstream political partial solutions.

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Content moderation has limited impact, as it is easy selling users’ personal data for targeted advertising to circumvent red-flag language caught by algorithms in order to generate revenue. The current debates and much of it still relies on users’ own reporting on data protection and microtargeting, and the rules of problematic material. Most importantly, it raises put in place by Facebook and Google to ban foreign- free speech concerns and serious questions about funded advertising at election times, are a start. the legitimacy of online platforms – or governments for that matter – to act as arbiters for online speech. But fundamental questions of what should be legal Deep knowledge of specific contexts – to address and illegal in digital political communication have challenges like the misuse of Facebook to spread yet to be answered in order to extend the rule of radicalization in Myanmar, for instance – is also electoral law from the offline to the online. Answering critical, or important cultural tropes will be missed. these questions would help determine the right Places where there is a history of election-related scope for online election observation, too. and other violence are particularly sensitive in this respect. This scoping report explains why social media is one of the elements of a democratic, rule-of-law From the perspective of election observers, trying to based state that observer groups should monitor. cope with the volume of information and the speed It agregates experience from diverse civil society at which stories or memes can go viral has made the and non-governmental initiatives that are innovating task of monitoring content on social media around in this field, and sets out questions to guide the elections seem impossible. development of new mandates for election observers.

In this new landscape, balanced and comprehensive The internet and new digital tools are profoundly oversight of elections and the online sphere will reshaping political communication and campaigning. require innovation. In addition to focusing on the But an independent and authoritative assessment content, we need to start thinking about the online of the impact of these effects is wanting. Election architecture that enables these distortions of the observation organizations need to adapt their democratic debate and the inﬂuence of malign mandate and methodology in order to remain relevant actors. Much of this architecture stems from the and protect the integrity of democratic processes. business model of web platforms, which relies on

Iskra Kirova and Susan Morgan Open Society Foundations

4 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The international election observation community • Disinformation initiatives have a headstart: they has lagged in its response to new threats to have already been experimenting with methods electoral integrity in social media. Challenges from of monitoring social media and in reporting disinformation campaigns, incitement to violence on outputs. They have technical knowledge and manipulative public relations campaigns of tools for monitoring, even though there is online hardly fgure when international election no established overall framework to address observers report their fndings. During the many social media/online disinformation in elections. recent controversies on disinformation in elections, While some initiatives try to approach the issue international Election Observation Missions (EOMs) with intensive technological developments contributed little, because the traditional election using software and AI solutions, others focus observation methodology did not provide any means on content-specifc aspects of disinformation, to analyse this emerging area of concern. A survey of narrowing down the analysis to lines of enquiry eight major election observation organizations shows that are specifc to their political contexts. that they understand the problem and are ready to Reactive vs long-term observation: initiatives address it, although only a few have taken concrete • to tackle disinformation tend to be reactive. steps to do so (see Annex 1 for details). Often, they try to follow developments in real time and to intervene by debunking stories The European Union and the National Democratic and alerting platforms, authorities or the wider Institute (NDI) have been more proactive, as have public. Traditional election observation does not smaller election specialists from MEMO98 (Slovakia) directly react to electoral developments, to avoid and Democracy Reporting International (author of becoming part of the campaign. For this reason, it this report). The much-needed connections between usually only provides an overall assessment of the election observers and other communities such as electoral process after election day. data analysts and journalists, academic researchers and disinformation experts are beginning to be • Ecosystem vs single players: Several initiatives made. to fght disinformation work in coordination with other groups, such as factcheckers or journalists. Feedback from the principal international election The major EOMs are stand-alone actors. They observation organizations and the outcome of exchange information with other groups but aim interviews with experts from 18 governments and to give an overall verdict based exclusively on their non-governmental actors that engage in monitoring own fndings. EOMs tend to be more visible, but in disinformation on social media (details in Annex recent elections reports by disinformation groups 2), highlights the contrasts as well as the space for may have eclipsed the coverage of traditional synergies: election observers’ fndings.

5 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

• Experimentation: Disinformation groups the challenges - such as the size of the data, the experiment with social media monitoring focusing shortcomings of existing software for social media on diferent tools, platforms, actors and forms monitoring and the comparison between contexts. of expression. International election observers follow their set methodologies. International These provide a lot of material for election observers election observation is a politically sensitive to consider and to develop further. To make the activity, mostly based on an invitation by the host analysis of social media in elections more efective, government, so international observers have little we recommend: scope for experimentation. That disinformation monitors and election Guidelines & methodology: International • • observers create more links and co-operate more election observers follow a detailed methodology, systematically; the essence of which is written into the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation • Civil society initiatives provide a set of best from 2005. In the disinformation feld there is no practices that do not put the reputation of EOMs at agreed framework, and discussions on overall risk when monitoring the impact of social media questions of methods, tools, approaches and during elections. These initiatives should be ethics of social media monitoring are still in the adopted. early stages. Reports on disinformation usually include neither assessment nor measurement of More recommendations can be found at the end of the impact or relevance of certain disinformation the report. The organizations and initiatives covered campaigns. in this report do not provide a comprehensive list of each relevant actor or method used. However, the Given that disinformation monitoring by non-EOMs case studies provide ideas and approaches that can is more developed, there are good practices to guide the monitoring eforts of EOMs. be found in the work of these groups on many of

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INTRODUCTION

Social media platforms have become a major are having positive results. Some of the companies infuence on elections: they are increasingly behind these platforms have enforced self-regulatory being used to shape political opinion and beliefs measures which usually increase the requirements generally, and in electoral periods they infuence for users running political ads or advertise on matters voter choices. Reports from many countries have of national interest. They have created several Ad shown that disinformation attempts to manipulate Libraries to increase transparency about who runs elections, be it via discrediting campaigns, external such ads and which groups are being targeted. infuence or trying to suppress voter turnout. Some Legislative eforts may help guide monitoring may represent violations of electoral or other rules, eforts in the future, but regulatory initiatives both while others may not be illegal in national legislation, at the national1 and international2 levels need to but are nevertheless inconsistent with the idea of be developed further before they can provide clear fair campaigning as outlined in international law. guidelines for electoral observers. Besides disinformation, social media also facilitates the placement of paid political and issue-based ads, Election Observation Missions – whether targeted to the preferences of diferent groups of international missions or domestic observer groups – voters. used to provide an authoritative voice on the integrity of a given election. However, with social media Referring to legislation when it comes to social now an important aspect of electoral dynamics and media monitoring poses an additional challenge legislation failing to respond to its challenges, these to initiatives that wish to use it as guidance when missions have lost relevance, since their assessment defning the scope of their analysis. So far, regulation does not usually include an analysis of the role of on what is acceptable or not when it comes to social social media. Instead, it has been left to investigative media use for political purposes is very fragmented, journalists, monitoring initiatives, data protection and in the very few countries where laws have been groups, intelligence services and factcheckers to put in place, it is still too early to assess whether they reveal disinformation on social media.

1 The NetzDG is an example of legislation applied by Germany to address hate speech on social media platforms. Other initiatives aiming at regulating aspects of social media have been attempted in France, UK, Italy, Czech Republic and others (in Goldzweig et. al (2018) “Beyond Regulation: Approaching the challenges of the new media environment”, Dahrendorf Forum. Available at: https:// www.dahrendorf-forum.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Beyond-Regulation_Final.pdf 2 Such as the EU Action Plan against Disinformation. Available at: https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters- homepage/54866/action-plan-against-disinformation_en

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Election observers have only belatedly woken up • State actors in the EU that track disinformation; to the challenges. Some have started introducing Non-state actors that look at disinformation in the expertise to their missions and a few have published • EU, with a few examples from beyond the EU. initial scoping papers and results. This paper will look at these emerging practices, identify good examples The study is based on oral and written interviews or and compare them to disinformation analysis done surveys with eight election observation organizations by non-election observer groups (groups that do and with interlocutors from 18 governments or not observe elections as their core business). We non-governmental organizations that monitor have studied three main groups of actors for this social media for political purposes. We also comparison: reviewed published documents from six initiatives. This study was researched and written by Rafael The main organizations that deploy international • Schmuziger Goldzweig (DRI Social Media Research election observation missions based on Coordinator), Bruno Lupion (researcher) and Michael the ‘Declaration of Principles’, the leading Meyer-Resende (DRI Executive Director). methodological document;

8 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

CONTEXT

THREATS TO ELECTORAL INTEGRITY THE FRAMEWORK OF INTERNATIONAL IN SOCIAL MEDIA ELECTION OBSERVATION

The Oxford Internet Institute notes: The reference framework for election observation is grounded in human rights. The principle “The number of countries where formally organised organizations that deploy observers either apply social media manipulation occurs has greatly increased, obligations and commitments that their member from 28 to 48 countries globally. The majority of growth states freely adhered to - for example in the case comes from political parties who spread disinformation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation and junk news around election periods. There are in Europe (OSCE), the African Union (AU) and more political parties learning from the strategies the Organization of American States (OAS) – or to deployed during Brexit and the US 2016 Presidential international human rights obligations, in the case election: more campaigns are using bots, junk news, and of countries that deploy observers to countries other disinformation to polarise and manipulate voters.”3 than their own. This is the case for the EU, the NDI and the Carter Center. While it is clear that social media is used to manipulate discourse and opinions around elections. The right to vote in elections and to stand as a The way this is done varies according to a set of candidate (Article 25 International Covenant for variables still to be defned. Are they being carried Civil and Political Rights) provides the cornerstone out by domestic actors or foreign powers? Is it a in this framework, with other political rights coordinated action or attempts from several groups? being equally essential - such as the freedoms of Do they rely on automated bots, human trolls, paid expression, opinion and assembly and the right advertising or sharing by sympathetic networks? to an efective remedy (independent courts) to Which narrative strategies do they use? What type address possible rights violations. The framework of of disinformation should be tracked when it comes election observation encompasses the elements of a to electoral infuence? The guiding principles of democratic, rule-of-law based state which observer electoral observation missions can shed light on groups monitor for an extended period – belying the some of these questions. journalistic caricature of a blind focus on election day.

