Democracy – a right worth defending
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CORDIScovery podcast- Episode #36 - Democracy – a right worth defending
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:10:03
CORDIScovery
00:00:10:05 - 00:00:16:03
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery.
00:00:16:05 - 00:00:37:18
Abigail Acton
Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me Abigail Acton. Between the 6th and the 9th of June, Europeans will go to the polls to vote for the people that they want to represent them at the European Parliament. Members of the European Parliament will be making laws on the environment, social policies, migration and every other important national priority with a European dimension.
00:00:37:20 - 00:01:03:02
Abigail Acton
Democracy is a collective achievement and 2024 has been called its biggest year. 8 of the 10 most populous countries in the world will hold elections in 2024, but the process will face challenges perceived and unperceived. Internet disinformation campaigns, fake news, the impact of AI, social media echo chambers. Around 1.5 billion people globally will be exercising their right to vote.
00:01:03:04 - 00:01:32:02
Abigail Acton
But just how safe is our democratic process and how can we make it more secure? Our three guests who all received funding for their research from the EU, are here to tell us what they are doing to meet the challenges facing democracy in the 21st century. Working out how trust and distrust are generated, understanding the mechanisms that allow for the rise of far right populism and using machine learning to determine when disinformation can tip from Internet chat into real life threat.
00:01:32:04 - 00:01:52:09
Abigail Acton
Jan Kubik is distinguished professor of the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University in the States and professor emeritus of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. He is particularly interested in the rise of right wing populism, which he studies from different perspectives, combining political, cultural and economic factors. Hi Jan.
00:01:52:11 - 00:01:55:18
Jan Kubik
Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here with you guys.
00:01:55:21 - 00:02:14:01
Abigail Acton
Nice to have you. David Dueñas-Cid is an associate professor of Kozminski University, Poland and the director of Public Sector Data-Driven Technologies Research Center. His research looks at the intersection between digital society and e-government, with a clear focus on electronic democracy and Internet voting. Welcome, David.
00:02:14:02 - 00:02:16:21
David Dueñas-Cid
Hello, Abigail. It is truly privilege being here.
00:02:16:22 - 00:02:39:04
Abigail Acton
It's really an honor to have you. David Thank you. Sven-Eric Fikenscher is a researcher with the Center of Excellence for Police and Security Research at the Bavarian Police Academy in Germany. His particularly interested in refining our understanding of how disinformation campaigns online can result in criminality and how that knowledge can be used to help law enforcers focus on potential threats.
00:02:39:10 - 00:02:40:15
Abigail Acton
Welcome, Stan.
00:02:40:17 - 00:02:43:01
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Thank you, Abigail. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
00:02:43:02 - 00:03:08:23
Abigail Acton
Great. Jan, you were behind the POBREBEL project, which drew on data and models from various disciplines to conduct an in-depth study of forces at play behind the rise of populism. You were clear that your focus is not just scholarly. The project serves as a platform for mutual learning. Like David, I know that you're interested in cultural dimensions, the subtleties of context in this case of the rising support for what you're calling authoritarian right wing populism.
00:03:09:00 - 00:03:11:23
Abigail Acton
What are you finding?
00:03:12:00 - 00:03:46:17
Jan Kubik
I guess the main finding is that this process that we observe is not just a political process. It is not just driven by economic factors, but it has a very strong cultural component, meaning that there are certain subcultures that exist that are particularly prone to accept this same more radical right wing discourse. And on the other hand, there are political activists who are politicians who are ready to push this discourse.
00:03:46:22 - 00:04:25:14
Jan Kubik
And this is often done. And that is perhaps the main thing, not just by political institutions, but by institutions of what we call cultural production. So most it is religious organizations, churches, but also school systems, art galleries, particularly the museums, particularly museums dealing with historical memory and such. So this is the process in which, you know, I call this impact of those factors as coming sort of sideways.
00:04:25:16 - 00:04:50:01
Jan Kubik
It is not the bottle bottom up mobilization of the people. It is not just top down manipulation by politicians, but there is the sort of the third force generally which comes from those cultural institutions, and we often overlook the significance. On the other hand, right wing populists these days seem to be very aware of the significance of those institutions.
00:04:50:05 - 00:05:01:00
Jan Kubik
And when they come to power, they immediately try to achieve a control over that. Sometimes they succeed better, sometimes not. But the effort seems to be very similar.
