The threat of disinformation in the great 2024 electoral cycle worries the Davos forum

The world faces an extraordinary electoral cycle in 2024, with around 70 countries, including almost half of the world's population, planning to hold presidential or legislative elections. At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is being held in Davos, Switzerland, starting this Tuesday, concern is noticeable about the threat that disinformation represents to these processes and to the global health of democracy. . A risk report published by the FEM in the run-up to the annual eventafter consulting with 1,500 global experts, placed misinformation as the greatest risk in the short and medium term along with the climate crisis.

It is interesting to note how in the same report from the previous year, disinformation did not appear among the 10 greatest threats either in the short term (two years from now) or in the medium term (10). In the current edition, it is the largest in the short. And in the middle, fifth behind different variants of threats linked to climate change. In addition to the report, the program of the annual WEF summit and the first conversations at the arrival of delegates confirmed the deep concern that this group provokes.

Disinformation—that is, the self-serving action to confuse or irritate public opinion—is an explosive element in a context that is nourished by different problematic elements, made up of the strong polarization of societies in much of the world, of democracies that are are becoming more fragile, from a geopolitical environment of strong tension and competition and an increasingly challenging technological environment, in which the challenge represented by social networks and large platforms, where false content has already proliferated for some time, is now added to the of artificial intelligence.

Generative artificial intelligence, in particular, represents a double risk: one of a quantitative nature, since now the production of disinformation can multiply without there having to be a human behind everything; and another qualitative one, with the so-called deep fakethe profound false, with a very high level of credibility and, therefore, with an extraordinary capacity for persuasion—and greater difficulty in denying.

False accusations from politicians

Naturally, the risk vectors are multiple, and among them politicians themselves stand out, often a source of very dangerous misinformation. In the United States, where the presidential elections will be held in November and the primary process has just been launched with the Republican event in Iowa, candidate Donald Trump has a proven track record as a promoter of disinformation, including the false accusation of cheating in the elections who lost in 2020. This is as old as politics, but the context is worse today than at other times.

The main international studies agree in recording a deterioration in democracy on a global scale, with a long streak of years in which more setbacks than progress have been detected.

The strong social polarization leads to a kind of absolute lack of communication, which in addition to eroding the ability to build political consensus, also makes it difficult for the media to deactivate hoaxes. Even those that are accurate and valuable often go unnoticed or are not believed by citizens who believe in the lie if they identify with a pole opposite to that to which they consider the medium in question belongs.

On the other hand, social networks, which monetize user engagement, have a perverse incentive by promoting tension in discourse. on-line, which unleashes passions and engages more than calm debate. As the writer, political scientist and former political advisor Giuliano da Empoli recently pointed out in an interview recently granted to this newspaper, beyond the action of malicious actors, the networks' algorithm itself already promotes discord and polarization.

In parallel runs the problematic dilemma of whether—and how—large platforms should screen content. The spread of false information in these immense propagators is a central issue. But the desire for them to prevent dissemination collides with the concern that deepening the exercise of this screening by private business giants could lead to a compression of freedom of opinion.

The unleashed geostrategic competition exacerbates the panorama, because the interest of authoritarian regimes in disrupting democratic processes is greater today than a few years ago. The objective is twofold: to weaken the largest democracies by plunging them into paralysis or even hatred and to demonstrate to other countries that there are more effective alternative models, in order to enlarge in the medium long term the field of regimes – in which China, Russia or Iran—and shrink that of liberal democracies.

Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.

_