3 Bradshaw, S., Howard, P.N., Challenging Truth and Trust: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation, p3

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Discourse on social media fts into this framework THE DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES from several perspectives. Most importantly, freedom of expression implies that ”everyone shall OF INTERNATIONAL ELECTION have the right to freedom of expression; this right OBSERVATION shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of Initiated by the NDI in 2005, several leading frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in international election observation missions – under the form of art, or through any other media of his the aegis of the UN – endorsed the Declaration of choice.” (Article 19 ICCPR). Principles of international election observation, which have been backed by more than 60 groups. They Social media are an important tool to expand form the basis for the annual meeting of leading these freedoms, but when manipulated they can international observer organizations. The principles undermine them. Much of the debate on freedom set out the recognised international approach for of expression is concerned with restrictions, and election observation, and serve as a quality seal less with a manipulative use of social media and that contrasts the practices of fake observer groups other online content. However, the right to vote that have sprung up in authoritarian states. They and to participate in political life is also concerned elaborate the foundation of democratic elections in with the systemic aspects of opinion formation human rights. (and not only expression). The UN’s Human Rights Committee (the monitoring body of the International They defne international election observation as: Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), noted in its “(...) the systematic, comprehensive and accurate General Comment 25 (the right to vote and political gathering of information concerning the laws, participation): processes and institutions related to the conduct of elections and other factors concerning the “Persons entitled to vote must be free to vote for any overall electoral environment; the impartial and candidate for election and for or against any proposal professional analysis of such information; and submitted to referendum or plebiscite, and free to the drawing of conclusions about the character of support or to oppose government, without undue electoral processes based on the highest standards infuence or coercion of any kind which may distort or for accuracy of information and impartiality of inhibit the free expression of the elector’s will. Voters analysis. (…) observer missions must make concerted should be able to form opinions independently, free of eforts to place the election day into its context and violence or threat of violence, compulsion, inducement or not to over-emphasise the importance of election day manipulative interference of any kind.”4 observations.”5

4 UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment 25, 1996, point 19 5 Point 4 of the Declaration

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The Declaration also states that its endorsers • Accuracy: the analysis of social media is a new “recognise that international election observation feld with many discussions about the accuracy of missions must be of sufcient size to determine diferent methodologies. There are wide-ranging independently and impartially the character of debates, for example, on what a social bot is, what election processes in a country and must be of disinformation means and how to measure the sufcient duration to determine the character of sentiments of written texts. all of the critical elements of the election process Impartiality: disinformation and hate speech can in the pre-election, election-day and post-election • emanate from many political sources. Observers periods.”6 would need to follow all of those that may have a signifcant impact. Applied to social media, these principles raise several challenges, especially in view of the huge amount • Drawing of conclusions: the research on the of material being posted on social media during an impact of social media on political opinion electoral period: and voter choice and behaviour is not rich, and it is difcult to determine the impact of • What would a systematic gathering of discourse on disinformation. 900,000 Americans saw the social media look like? What would be the criteria headline that falsely claimed that Pope Francis and the plan for doing so? had endorsed Donald Trump as the best candidate for President. But how much weight does one false Comprehensive: is it realistic that observers could • story carry when people consume news every day? comprehensively assess the social media sphere? As the US 2016 elections showed, unexpected • Sufcient size: if it was possible to gather a problems may be discovered much later, such comprehensive, accurate and systematic view of as the disinformation campaigns by the Russian faws in social media discourse, how big would ‘Internet Research Agency’. Will observers be able that mission be? to detect signifcant problems while an election is unfolding? This paper surveys the practice and intentions of international election observer groups on social media monitoring and explores what other groups are doing in this feld, in particular in the EU, in order to provide inspiration for tradition election observers.

6 Point 19 of the Declaration

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WHAT ARE INTERNATIONAL OBSERVER MISSIONS DOING ON SOCIAL MEDIA DISCOURSE?

International EOMs have only belatedly started to data collection and analysis tools. It has an internal pay attention to social media discourse. The question guidance note on ‘disinformation and electoral of social media fgured in discussions of the annual integrity’. meeting on the Declaration of Principles, the main meeting of international election observers, in 2017 The EU included a chapter on the analysis of ‘online and 2018. However, while this forum has addressed related content’ in its Election Observer Handbook9. It many questions of methodology in detail, it has only follows the chapter on the monitoring of traditional discussed the bigger picture when it comes to social media, and mostly explores the role of online media. Of the international groups, the NDI and the media and looks at freedom of expression issues EU seem so far to have been the most agile. (restrictions of content) and hate speech issues. It does not cover the question of public discourse on The NDI included in its 2017 Kenya report a social media and the disinformation threat. So far paragraph summarizing the country’s social EU EOMs have only provided limited information on media landscape and highlighting examples of online content and social media. disinformation campaigns. They also addressed the problem of disinformation in the mission sent Recent EU EOMs sometimes included a short to Liberia on that same year, despite not addressing chapter with an overview of the social media specifcally the role of social media due to extremely landscape (main networks, numbers of users)10 limited internet penetration7. The organization and some impressions on their use, but most of posted a long-term ‘disinformation analyst’ to its them contained little information on social media Georgia election observation mission in 20178. In its discourse, and no structured monitoring nor support of domestic election observer groups, NDI quantifcation of social media activity during the has started providing technical assistance, including campaign.11

7 NDI. Available on pp42-43 at: https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/ﬁles/NDI%20Final%20Interational%20Election%20 Observation%20Mission%20Report%20-%20Liberia%202017%20Presidential%20and%20Legislative%20Elections%20%282%29. pdf 8 NDI. Available on p12 at: https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/ﬁles/NDI-GE%20EOM%202017-%20IR-ENG.pdf 9 EU Election Observer Handbook, Third Edition, 2016 10 Final Report EU EOM to Pakistan, 2018 11 Final Reports of EU EOMs to Lebanon 2018, Zimbabwe 2018, Tunisia 2018, Liberia 2017

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The EU is currently undertaking many activities to These initiatives are in addition to a wide-ranging improve the capability of EU EOMs, including efort to deal with EU internal disinformation challenges. • the inclusion of a digital analyst in an EU EOM for the frst time (Nigeria); Annex 1 provides an overview of the status quo of the principal international election observation groups. • a workshop on EOM monitoring of online campaigns, held by the EODS project; • Democracy Reporting International will bring together a working group under the EU-funded Supporting Democracy project to develop a methodology for social media monitoring in elections for the use of any interested group (international or national).

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WHAT ARE EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS DOING?

Overall, governments seem to take a more cautious Governments and intergovernmental bodies appear approach to social media monitoring than civil to mainly deal with disinformation as it relates to society organizations do. This is probably because factual inconsistencies around the electoral process it may be perceived as surveillance of individual and, when it comes to the origins of disinformation, citizens or that a government is trying to get an external actors (state and non-state alike). The informational advantage - even if only publicly following table summarizes some initiatives. available data (public posts on social media) are monitored without a focus on individuals.