00:05:01:02 - 00:05:18:21
Abigail Acton
To it's something that we sometimes overlook. It's sort of more insidious and more gradual, perhaps, and more far reaching in a strange sort of way. And you mentioned when they come to power, I know the part of your project was looking at the mechanisms behind these rises to power. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that actually manifests itself?
00:05:18:21 - 00:05:22:11
Abigail Acton
How do they come to power so easily? Why don't we see through them?
00:05:22:13 - 00:06:01:23
Jan Kubik
I think that the first step in the analysis is to make a distinction between the mechanisms through which they come to power and then the mechanism through which they stay in power. So the factors that influence their coming to power are a multitude, and they are sometimes accidental. One factor mobilization. Another factor is some kind of accident at work that happens to the others and our third factor is corruption and disillusionment of existing governments, more centers, certain left, whatever they are, but, you know, after a while people get fed up.
00:06:02:00 - 00:06:23:10
Jan Kubik
And this is in the democratic society, you have this paradox that the enemies of democracy are free to advertise their products and they may be hiding them a little bit initially, but they say, you know, we need to get rid of all those bums. We need to get them out of power, and then we will come and everything will be beautiful.
00:06:23:10 - 00:06:34:17
Jan Kubik
And then they're right and they stay. They grab, you know, systematically 30, 40, sometimes a little bit more percent of the electorate.
00:06:34:19 - 00:06:37:10
Abigail Acton
What do we need to do to defend our democracies?
00:06:37:12 - 00:07:06:15
Jan Kubik
Well, so far we have three or four ideas that are a bit more concrete. One is that we need to teach people the difference between right wing populism conservatism. A lot of young people do not make this distinction at all, and they do not make a distinction between, you know, fascism and conservatism and so on. And second, the element that I mentioned that we need to teach people that you need to pay attention to more than politics.
00:07:06:21 - 00:07:28:20
Jan Kubik
You need to look at those cultural institutions and you need to in this context, you need to teach people the value of pluralism. What I mean by that is, you know, if you look at the world, obviously nothing is perfect, but you have systems in which, say artists and museum curators and so on self-govern themselves for good or bad, right?
00:07:28:24 - 00:07:59:12
Jan Kubik
Sometimes they go this way, sometimes that way. But they're responsible for the whole area of life, of social life in any system that destroys pluralism the central government wants to take control over those institutions. And people do not always understand that. So simple teaching about the value of pluralism. And the third element is the significance of children and teaching kids that you can have the system that is run according to some basic principles of justice.
00:07:59:14 - 00:08:07:10
Jan Kubik
My wife teaches young kids, and she always tells me that they are very sensitive to the message of justice.
00:08:07:13 - 00:08:10:12
Abigail Acton
The word fair is very, very strong in a child's mind. Fair?
00:08:10:17 - 00:08:29:11
Jan Kubik
Fairness is the concept. And at some point people kind of lose this in the sense that everybody should be the subject of the fairness, consideration. And some people are then found deserving of fairness whereas others are not.
00:08:29:13 - 00:08:31:03
Abigail Acton
And that's where it slips. Yeah.
00:08:31:05 - 00:08:35:16
Jan Kubik
And then it literally flips. And this, this polarization emerges.
00:08:35:20 - 00:08:46:08
Abigail Acton
Yeah. Listen, so yeah, I mean, this this is something you obviously care passionately about. It's research that you've been doing for a long time beyond this, just this project as well. Why? Why do you care so much?
00:08:46:10 - 00:09:19:04
Jan Kubik
I think that the main factor is my family story, which is very, you know, normal for someone born in Eastern Europe, which is the enormous suffering and tragedies brought about by two totalitarian systems by the Soviet and Nazi and the people who died. My mother was tortured by the Gestapo her first husband was disappeared literally by the Soviets.
00:09:19:04 - 00:09:48:10
Jan Kubik
We don't even know what happened to him. So this looking back, the history of the twenties and the thirties, which I tried to read as much as possible about, which is difficult sometimes, but the similarities are absolutely striking. That this was the time where people were didn't want to use fascism to label those phenomena. So they kind of danced around the term neofascism, semi-fascism, demi-fascism.
00:09:48:12 - 00:10:02:15
Jan Kubik
But there are similarities, obviously. And the similarity is the rejection if not simply the hatred of liberal democracy, which is simply the rule of majority constrained by the rule of law.