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TABLE 1 Government initiatives on social media monitoring

GOVERNMENT EUROPE/INTERGOVERNMENTAL Body Country / Has ever monitored or is Focus on domestic Scope Range Software/ organization monitoring elections? actors or foreign tools used Which ones? inﬂuence

NATO StratCom NATO / Round the clock Both Monitors Twitter Tools built Center of Based monitoring not speciﬁcally automation, and in-house Excellence in Latvia in election periods bots and VKontakte trolls

Swedish Sweden Swedish 2018 Both Monitors Twitter Tools built Defence elections inﬂuence and in-house Research operations, discussion Agency threats to boards elections

East StratCom EU Yes, but not exclusively. Focused Monitors TV, BrandWatch Task Force Got budget and new on Russian disinformation webpages, employees to monitor run- inﬂuence on Facebook up to the 2019 European the Eastern and Parliament elections Neighbourhood Twitter

German Germany No. Initiatives to counter Both, with a greater Positive Ministry of disinformation by focus on foreign narratives Foreign Affairs disseminating German inﬂuence regarding - - facts/narratives in foreign Germany countries as a public to counter diplomacy tool disinformation

Policy France Yes, but not Foreign Monitors Planning comprehensive. Published inﬂuence disinformation Staff (CAPS), a concept paper & case campaigns, Minister for study on the ‘Macron leaks’ harmful - - Europe and narratives, Foreign Affairs12* media ecosystem, bots and trolls

Inter-ministerial Denmark No. Issued an action plan Focus on Monitors task force: to build resilience ahead of Russian inﬂuence Ministry of the 2019 General Danish inﬂuence campaigns - - Justice, Defence Elections (dis information) and Foreign Affairs13*

Centre against Czech Yes, 2017 Presidential Focus on Monitors Terrorism and Republic Elections. The Centre Russian dis information, Hybrid Threats monitors threats related to inﬂuence foreign - - (Ministry of the internal security of the propaganda the Interior)14* Czech Republic, including and terrorism disinformation campaigns threats

* Based on desk research and not interviews.

12 Available at: https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/french-foreign-policy/manipulation-of-information/article/joint-report-by-the- caps-irsem-information-manipulation-a-challenge-for-our 13 Available at: http://um.dk/en/news/newsdisplaypage/?newsid=1df5adbb-d1df-402b-b9ac-57fd4485ffa4 14 Available at: https://www.mvcr.cz/cthh/clanek/centre-against-terrorism-and-hybrid-threats.aspx

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Government initiatives are generally more focused Obviously, governments may do much more on geopolitical aspects of electoral monitoring - through intelligence agencies, which cannot namely attempting to avoid external actors (state and be assessed by this study (a report by Privacy non-state alike) from infuencing national elections. International15 explores the limits of data collection This is the case when we look at the French, German, from intelligence agencies, but does not cover Czech and Danish examples, which also focus on how intelligence services monitor social media in questions related to security and terrorism threats. elections).

When it comes to initiatives monitoring national Two intergovernmental initiatives – the East elections, the Swedish government seeks to avoid StratCom Task Force and the NATO StratCom factual inconsistencies around the management Center of Excellence – have diferent scopes: the of the electoral process. It monitored online former is an EU initiative to spot, debunk and commentary and discussion boards on Swedish compile disinformation narratives led by Russia, websites to look for posts that conveyed a threat to while the latter is a research centre that channels the Swedish elections, such as planned attacks on expert opinion to NATO. polling stations.

15 Available at: https://privacyinternational.org/explainer/55/social-media-intelligence

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WHAT ARE CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS DOING?

The following sections map 17 initiatives from EUROPEAN CIVIL SOCIETY non-governmental actors in the feld of social media monitoring during elections. They were selected Many initiatives are experimenting with social based on desk research on the 28 EU member media monitoring of political trends in Europe. We states and relevant initiatives in the US and other interviewed nine initiatives at the European level non-European countries. Potential interviewees to understand details on the monitoring exercise were contacted via email from 17 December 2018 they have done, as well as the phenomena they are onwards, and interviews were conducted between monitoring on each platform and the tools used for 19 December 2018 and 24 January 2019. A more the analysis. The following table summarizes the comprehensive description of each organization/ initiatives. initiative can be found in Annex 2 of this study.

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TABLE 2 Non-governmental initiatives on social media monitoring (Europe)

NON-GOVERNMENTAL INITIATIVES (civil society, academia, think tanks, consultancies) EUROPE Organization/ Country Has monitored or will Domestic Phenomena Range Software, Initiative monitor social media in actors or foreign tool or which elections? inﬂuence service used

EU Disinfo Lab Belgium Italian 2018 Federal Both Disinformation Twitter Visibrain, Elections and Gephi hyperactivity

Prague Czech Czech Parliament Election Both Disinformation, Websites and Versus Security Republic in 2017 and Senate and but also looking Facebook public Studies Presidential Elections in at broader pages Institute 2018. Will monitor the EU context Parliament Election in 2019

Debunk.eu Lithuania Not the main focus, but Prioritise Disinformation Websites and Tool built will monitor Lithuanian foreign Facebook public in-house Presidential and Municipal inﬂuence pages. Plans Elections in 2019 to include TV broadcasters and video using speech to text technology

Stiftung Neue Germany 2017 German Federal Both Disinformation Websites, TalkWalker Verantwortung Elections Facebook public (SNV) pages and posts and Twitter

European Czech Czech Presidential Foreign Disinformation Websites and - Values Think- Republic Elections in 2017 and (Russia) and hostile Facebook pages Tank / Kremlin Parliament Elections in inﬂuencing Watch 2018 activities

Oxford UK Not the main focus, but Both Political Facebook and Tools built Internet monitored the 2017 UK bots and Twitter in-house Institute (OII) / General Election and disinformation Computational several others Propaganda Project

Bakamo.Social UK 2017 French Election Both Disinformation Twitter TalkWalker and thematic or emotional patterns

EASTERN EUROPE

Atlantic Ukraine 2019 Ukrainian Presidential Foreign Disinformation, TV broadcasters Semantic Council / Election inﬂuence, cyberattacks, and webpages Visions Ukrainian mainly Russia kinetic Election Task operations Force

International Georgia Georgian 2018 Presidential Both Violation of Facebook Fact-a-lyzer Society for Fair Elections electoral laws, Elections and disinformation Democracy and Russian (ISFED) narratives

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European initiatives by civil society during elections A GLIMPSE BEYOND EUROPE have multiplied since 2017. Without an overarching methodology to follow, the projects focused on To complement the survey of European initiatives, diferent aspects and adapted to the restrictions it is useful to consider some specifc projects from of data that can be collected (especially in relation outside Europe that focussed on monitoring social to Facebook), as well as the needs of the specifc media in elections. Non-governmental initiatives political contexts. In terms of phenomena, the focus around the world are helpful in identifying rising was on monitoring disinformation (during and trends and challenges that can inform the work of outside elections); in the case of Eastern Europe, EOM on social media monitoring. This section lists with a particular focus on disinformation campaigns eight organizations in the US, Brazil and Nigeria that coming from Russia. are working nationally or globally in topics related to disinformation, Russian interference and monitoring Some initiatives explored in detail the use of social of paid ads. media in specifc elections (Bakamo.social, ISFED, SNV, Prague Security Studies Institute), while others tried to actively fght disinformation in partnership with factcheckers (Debunk.eu). Selected best practice from such initiatives will be featured in the fnal section of this report.

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TABLE 3 Non-governmental initiatives on social media monitoring (outside of Europe)

NON-GOVERNMENTAL INITIATIVES (civil society, academia, think tanks, companies) OUTSIDE OF EUROPE / GLOBAL Organization/ Country Has monitored or will Focus on domestic Phenomena Range Monitoring Initiative monitor social media actors or foreign software, tool or in which elections? inﬂuence service used

Alliance for US Monitored electoral Foreign Disinformation Twitter Own platform Securing content during the inﬂuence based on Democracy / run-up to the US 2018 (Russia) Twitter API. Hamilton 68 midterm elections Version 2.0 Dashboard developed by Graphika

Atlantic Council US French and German Both, highlights False Several, Buzzsumo, / Digital Forensic elections in 2017, when foreign accounts, false including CrowdTangle, Research Lab Mexican and Brazilian inﬂuence narratives, Facebook, Sysomos and elections in 2018, bots and Twitter Twitonomy, European Parliament, disinformation and among others Indian and South YouTube African elections in 2019

International US / EU Monitoring also Both, with a Disinformation Websites, Versus Republican captures run-up to greater focus and hostile Facebook, Institute / elections on foreign foreign Twitter Beacon Project inﬂuence inﬂuence

Getulio Vargas Brazil 2018 Brazilian General Domestic, Polarisation, Facebook, Foundation Elections with some disinformation, Twitter, - / Digital references to bots YouTube Democracy Room foreign

Center for Nigeria/ 2019 Nigerian Not speciﬁed Disinformation WhatsApp Surveys and Democracy and UK presidential elections focus groups Development West Africa (CDD) & University of Birmingham

Who Targets Me* UK / Monitored political Not speciﬁed Not speciﬁed Facebook Browser Global ads since it was extension for launched in 2017 Chrome or Firefox

Political Ad US Monitored political Not speciﬁed Not speciﬁed Facebook Browser Collector / ads since it was extension for ProPublica* launched in 2017 Chrome or Firefox

Ad Analysis / US / Monitored political Not speciﬁed Not speciﬁed Facebook Browser Mozilla* Global ads since it was extension for launched in 2018 Firefox

* Based on desk research and not interviews

20 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

Overall, such projects share the same trends as In light of its promise to make ad libraries available the European initiatives: some are more focused in other countries, Facebook temporarily blocked on one specifc topic (the Hamilton 68 Dashboard access to such tools in January 2019, citing privacy focuses on Russian infuence) while others take the concerns. In response to this move, ProPublica said broader national context into consideration (Digital that the information provided by Facebook was Democracy Room looks into political polarisation incomplete and that the organization has routinely and public discourse online in Brazil). publicised ads run by organizations that were not recorded in the archive17. According to Who Targets It is worth highlighting three initiatives that tried to Me, the core functions of their extension are still address the need for transparency regarding paid working and able to collect data from ads, but ads on Facebook, a concern that gained traction after Facebook has blocked access to some components of the Russian Internet Research Agency placed paid the extension. ads during the 2016 US election which were seen by 10 million people, according to Facebook16. Three initiatives (Who Targets Me, Political Ad Collector NON-GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES: and Ad Analysis) tried to bypass the lack of data disclosure surrounding paid ads by asking users to EUROPE & BEYOND install browser extensions that scraped details about Table 4 summarizes the actions of non-governmental Facebook ads shown to them. The frst two, launched initiatives in Europe and around the world, in 2017, ofered details about targeted political ads on comparing monitored phenomena and platforms. Facebook, while the third, launched in October 2018, has not had much time to be tested.