00:10:02:17 - 00:10:18:23
Abigail Acton
Fascinating. Is there a way that we can actually use that generation of distrust against the people who are using distrust to undermine democracy? I mean, can we take their tools and turn it back on them, make other people distrust them?
00:10:19:00 - 00:10:49:03
Jan Kubik
Well, this is something I'm trying to work on now. This process of redoing all the damage done in eight years proves to be extremely difficult. And it raises the question: is it possible to fix the legal system that is badly damaged? So there is an idea maybe we should start from scratch, like, you know, a new revolution of sorts and the constituent assembly and restart the system and whatever they call it, the Third Republic.
00:10:49:05 - 00:11:16:01
Jan Kubik
You know, it happened in France few times. The start the fourth Republic or something, because the gradual change proves to be tedious. It is being blocked in through a number of strategies that I'm though trying to study by those right wing populists who lost power. And people are getting impatient. There is this concept in the literature of militant democracy.
00:11:16:02 - 00:11:39:18
Jan Kubik
Can we ethically use the tools that they were using against us? Let's call it this way. And to be quite honest with you, I don't know. I kind of waver. I mean, moments of anger. I said, Yeah, sure. Show them how it tastes. But on the other hand, you think, no, you cannot do that. You cannot be like them, right?
00:11:39:20 - 00:11:42:24
Abigail Acton
Because otherwise there'd be nothing to fight against. You'd become absorbed.
00:11:43:01 - 00:11:49:15
Jan Kubik
Tremendous, tremendous dilemma. And basically what happens, the system kind of muddles through.
00:11:49:17 - 00:12:11:03
Abigail Acton
When it's permitted to. Excellent. Thank you very much. David, I'm going to turn to you, the ELECTRUST project, or to give it its full title, “The Dynamics of Trust and Distrust, Creation and Internet voting” looks at how trust and distrust shape public discourse around Internet voting and those promoting it. So what is your research thrown up about the use of the Internet and other forms of distance voting?
00:12:11:03 - 00:12:12:01
Abigail Acton
00:12:12:03 - 00:12:34:22
David Dueñas-Cid
First of all, let me put a bit of background on my research. We are living more and more in mobile society that people are moving from one place to the other. And that creates a situation in which the turnouts are generally declining in many places. And technology has been labeled as one of the options for solving these kind of issues.
00:12:34:24 - 00:12:53:15
David Dueñas-Cid
So Internet voting has been considered as the future of elections for quite some time, but its implementation has not been easy so far. So we would go back to 1999. We would think that in the future we are going to vote on using the Internet. And if we ask ourselves this question nowadays, we would probably reply the same.
00:12:53:17 - 00:13:11:17
David Dueñas-Cid
But we are still not there. One of the things that we have done in my research is checking the places where Internet voting has been implemented. So for example, Estonia since 2005, using Internet, Switzerland they were using it, they stopped it temporarily and they brought it back last year. And they are using it.
00:13:11:17 - 00:13:32:10
David Dueñas-Cid
They are experimenting with it again. And in many places they considered that this is a good solution, for example, for tackling expats. So, for example, in France, in Panama, they are using it for expats. In other places for some minor elections, like in Canada, it's being used for for local elections. That's of course, there have been other cases that have not been successful.
00:13:32:12 - 00:13:51:04
David Dueñas-Cid
So, for example, in Norway tried it in 2015, 2017, and then they cancelled. In Australia they were using and then they cancelled. In Finland, in the Netherlands, something similar. So one of the things that is the core of everything is that the concept of trust, which is central on my research.
00:13:51:04 - 00:14:10:20
Abigail Acton
We consider the notion of trust. Obviously it's really crucial with regards to casting a long distance vote. But I think you're finding some interesting things with regards to trust and distrust, not actually being at the opposite ends of one single spectrum. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you're finding about the nature of distrust in trust?
00:14:10:22 - 00:14:28:18
David Dueñas-Cid
Of course. And let's say that in elections, everything at the end relates to trust. I mean, in order to trust the outcome of the elections, we need to trust the process. And the outcome is the important part because it represents the delegation of power. Somebody is giving the power to someone else, the citizens are giving the power to the president.