16 Facebook Newsroom. Available at: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/10/hard-questions-russian-ads-delivered-to-congress/ 17 The Verge (2019). Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18201361/facebook-political-ad-transparency-tools-blocked- user-data-privacy

21 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

TABLE 4 Non-governmental initiatives matrix

NON-GOVERNMENTAL INITIATIVES MATRIX: WHO HAS MONITORED OR IS MONITORING WHAT, ON WHICH PLATFORM? Websites / Traditional Facebook WhatsApp Twitter YouTube discussion media boards (TV, radio)

Disinformation/ Debunk. CDD & Hamilton 68 Digital Debunk. Ukrainian information eu, Prague University of Dashboard, EU Democracy eu, Prague Election manipulation Security Studies Birmingham, Disinfolab, SNV, Room, Security Task Force Institute, SNV, Digital Oxford Internet Digital Studies Kremlin Watch, Forensic Institute, Forensic Institute, Oxford Internet Research Digital Forensic Research Kremlin Institute, Lab Research Lab Watch, Digital Forensic Lab, Beacon Ukrainian Research Project, Digital Election Lab, Beacon Democracy Task Force, Project, Digital Room, Bakamo. SNV, Beacon Democracy Social Project, Room, ISFED Digital Forensic Research Lab

Bots/trolls Digital Forensic Oxford Internet Research Lab Institute, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Digital - - - - Democracy Room, Hamilton 68 Dashboard, EU Disinfolab, Bakamo.Social

Russian Debunk.eu, Hamilton 68 Debunk. Ukrainian inﬂuence Kremlin Watch, Dashboard, eu, Kremlin Election Beacon Project, EU Disinfolab, Watch, Task Force ISFED Beacon Project, Ukrainian - - Bakamo.Social Election Task Force, Beacon Project

Political ads Who Targets Me, Mozilla Ad Analysis, ProPublica

22 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

Topics/objects of analysis Lastly, the link between disinformation and paid political or issue ads remains a central aspect when Most of the initiatives covered focus on it comes to social media monitoring. As mentioned, disinformation, with investigations of Russian the browser extensions Who Targets Me, Ad Analysis infuence associated with many of them. Bots, and ProPublica18, which tried to collect information trolls and the role of internal groups were studied on ads, had difculties to access Facebook data. mainly by initiatives looking at diferent political Facebook has started providing information about debates online, not necessarily during elections political ads through its Ad Library. The Ad Library (namely the Oxford Internet Institute and the Digital is ofcially available for all countries and territories Forensic Research Lab). Some projects focused on – from Antarctica to Western Sahara. What is the role of internal groups and their use of social unclear, however, is the amount of data included in media. Stiftung Neue Verantwortung research each of the Ad Libraries. Browsing for information concluded that the Alternative für Deutschland within them, we notice that libraries in the U.S., UK party and far-right groups used disinformation as an and Brazil are much more complete than the ones important political mobilisation strategy during the available for Nigeria and Tunisia, for example. There 2017 German parliamentary election campaign. The are similar discrepancies in the Ad Libraries available Digital Democracy Room also found that right-wing for EU countries. So far, detailed information is groups were prone to use disinformation to mobilise available about active and inactive ads in the U.S., voters during the Brazilian elections. with a consolidated list of organizations that paid for political ads and data easily searchable by keywords Debunk.eu in Lithuania stands out for its use of or organization names. For other countries (Nigeria, AI to automatically spot news articles with a high for example), none of this data is available. One can probability of being disinformation, and the support only look into active ads and search for the pages of a network of volunteers and newsrooms to confrm who are running them – it is not possible to check for and debunk them. Beacon Project developed a web inactive ads or search for ads using keywords19. crawler that scrapes and sorts predefned sources within a given country. It ofers a free tool to partner Google also launched an EU-wide searchable ad organizations, one of which is the Prague Security library for political ads, but it allows only searches for Studies Institute, which will use this platform to candidates and advertisers – not by topic20. Twitter monitor the 2019 European Parliament elections committed to make all political ads related to the in the Czech Republic. Another initiative in the European Parliament elections available in its Ads Czech Republic is Kremlin Watch, which looks Transparency Centre, providing a list of all registered for disinformation supporting Russian interests organizations allowed to place political campaign in around 40 websites in the Czech language and advertising21. As with Facebook, these measures do their Facebook pages, not necessarily related to not apply in several other countries. elections. The Ukrainian Election Task Force focused on the March 2019 presidential elections and aims Apart from their eforts to make political ads to highlight disinformation to an international more transparent, the companies increased the audience, rather than to the Ukrainian public. requirements for those posting political ads on

18 ProPublica (2019). Available at: https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-blocks-ad-transparency-tools 19 More detailed information about the differences between ad libraries in the US and the EU is available here: https://democracy- reporting.org/facebooks-ad-library-for-european-parliament-elections-seven-steps-to-make-it-more-useful/ 20 Google Ad Library: https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/region/EU?hl=en 21 Available at: https://ads.twitter.com/transparency/i/political_advertisers

23 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

their platforms. These include the obligation to have been infuential in the recent elections in Brazil. prove registration in the relevant country, which The private messaging app is widespread in the makes foreign funding of political campaigns more country, and actions taken by Facebook and Twitter difcult. For example, Facebook requires residency in to fght disinformation networks in their platforms Australia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Israel, Thailand, may have prompted campaigners to become more Ukraine, UK, EU countries and the U.S. to run ads active on WhatsApp, an encrypted platform. in these countries22. Google requires all election ads to show a disclosure identifying who paid for them The use of WhatsApp is being monitored in the and, like Facebook, says that sponsors of posts must current election campaign in Nigeria. Researchers be registered in the country where the political ad who analysed its impact in Sierra Leone indicated is being run. However, this currently applies only that its use is closely related to ofine social to the EU, India and the U.S.23. The certifcation structures. The mean size of groups in West Africa process was also implemented by Twitter in the and Latin America is bigger than the ones in Europe, U.S., Australia, India and the EU24. While these meaning that the viral aspect of such platform varies requirements do not apply to all countries where from country to country and is related to cultural these companies do business, they are being habits, socioeconomic conditions and the level of gradually implemented, and can infuence the scope connectivity available to users (particularly when it of observation by EOMs. The more data companies comes to mobile vs fxed broadband access). make available, the more there is to observe and analyse. Assessing the stated policy of the frms and Facebook has received attention outside Europe whether it is being implemented is an obvious area because of its political importance as the most for observation. popular social media platform. Twitter attracts similar attention for the ease of collecting and analysing data and because it is a service typically Platforms used for political debates. WhatsApp is a rising In Europe, non-governmental initiatives have platform for the manipulation of public opinion focused on two platforms: Facebook and Twitter. in elections in Brazil and Nigeria. A few of the Websites, discussion boards and traditional media researched initiatives mentioned the role of are also seen as relevant, mainly in countries that fear YouTube, but none of them monitored platforms Russian interference, given the relative prominence such as Instagram, Reddit and Gab, or Telegram, of state-backed Russian media outlets such as Russia VKontakte, WeChat or Weibo. Research has been Today and Sputnik. done on some of these platforms2526, but they were not mentioned in the interviews conducted by this Beyond Europe, the fact that WhatsApp and YouTube study. are hardly monitored or analysed leaves gaps, given the infuence both platforms have in shaping political The social media landscape is dynamic, and opinion and voter choice. WhatsApp was reported to observers should stay tuned to trends and monitor those that are relevant.