00:14:28:20 - 00:14:48:04
David Dueñas-Cid
The previous president is giving the power to the new president. Trust is the concept. Trust and distrust, they have been considered as the two opposites logical ends of the same similar, same continuum. And in my research I'm trying to use a different approach, not considering that the opposite of trust is distrust. And the opposite of distrust is trust but the trust and distrust.
00:14:48:04 - 00:15:21:19
David Dueñas-Cid
There are two complementary concepts that they go in parallel and they are obviously logically related. They are obviously opposite, but they have their own internal dynamics and their own understandings. So the same process bringing to trust the absence of it does not necessarily bring to distrust. So that makes this issue a bit more complex and it opens the door to understanding that some elements can be to trust and distrust at the same time, or that some elements that they were bringing in trust in the past when they disappeared, they are suddenly bringing distrust.
00:15:21:21 - 00:15:38:04
Abigail Acton
Okay, that's very interesting. Could you tell me a little bit more about that kind of idea? Because the idea that something could inspire trust and distrust at the same time it sounds very, very interesting. Can you give us some examples of what you're thinking of, a context that might do that?
00:15:38:06 - 00:16:05:01
David Dueñas-Cid
For example, in the Netherlands, they were using machines for casting ballots till 2005-2006, and there was a group of hackers that demonstrated that the system was not trustworthy. And therefore, this group of hackers, first, they did a brilliant job even demonstrating that the system was probably not trustworthy. But also they were bringing trust to the democratic system, by creating distrust on the technology that was being used.
00:16:05:03 - 00:16:14:05
David Dueñas-Cid
So both elements, they were going hand by hand do they know. If we understand trust and distrust that the same logical continuum, we cannot feed this type of explanation.
00:16:14:07 - 00:16:36:21
Abigail Acton
You're absolutely right. The fact that it was shown not to work then leads people to believe that the situation is robust enough to permit that analysis, that it doesn't work. And that gives you a feeling of confidence. Yeah, I get that. Okay. That's interesting. So can you tell us a little bit more, please, about what some triggers might be for distrust and trust?
00:16:37:02 - 00:16:46:07
Abigail Acton
Because, I mean, we tend to think fairly superficially. You distrust because you think someone's lying and you trust because you believe that they're not or something like that. But it's more sophisticated than that, isn't it?
00:16:46:10 - 00:17:07:11
David Dueñas-Cid
In fact, yeah. One of the core questions that I was trying to respond to in my research, it was when we talk with experts on Internet voting, which are the elements that are bringing trust, they're normally putting the focus on the technological robustness, which obviously is crucial element for building trust, but it's not enough.
00:17:07:11 - 00:17:32:19
David Dueñas-Cid
For example, my father would not trust an Internet voting system because it's extremely secure and complex cryptography is in use. But he would trust Internet voting for other reasons, that they are societal, that they are not related with the technology itself. And that makes the concept much more wide and much more interesting. So, for example, quite many elements that are building trust relate with positive previous experiences.
00:17:32:21 - 00:17:56:10
David Dueñas-Cid
So we can see from some of the countries that are using Internet voting, they continue using it even if they find problems because they already had some positive experience. But those who never implemented Internet voting, they found it really complicated to take the decision to start using internet voting because there is not an experience legitimizing the positive use of that and distrust, on the other hand, works in a different way.
00:17:56:10 - 00:18:18:22
David Dueñas-Cid
I mean, normally the cases that we saw where distrust was appearing it was also absolutely not related to technological issues quite often or it was appearing in a disruptive manner on a system that was being used. So trust is a process that is being built slowly and distrust it's an element that was appearing from different interests.
00:18:18:24 - 00:18:37:09
Abigail Acton
Yes, that's human nature. It's interesting, isn't it? It takes us a long time to build confidence in something, but no time at all to lose that confidence. What do you think we can actually take away from this, this work that you've been doing, David? What would be the key message that you would have to policymakers or people deciding whether to implement Internet voting and so on?
00:18:37:09 - 00:18:38:16
Abigail Acton
What would you say to them?
00:18:38:18 - 00:18:59:22
David Dueñas-Cid
In fact, my research is not per se trying to say that Internet voting is the solution or not, but I'm trying to understand which are the insights that occur when it's adopted, because this is still a gap on that, since there are not so many experiences and we are still working on them and we are still learning a lot from them.