22 Available at: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/208949576550051# 23 Available at: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6014595?hl=en 24 Available at: https://business.twitter.com/en/help/ads-policies/restricted-content-policies/political-content.html 25 Bandeira, Luiza (2018) “#ElectionWatch: Migration to Gab in Brazil“, DRFLab. Available at: https://medium.com/dfrlab/ electionwatch-migration-to-gab-in-brazil-67a1212c4c76 26 Nithyanand, Rishab (2018) “Russian propaganda spread on our site before 2016 election“, Data and Society. Available at: https:// datasociety.net/output/reddit-russian-propaganda-spread-on-our-site-before-2016-election/

24 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

FIGURE 1 Social media landscape and dynamics

Great focus of analysis on the importance “Free speech” platforms gaining of Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter ground (US, Brazil)

Video and image content becoming central Non-western social media platforms to information consumption (especially (VKontakte, Weibo, Telegram, WeChat...) when it comes to spreading disinformation) with presence in Eastern Europe and Asia

Other social networks such as Gab and Reddit are information consumption on social media. On beneftting from the shifting preferences of social Twitter, video content generates ten times more media users, and gaining attention from users who engagement than text-only tweets28. Disinformation question the community guidelines enforced by often uses manipulated or misleading video content. platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and others. This trend makes platforms such as Instagram and Brazilians and U.S. Americans are among the top YouTube important tools for disinformation, but few users of Gab, with spikes in registrations during the of the initiatives researched for this study have been Charlottesville unrest and the recent presidential looking at these platforms. elections in Brazil27. While neither is likely to overtake other social media platforms in popularity, Lastly, non-Western social media such as Weibo, they are spaces where extremist groups can organise WeChat, VKontakte and Telegram, among others, themselves online without controls, ofering them a present a challenge when it comes to social media quick way to coordinate disinformation campaigns monitoring in contexts where they coexist with and infammatory speech on other social media Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. This is the case in platforms. some Eastern European countries, where VKontakte and Telegram have a relatively important presence, When it comes to content, visual forms of alongside Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. communication are increasingly central to

27 APublica (2018). Available at: https://apublica.org/2018/12/rede-social-de-ultradireita-chega-ao-brasil-com-acenos-a-bolsonaro/ 28 Twitter Business. Available at: https://business.twitter.com/de/blog/5-data-driven-tips-for-scroll-stopping-video.html

25 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

Monitoring tools Versus is a platform developed by Beacon Project (International Republican Institute) and ofered for The organizations listed above use a variety of tools free for partner organizations. It can scrape content to monitor social media and digital content. They from pre-defned sources, such as websites or can be complex or easy to operate, free or paid, and Facebook public pages, and organise it automatically, of-the-shelf or bespoke solutions, sometimes built allowing analysts to flter, sort and tag the content. in-house. Most tools used are originally designed for business purposes and have been adapted to examine Fact-a-lyzer is an NDI/Open Election Data political content. They include: Initiative platform that facilitates data collection and analysis of insights for social media monitoring CrowdTangle, a social media analytics solution purposes. It was piloted for the Georgia 2018 bought by Facebook in 2016. It can monitor elections in cooperation with the Georgian NGO Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit. However, ISFED. It facilitates data collection, coding and it is not publicly accessible and only ofered by visualisation of publicly available data, and it Facebook to selected partners. was specifcally designed to monitor Facebook in a political context (diferently from platforms TalkWalker, a paid, of-the-shelf tool for social originally designed for marketing purposes). media listening, analytics and reporting, used mainly for business purposes, but also useful for monitoring There is no one-size fts all tool to facilitate and political and electoral content. However, its access optimise data collection and analysis for political to Facebook data was restricted after a change in purposes. The adaptation of business intelligence the Facebook API. Others of-the-shelf solutions are tools demands not only the knowledge to use them, Sysomos, BrandWatch and Visibrain. but creativity to combine them with other tools to gather relevant insights in an electoral context. Twitonomy is a platform for listening and analysing posts on Twitter, which is also useful when looking at A challenge to overcome is to ensure that the historical behaviour of Twitter accounts. organizations and EOMs have access to data from Facebook, with tools for monitoring this context adapted to elections.

26 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

GUIDELINES FOR EOMs

The review of the practices of those organizations, of the regional media should also be taken into account. government agencies or international initiatives For broadcast media, the media analyst normally provides insights that can inform the work of EOMs monitors all programmes during primetime broadcasts in monitoring social media. and other election-related programming for the entire period of the defned campaign period. Television and radio programmes are recorded by the EU EOM and MONITORING OF SOCIAL MEDIA stored until the end of the mission.”29

VS TRADITIONAL MEDIA Selecting actors on social media is much more The experience of social media monitoring is complex: diferent from the monitoring of traditional media undertaken by many EOMs. Traditional media • The reach of traditional media is relatively clear usually encompasses a limited set of actors (TV (based on audience numbers). On social media, and radio stations, newspapers). Social media is far some private or anonymous accounts/sites/users more complex, with a myriad of actors and content. that carry political content may have a wide reach, By defnition social media is shaped not only by but it may not be easy to identify them. “institutional actors” (governments, media, parties) • The number of actors: Traditional media include but by many unofcial infuencers (individuals, a known number of known TV or radio stations, groups sympathetic to a party or a programme, etc.). while on social media the number of potential actors is huge. The selection of TV or radio stations to be monitored is based on relatively simple metrics: • Size of material: Traditional media monitoring analyses some 100 hours of coverage. Social “Those selected should include state/public and media monitoring must analyse millions of posts. privately-owned media outlets, and ensure a varied • Social media is dynamic: On social media an balance considering, for example, political leanings and account may reach a large audience one day but target audiences. Media aimed at minorities should be be irrelevant on another. In contrast, traditional considered for monitoring, and the geographical balance media’s reach is relatively stable.

29 EU EOM Observer Handbook (2016), p80

27 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

FIGURE 2 Timing: Disinformation networks act during election campaigns, but also permanently

ELECTION DAY

Networks’ activities are more Intensity of activities intense around elections diminishes after election day

ELECTORAL PERIOD

Networks exist throughout the year: Facebook pages, biased media outlets, groups on Facebook, WhatsApp, network of inﬂuencers on Instagram, YouTube

Source: Democracy Reporting International

EOMs usually focus on the pre-election/campaign the post-election-day period may be critical, when period. However, when choosing what to monitor, results are tallied and published and when there EOMs would need to keep in mind groups or may be intense public debates on the integrity of a accounts that are known to spread disinformation particular election. on a continuous basis. In controversial elections,

FIGURE 3 EOMs and other civil society monitoring periods ELECTION DAY

EOM’s MONITORING PERIOD

Cooperation (technical support, knowledge, expertise)

CIVIL SOCIETY MONITORING

Source: Democracy Reporting International

Many civil society organizations monitor groups to understand the actor landscape and typical disinformation more permanently. EOMs need narratives that may have been promoted before to connect to the information provided by these election periods.

28 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

COOPERATION BETWEEN ACTORS DEALING WITH DATA

AND INFORMATION EXCHANGE Social media monitoring entails the analysis of PARTNERSHIPS big amounts of data. Debunk.eu approached this challenge by training AI tools to identify content One aspect highlighted during the interviews was that was potentially spreading disinformation. The the importance of cooperation. The connection tool identifes articles that have a high likelihood between diferent actors in initiatives such as of being disinformation, which are then verifed Debunk.eu allows them to quickly identify potential by volunteers, who forward the most suspicious to threats and share the information with volunteers media outlets. Journalists verify the claims and, if the and fact checkers to prevent items of disinformation story is false, write and publish a debunking story. gaining relevance. Compared to other countries, Lithuania has a highly connected ecosystem to fght Risks associated with the use of AI tools by EOMs disinformation. include the potential to oversee disinformation and hate speech content. Both can be subtle in diferent When it comes to information exchange, a sharing contexts, and identifcation can be more difcult agreement between the Digital Forensic Research considering the diversity of local languages. Also, the Lab and Facebook allows improved action to foster cost of AI can be signifcant, the length of EOMs is election integrity. If the Digital Forensic Research too short to train AI, and EOMs could be accused of Lab fnds suspicious activity on Facebook, it fags it having built bias into the algorithms. to the company for possible intervention. This is also the case for studies conducted by the Oxford Internet Another option of dealing with the large amount Institute. Their identifcation of bot networks helped of data is sampling, an approach used by Bakamo, Facebook to take them down. Digital Democracy Room and others. However, it entails some risks such as bias in the choice of the These practices will be difcult for EOMs to adopt. sample and external validity. Generally, EOMs do not interfere in the process, but only observe it. They avoid becoming part of the story and generally share fndings only after election WORKING IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS day. Interventions which call on platforms to take action may confict with their non-intervention International EOMs typically work in widely diferent policy. Also, major EOMs are stand-alone operations, political and social contexts, which are refected especially international EOMs. The EU and the in the way that social media platforms are used. OSCE avoid working with any specifc national Organizations working in diferent countries, such group, which could undermine their impartiality. as Digital Forensic Research Lab, Oxford Internet Nevertheless, EOMs network intensively with Institute and Democracy Reporting International can domestic groups to gather information, and should provide comparative insights on how to shape the expand this networking to groups dealing with and analysis according to the context and the challenges monitoring political discourse on social media. of diferent languages, scripts and social media consumption.

Table 5 summarizes the challenges identifed by the initiatives interviewed. It identifes the best practices adopted and insights on opportunities and risks for EOMs.

29 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

TABLE 5 Challenges, best practices and risks & opportunities for EOMs

CHALLENGES AROUND SOCIAL BEST PRACTICES OPPORTUNITIES FOR EOMS RISKS FOR EOMS MEDIA MONITORING

Using findings to Information exchange Partnerships with platforms may Actions taken by the platform have immediate partnership with Facebook: increase relevance of EOMs during elections based on impact Atlantic Council/Oxford regarding access to data and EOM findings would make Internet Institute impact of mission’s findings observers part of the story, when their mandate is to observe only

Dealing with big Debunk.eu trained an AI AI tools can help cover more AI applications can be too amounts of data algorithm that identiﬁes platforms and content in any costly and designing and potential false stories from given context saving time training AI for each national several sources of observers in monitoring context (including different exercises languages) during a short time span is a challenge

Bakamo applied a method Sampling data can bring useful Methodological biases linked to sample the data, drafting insights for EOMs monitoring to wrong sampling may harm conclusions without covering efforts, reducing costs and time the ﬁndings of EOMs the whole social media ecosystem

Data collection Use of Fact-a-lyzer by ISFED The initiative to build a The platform was tailor from Facebook platform that looks speciﬁcally made based on ISFED’s (API restrictions into electoral contexts is an methodology and is not an and difﬁcult to innovation, considering the easily adaptable solution for access publicly use of business intelligence different contexts available data) tools that are not built for this purpose

Dealing with social Digital Forensic Research Initiatives could offer No risks associated media inﬂuence in Lab, Beacon Project, Oxford comparable methodologies to different contexts Internet Institute, Democracy identify the best approach to Reporting International have take in each context, and how experience in monitoring these networks connect to each social media impact in other different countries

Good integration Debunk.eu relies on EOMs may beneﬁt from International EOMs usually between different partnerships to have a quick fostering connections between do not enter partnership to actors when it response to disinformation local actors that would help avoid their impartiality being comes to ﬁghting identifying trends related to challenged disinformation disinformation and risks related to electoral processes

Guiding the ISFED monitored whether It is clearer for EOMs to guide The monitoring exercise may monitoring effort ofﬁcial political actors the monitoring exercise based oversee questions that are not based on existing were complying with online on existing legislation, focusing regulated and will hardly be legislation campaigning rules in Georgia the scope of the effort around subject to a clear regulation, more concrete issues such as such as disinformation. It also political ads and standards risks not looking at actors that for social media use around hide behind fake pages elections

30 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

Best practices can be partially transferrable to EOMs. regulation would help monitoring eforts focus on Exchanging the fndings of previous research with more specifc questions. social media platforms and other actors in a given context (media actors, civil society and governments) Finally, there is clear demand for a tool that may help observers foresee what problems may can help to collect and analyse data for political arise during elections. Social media companies have purposes. Most of the initiatives adapt tools made diferent capacities in diferent countries, and only for marketing purposes on social media analysis provide complete information through tools such during elections. Debunk.eu, Bakamo and ISFED as ad libraries in some of them. Knowing what tools are testing or developing their own approaches to are available and which actors are looking at social solve this problem but are still far from reaching an media helps to decide the best monitoring approach. ideal approach that is easily adaptable to diferent contexts. ISFED monitored how social media use for campaigns was contravening existing laws on online campaigning. While they found cases where SWOT ANALYSIS FOR EOMs IN SOCIAL candidates were misusing social media, such as instances of public servants campaigning via social MEDIA MONITORING media during working hours, many of the issues These best practices present risks and opportunities seen on social media have yet to be regulated (hate for EOMs. Many of them were pointed out by speech, disinformation, among others). Improved interviewees, as presented in Table 6.

TABLE 6 SWOT analysis of EOMs monitoring social media (based on interviews)

EOMS AND SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING Strengths Weaknesses • Credibility derived from non-partisan status • Lack of training on how to monitor social media and digital content • Unbiased perspective Limited knowledge of local context and Know-how from election monitoring in • • connections to local digital ‘ecosystem’ different countries and periods (international EOMs) • Short timeframes to understand context • A degree of diplomatic protection • Limitations to experimentation (international governmental EOMs) (governmental EOMs)

Opportunities Threats • Increasing awareness of disinformation • Initiatives to monitor disinformation can make during elections increases EOMs relevance EOMs the target of disinformation actors that will try to undermine their credibility, attack EOMs may open spaces for discussing and • their IT infrastructure, etc. networking on social media in election issues • Monitoring may be misinterpreted as data gathering on individuals

31 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

RECOMMENDATIONS

GOVERNMENTS: EOMs: • Encourage and fund experimentation by • At a minimum, embed social media analysts in non-governmental organizations to further the each EOM in order to understand and assess it development of methodologies and tools. with context and in detail (even if the EOM does not monitor social media). Social media analysts Compare best practices across the EU. • will make EOMs ‘literate’, i.e. able to connect and • Foster networks to share lessons learned and take to understand the work and fndings of groups stock of new insights after elections. monitoring social media and accusations raised by stakeholders on social media disinformation. • While governments/intelligence services sometimes issue warnings about disinformation, • International EOMs can expand methodology the absence of details/underlying data makes it into areas that are more regulated and technically difcult for NGOs and the wider public to assess achievable. These could include the monitoring them. Governments should substantiate these of paid ads (if made available by platforms) and claims. costs (relating them to campaign expenditure provision); the monitoring of ofcial pages CIVIL SOCIETY: of parties or candidates to track violations of electoral or wider rules (such as hate speech); • Increase cooperation, exchange of information and monitoring social media for violations of and good practices in social media monitoring. campaign silence provisions (where applicable). • More structured discussions by actors on • Explore the development of a credible methodologies, legal framework and ethics of methodology for social media monitoring by social media monitoring. EOMs. • Increase and strengthen links between civil • While it is unrealistic for EOMs to society groups and internet platforms so that the comprehensively monitor all social media former can raise concerns in time and that fndings discourse during elections (given the size, are considered by platforms. dynamism and complexity of the material), criteria to determine the observation may include Embrace experimentation. • regulation, i.e. observers focussing on areas that are more regulated than others (such as campaign fnancing rules, violation of platform policies, breaking electoral silence).

32 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

• To ensure impartiality, research should be • Include a technical working group on social media designed in a nonpartisan manner. It should not monitoring in future meetings of the ‘Declaration focus immediately on one part of the political of Principles Group’. spectrum but try to ascertain how all the relevant Address recommendations to tech companies too. sides act on social media. • Establish a set of ethical, legal and reputational Conclusions should be drafted in light of the • • guidelines for the work of social media analysts in capacity and approach of the mission, clarifying EOMs. the scope, methodology and decisions that guided the analysis. Transparency is central to ensure that the conclusions are credible and replicable.

33 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

ANNEX 1: SURVEY OF INTERNATIONAL ELECTION OBSERVATION ORGANIZATIONS

ELECTORAL INSTITUTE UN (DOESN’T EU OSCE/ODIHR NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTE COMMONWEALTH CARTER CENTER SUSTAINABLE SOUTH OAS USUALLY OBSERVE AFRICA (EISA) ELECTIONS)

Do you consider Yes Yes. Social networks and Yes. Manipulation can amplify Yes. We note it Yes, (dis-) Yes Yes, but it Yes, it has digital content/ online media an important voter confusion, dampening in particular for information depends on many changed how social media avenue for the conduct of participation, galvanise communication of election environment factors including campaigns are relevant for election campaigns. Potential social cleavages, (dis) management bodies and very relevant access to internet conducted, electoral integrity? to broaden participation, but advantage certain parties and other stakeholders (like how election needs to respect civil and candidates, and degrade trust parties) with the electorate management political rights in institutions communicates, etc.

Should internal Yes Yes, but with a signiﬁcant Yes Yes, but methodology, Yes Yes Yes Yes, but many observers get level of care (sound consistency and challenges: involved? methodology) transparency of doing it short duration of remain unclear missions, limited resources, etc.

Have you • EU observer Not on social media (but on • Internal guidance document 2016 report ‘New Media in Not yet. No No No published handbook chapter cybersecurity) • updates under D4D Elections’ aimed at EMBs documents on on digital content coalition speciﬁcally this? • EODS/DRI Study “New Frontier”

Have you started • Digital analyst in EOMs conduct qualitative Yes. Kenya, Georgia and now Not systematically Not in big We follow Yes, but not yet No, the UN focussing on this Nigeria EOM monitoring of social media Ukraine missions but in election in a systematic does not usually in EOMs? • Planned EODS content and online media small teams in management manner. In a deploy EOMs. conference and content (qualitative/ Zimbabwe and bodies conduct preliminary We decide in training quantitative) DRC in social media manner in Mexico case we are and Brazil 2018 tasked with one

What are your Develop Consolidate methodology Nothing speciﬁc. Requires Experimentation We plan to We will work No plans on this? methodology and on observation of election broader institutional and expand and with the OAS build positions into campaigns, which will - consideration/discussion development of develop a special rapporteur EOMs include the aspect of online policy on this methodology on freedom of campaigning expression

34 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

ANNEX 1: SURVEY OF INTERNATIONAL ELECTION OBSERVATION ORGANIZATIONS

ELECTORAL INSTITUTE UN (DOESN’T EU OSCE/ODIHR NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTE COMMONWEALTH CARTER CENTER SUSTAINABLE SOUTH OAS USUALLY OBSERVE AFRICA (EISA) ELECTIONS)

35 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

ANNEX 2: BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE INITIATIVES ANALYSED (based on interviews)

A. NON-GOVERNMENTAL INITIATIVES

EUROPE: Neue Verantwortung says that Facebook was the main dataset due to the number of active users Organization: in Germany, and could not be left out of any new Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV) studies. Country: Germany

Stiftung Neue Verantwortung is a German Organization: Debunk.eu Country: Lithuania independent think tank that researches disinformation, among other issues. In 2017, it Debunk.eu is an initiative in Lithuania that aims developed a study to identify how ten disinformation to identify new disinformation articles within two stories were shared and amplifed in the three- minutes of their publication, relying on AI and month runup to the German federal election. The partnerships with volunteers and media outlets. stories were spotted by factchecking organizations The tool currently analyses 20,000 articles in Germany, and the researchers used the platform per day, from more than 1,000 domains, and Talkwalker, a web crawler, to scour the entire automatically assesses the probability that a new German language web - including Twitter and article is disinformation, considering variables such Facebook public pages and posts - to map who as keywords, social interactions and publications spread the stories, the most important amplifers in multiple domains. The 2% of articles with the and the number of disinformation and debunking greatest likelihood of being disinformation are pieces. They were able to access Talkwalker through analysed by volunteers (known as “Lithuanian a partnership with the company Unicepta. It relied Elves”), who then forward the most suspicious to on URL and keyword searches, and student interns media outlets. Journalists verify the claims and, if the helped to code and clean the dataset. The research story is deemed false, write and publish a debunk. concluded that disinformation was an important The initiative has partnerships with media companies political mobilisation strategy for the AfD and that reach 90% of the Lithuanian population. In rightwing populists during that campaign. The 2019, it plans to expand the range of the tool to organization had funding and plans to replicate the 200,000 articles per day and use speech-to-text same methodology in the run-up to state elections technology to analyse TV programmes and video in Bavaria and Hessen in 2018, but gave up after on demand. Debunk.eu has tuned its algorithm and Facebook restricted the ability of Talkwalker and partnerships towards the next presidential election other similar tools to access its data via API. Stiftung in Lithuania, in May 2019, which will include a daily

36 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

report sent to journalists with problematic stories disinformation and have a relevant readership. and an early warning system. The organization also Some of the disinformation stories are debunked intends to scale its technology to 35 languages and and the results are published in their website, in a other countries in the future. It is funded by Delf, newsletter and on their social media accounts, and a major media company in the Baltic region, and sent to the East StratCom Task Force. Kremlin Watch Google Digital News Initiative. has developed initiatives to identify disinformation campaigns during the run-up to the Czech legislative Organization: elections in October 2017 and the presidential Prague Security Studies Institute election in January 2018. It also tracks disinformation during non-electoral periods, when the organization Country: Czech Republic develops a systematic approach to identify its origins, The Prague Security Studies Institute has monitored the dynamics of its spread and the main narratives. and published reports on disinformation narratives The European Values Think-Tank produces and spread during the last three Czech elections — the publishes studies on the topic, including an annual parliamentary election in 2017 and Senate and report about how the EU28 countries try to address Presidential elections in 2018. It has applied the same Russia-led disinformation. It is considering adding methodology in 2019 on the runup to the European countries from the Eastern Partnership and Western Parliament elections. Its monitoring usually begins Balkans to future editions of that report. four to fve weeks before election day and focuses on six to seven Czech websites that are known to be Organization: Computational Propaganda hubs for spreading disinformation, including their Project / Oxford Internet Institute Facebook pages. To do this, it relies on the platform Versus, a web crawler developed by the Beacon Country: UK Project (International Republican Institute) and The Computational Propaganda Project at the ofered at no cost to their partner organizations. The Oxford Internet Institute investigates the interaction platform allows it to monitor Czech sources and sort of algorithms, automation and politics, including articles and public posts on Facebook and Twitter. disinformation campaigns and social media bots. Manual coders analyse the content according One of its methods is to use software built inhouse to to variables such as type of message, sentiment scrape vast amounts of public posts on Twitter and towards the candidate and number of shares in Facebook, look into which URLs were shared and social media. During the monitoring, it produces classify them with the help of human coders familiar weekly summaries and send them to journalists, with the political context of the monitored country, state authorities and political parties, and activates aiming to measure how much “junk news” is being an early warning system that informs candidates and spread. It also has a Junk News Aggregator that journalists when a piece of disinformation has the tracks misleading, deceptive or incorrect information potential to spread. It treats disinformation spread by gaining traction on Facebook. Beyond monitoring domestic actors or foreign powers in the same way. initiatives, the organisztion also publishes papers about policy and regulation related to the issue. Organization: Kremlin Watch / European Values Think-Tank Organization: EU Disinfolab Country: Czech Republic Country: Belgium

Kremlin Watch, a programme of the European Values EU Disinfolab is a Brussels-based NGO whose goal Think-Tank, monitors disinformation narratives is to facilitate collaboration among stakeholders spread in the Czech Republic that support Russian involved in fghting disinformation. In 2018 it interests. To do so, they manually analyse articles published two studies that applied social network published by around 40 websites and their Facebook analysis to Twitter posts to investigate the spread of pages in the Czech language that are known to spread disinformation and echo chambers during the Italian

37 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

2018 election, and the hyperactivity surrounding • Violations of electoral law the Benalla case in France. The open source Discrediting campaigns against candidates, software Gephi was used to map and cluster posts • parties and the electoral process and human experts for semantic and qualitative analysis. Monitoring of the Italian elections study • Disinformation, divisive and illiberal narratives. began three months before election day and initially focused on Kremlin-related Twitter accounts, but the The frst and second categories focused on public organization claims that it is not particularly focused ofcials and national actors, while the third was on Russian-led disinformation. EU Disinfolab is associated with Russian narratives spread both a partner of WeVerify, an initiative launched in by foreign and domestic actors. The fndings of December 2018 that aims to develop an algorithm- electoral law breaches helped to prevent abuses by supported verifcation platform for digital content, public ofcials and public organizations during the with funding from the EU’s Horizon program until electoral period. The other categories documented November 2021. the narratives being discussed during the elections (namely anti-western propaganda, anti-NATO Organization: Ukrainian Election Task messages and xenophobia/homophobia), an area Force / Atlantic Council that they are willing to look into in the future with the help of manual coding. Apart from traditional API Country: Ukraine concerns, other challenges related to the dynamic The task force was created to monitor the run-up environment of social media analysis during to the March 2019 Ukrainian presidential election elections emerged: as voting day approaches, new in three felds: kinetic operations, cyberattacks pages are created and the intensity of content shared and disinformation. It is supported by the increases, making it more difcult to track such Atlantic Council, Victor Pinchuk Foundation and trends around election day. Lack of data, time and Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity. structure prevented a more comprehensive analysis. It focuses on identifying and highlighting disinformation narratives spread mostly by the Organization: Bakamo.Social Russian state media via social media. The Task Country: UK Force does not aim to inform Ukrainians, nor to spot domestic disinformation, but to identify foreign Bakamo is a consultancy that maps how information meddling in Ukrainian elections and to highlight spreads in social media and identifes thematic or it to Western audiences. It has partnered with two emotional patterns linked to a specifc content. It Ukrainian organizations, StopFake and Detektor uses the tool TalkWalker to scrap large amounts of Media, to look for narratives. A Czech company, public posts from social media, such as Twitter, and Semantic Visions, looked for mentions of Ukrainian then uses human analysts to clean the dataset and presidential candidates on over 24,000 digital classify and interpret the narratives. The consultancy sources with the .ru domain. reported on patterns of disinformation during the 2017 French elections, funded by Open Society Foundation. It concluded that one in fve links was Organization: International Society for shared from sources that contested the legitimacy Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) of traditional media, and that Russian infuence Country: Georgia emerged as a distinct category in that disruptive ISFED came up with a methodology to track narrative. Bakamo has also published a study on Facebook during the 2018 Georgian elections and migration narratives in EU28 member countries experimented, in partnership with the National for a German party foundation, and a report on the Democratic Institute, with the use of the platform impact of disinformation campaigns on political Fact-a-lyzer, which collects Facebook data to monitor radicalisation. selected pages in a user-friendly interface. ISFED monitored social media to look for three things:

38 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

OUTSIDE EUROPE: or covertly linked to Russian infuence, and distilled the top ten most popular hashtags, URLs, domains, Organization: Beacon Project / keywords and trends, among roughly 200,000 International Republican Institute tweets a day. The list of monitored Twitter accounts Country: U.S. was not disclosed. Occasionally, it published expert analysis adding context to the raw data. Version 2.0 Beacon Project was created by the International is expected to launch in 2019 and will only monitor Republican Institute in 2015 to help to organise a Twitter accounts openly connected to Russia, pan-European response to hostile infuences, in such as diplomatic ofcers, government-funded particular disinformation. Initially it focused on media and its main editors and commentators. activities emanating from Russia, but expanded Among other reasons, the update was designed to to include threats to democratic governance at improve understanding of the methodology and to large, whether from domestic or foreign sources, in avoid misinterpretations of results. Technology is countries formerly under the infuence of the Soviet developed by Graphika, a social media monitoring Union. To do so, Beacon Project helps organizations frm. The dashboard is not focused on elections, to monitor their local media more efciently. It has but captures elections-related trends. Alliance for developed a web crawler, called Versus, and ofers Securing Democracy is considering expanding its the platform for free to partner organizations. Versus scope to monitor China- and Iran-linked accounts. scrapes pre-defned sources within a given media space in a country - mainly media outlets - but Organization: Digital Forensic Research also Facebook public pages and Twitter accounts. Lab / Atlantic Council Analysts and human coders use it to flter, sort and tag the content, looking for hostile narratives. In Country: Based in U.S., employees in 2018, the initiative coordinated a media monitoring several countries project in the Visegrád Four countries, in partnership The Digital Forensic Research Lab is an initiative with the following organizations: Prague Security from the Atlantic Council whose mission is to expose Studies Institute (Czech Republic), Political Capital and explain falsehood online, such as false narratives Institute and Center for Euro-Atlantic Integration and false accounts, and to identify its sources and (Hungary), Globsec (Slovakia) and Center for amplifers. It has a team of 15 people with diverse Propaganda and Disinformation Research (Poland). professional backgrounds and based in diferent Beacon Project is not necessarily focused on countries. It also develops projects and partnerships elections, but its projects may overlap with them. It focused on elections. It helped to identify accounts has a team of fve staf (three in Brussels, one in Riga involved in spreading disinformation about and one in Belgrade) and a programme director split Emmanuel Macron in 2017 in France. In Germany it between Brussels and Bratislava. Versus is being partnered with Bild and found a network of Russian adapted to scrape media in other languages, such as Twitter bots amplifying AfD messages. It also worked Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Serbian, Bosnian and on the Mexican and Brazilian presidential elections Macedonian. in 2018. This year, Digital Forensic Research Lab will look at the European Parliament elections and those Organization: Hamilton 68 Dashboard / in India and South Africa. The organization relies Alliance for Securing Democracy on diferent technological tools, such as Sysomos, Country: U.S. CrowdTangle, BuzzSumo and Twitonomy. In 2018, it established an information sharing partnership Hamilton 68 is an online dashboard developed by with Facebook which was mainly focused on election the Alliance for Securing Democracy, housed at integrity. If the organization fnds suspicious activity, The German Marshall Fund of the United States, it shares it with Facebook. In exchange, Facebook to help to spot information manipulation led by ofers sanity checks of their fndings and details to Russia. Version 1.0 of the dashboard was released enhance Digital Forensic Research Lab analysis, but in August 2017 and closed in December 2018. It does not grant it access to confdential data. monitored 600 Twitter accounts allegedly openly

39 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

Organization: Center for Democracy and platform. Since the researchers did not have the Development West Africa & University of necessary data to analyse WhatsApp, they picked up Birmingham stories shared on the platform as they spilled over to Countries: Nigeria & UK other social networks (Facebook and Twitter), trying to understand the role of the private messaging app This consortium formed by CDD and the University in disinformation campaigns. of Birmingham was granted funding from WhatsApp to carry out a project analysing the impact of the Organization: Truepic platform on the upcoming elections in Nigeria. Country: U.S. The monitoring will be in two states to balance regional representation and will focus on how key Truepic is a U.S. company that ofers image and video stakeholders - political parties, electoral ofcials, civil certifcation and aims to be the world’s frst digital society, local leaders - are using social media and photo notary. Their app ofers two services: it takes WhatsApp. Because of encryption and the difculty photos and record videos that are self-authenticating in collecting data, data will be collected via surveys and may be used for legal or evidential purposes, and focus groups, particularly among young people, and it is able to identify if a picture taken by a third and to educate citizens about the characteristics of party was manipulated. Truepic has done a small disinformation. One component will show users experiment during the US midterm elections and is stories circulating during elections and ask them if planning to ofer its technology for wider use during they think they are true or not, and what they did the 2020 presidential election. The company is about it. The project will produce articles and policy considering ofering its technology at no or little cost briefs to document the impacts of WhatsApp during in areas where it can have a social impact, such as elections and to establish partnerships to see how election observation missions that need to document academia and civil society can help governments voting procedures and campaign events. reduce the potential threat posed by these platforms in West Africa. B. GOVERNMENTAL/ Organization: Getúlio Vargas Foundation INTER-GOVERNMENTAL (Digital Democracy Room) Country: Brazil INITIATIVES

Digital Democracy Room was initiated after the Organization: political debate on social media in Brazil had NATO StratCom Center of Excellence become increasingly polarised. Hate speech Country: Based in Latvia and disinformation accelerated division and radicalisation, which became a central aspect of the The NATO StratCom Center of Excellence is a 2018 elections. DDR tracked data from diferent research centre that focuses on communication- platforms - Twitter, Facebook, YouTube - to analyse related issues. It does not have operational capacity bot activity and the infuence of international actors. to act in NATO operations or exercises, but may Their Twitter analysis was facilitated by the ease of contribute expert opinion to them. The centre API access. Facebook’s data restrictions limited the publishes a quarterly study entitled “Robotrolling research but allowed some analysis. Report” about automation on Twitter and VKontakte. It scrapes vast amounts of public posts from these WhatsApp became a major infuence on the electoral two platforms which refer to NATO, the Baltics process in Brazil. The private messaging app is very or Poland, using a list of terms and a system built popular in the country, and action taken by Facebook in-house. It then uses coders and machine learning and Twitter to fght disinformation networks on their to identify the percentage of automated posts. Two platforms encouraged them to shift to the encrypted years ago, it found that 70% of the conversations in

40 Experiences of Social Media Monitoring During Elections: Cases and Best Practice to Inform Electoral Observation Missions May 2019

Russian were automated, while today it is at around social media accounts aim to raise awareness about 20%. The centre says that the problem has not gone the issue. Disinformation messages are tagged away but has shifted from simple automation to and included in a database that currently contains anonymous accounts controlled by humans. It has around 4,700 pieces of disinformation published also published a report about the black market for in 18 diferent languages. The Task Force had social media manipulation, such as likes or followers, few resources in its frst three years, but recently and in 2019 will publish a report on how governments benefted from the EU’s increasing commitment to should structure protection mechanisms against tackle disinformation. In 2018-2019 it was assigned disinformation. It has also experimented with image its frst budget of €1.1m with support from the classifcation on Instagram and Facebook and has an European Parliament. This was increased to €3m in established dialogue with social media companies. 2019-2020. The Task Force now has an overall staf of 16 people, of whom six focus on disinformation while Organization: the others work on proactive communications, media Ministry of Foreign Afairs (MFA) support and Russian language outreach. The team will hire two new employees in the spring of 2019. Country: Germany Since January 2019 it has contracted out professional The German MFA work on disinformation is media monitoring services, disinformation and broader and does not focus on elections, instead data analysis expertise. The Task Force will receive tackling narratives related to foreign relations. information and feed into an EU Rapid Alert System One example is the #rumours about Germany site, to inform countries quickly of new disinformation which aims to tackle disinformation about refugees stories, as outlined in the EU Action Plan on and migrants. It is also experimenting with social Disinformation. media listening platforms such as Talkwalker to understand the perception of Germany abroad, Organization: and considers disinformation to be one aspect of Swedish Defence Research Agency a broader discussion of hybrid threats fostered by Country: Sweden state and non-state actors. The aim is to spread positive narratives rather than directly countering The Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) is a or debunking misinformation. In terms of governmental agency which is part of the Ministry international cooperation, the MFA is supporting of Defence. In 2018, it was commissioned by the the implementation of the EU Action Plan against Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) to Disinformation and working with G7 countries on produce two studies on monitoring social media the issue. It is interested in looking more broadly at and digital content. One analysed the behaviour hybrid threats and social media monitoring over the of Twitter bots and mapped possible infuence next few years. operations. The other monitored online commentary and discussion boards on Swedish websites to Organization: East StratCom Task Force look for posts that conveyed threats to the Swedish elections, such as attacks on polling stations. Data Intergovernmental organization: EU scientists developed an in-house web crawler to The East Stratcom Task Force was set up in 2015 by scrape the data, created two dictionaries of words the European Council to address Russia’s ongoing possibly related to threats, fltered material with disinformation campaign. It does so by gathering those terms and submitted it to human coders to disinformation narratives, exposing the trends and delete false positives. In the process they identifed methods behind them, and publishing the fndings rumours and complaints about the election, but no on the EUvsDisinfo.eu website. A newsletter and credible threats.

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