00:19:00:03 - 00:19:20:08
David Dueñas-Cid
So I'm trying to contribute and that's for things to give guidelines for people who are interested in implementing Internet voting, to know what can happen when this system is implemented, which can be the elements that can bring trust, which can be the element that can bring distrust, the strategies for building trust. They should be different than the strategies for managing this trust.
00:19:20:10 - 00:19:31:12
David Dueñas-Cid
And this is an important difference because trust is working in one way and distrust in another one. But we need to consider both of them because we might find them when we are saying to deal with the system.
00:19:31:14 - 00:19:49:21
Abigail Acton
Okay, that's excellent. Thank you very, very much. It's particularly interesting because as soon as you've spoken, it feels very understandable and very logical. But until you speak, until you've explained that one would have thought that they are two opposite ends of the same spectrum but there are two things running in parallel. Very interesting. Does anyone have any comments or observations for David?
00:19:49:23 - 00:19:50:05
Abigail Acton
Yes. Jan.
00:19:50:05 - 00:20:41:10
Jan Kubik
Yes, I do. So in your project, did you try to look at the variable of, let's call it ideological polarization? Because I suspect that in a culture that is more accustomed to cultivating pluralism and tolerance, that process of simultaneous trust and distrust, what's happening is possible and may happen in the culture of, you know, like driven by the right wing populist discourse where everything is binary and polarized, they will produce ideas that will refuse the possibility of this duality because they want to see everything in a negative way or positive way, depending.
00:20:41:10 - 00:21:00:05
Jan Kubik
So, for example, the distinction that you made was very interesting between trusting those hackers, but distrusting the democracy or the other way around. But it is not possible, it seems, in this highly polarized discourse of, say, at this moment, right wing populists. So did you try to look at this?
00:21:00:07 - 00:21:23:03
David Dueñas-Cid
Yeah, we were considering I mean, we had one limitation, which is like there are not so many countries that are using Internet voting and this is reduced in the sample to a certain number of countries. So therefore, we cannot freely choose where we are going to make the research. We explored the case of Poland as a country- zero, let's say, where Internet voting was never implemented, so therefore they are free of experience.
00:21:23:03 - 00:21:33:14
David Dueñas-Cid
And we are working now on the results to see how these different types of discourses are raising. And I think Poland is an example itself, a country that has been that is politically polarized.
00:21:33:16 - 00:21:49:24
Jan Kubik
Right wing populists simply hijacked any discussion of pluralism and put everything in the black and white colors. But immediately. And so I would suspect that they will not hear this argument that you can have trust and distrust realized simultaneously.
00:21:50:01 - 00:22:15:18
David Dueñas-Cid
Not, in fact, they have a really good strategy quite often because they take concepts that they are highly technical to reduce them to something that is easy to understand, to then undermine that the quality of the system that is being used, connecting with technical issues, but at the end not related to them because the technical issues they referred to have been solved, but they still use them repeatedly to spread the message that is undermining the quality of democracy in the end.
00:22:15:18 - 00:22:44:22
Abigail Acton
Fascinating. Thank you very much. I'm going to now turn to Sven. Sven, the system kind of muddles through. But of course, if you get lots of disenchantment and frustration and this idea of promises not being kept, then people resort to campaigns on the Internet and disinformation and fake news and so on. Your project, Sven “FERMI” which was the “Fake news risk mitigator”, it's only halfway through...
00:22:44:24 - 00:23:04:02
Abigail Acton
but you've already got some very interesting findings to share with us. It's looking at generating tools that can help lawmakers determine the nature of the threat from online disinformation campaigns. So that can distinguish between stuff that's just hot air and stuff that actually might genuinely result in violence. Can you tell us a little bit more about this?
00:23:04:02 - 00:23:19:22
Abigail Acton
We've heard about trust and distrust not being the same spectrum and populism being more than just a political phenomenon. So for me, looked at the complexity that comes when you try to define what disinformation actually is. How's that going for you?
00:23:19:24 - 00:23:41:17
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Yeah, well, Abigail Well, first of all, thanks again for having me on this. Great pleasure to do this with you and my colleagues. Well, actually, we've been facing a couple of challenges. The one that was defined disinformation in the first place. Because as it turned out there is no such thing as a universal accepted definition of the term disinformation in the EU and beyond.
00:23:41:19 - 00:24:10:12
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
So what we did is we studied the definitions we could find and looked for a common themes, common focal points. Turns out one of those common focal points was that disinformation is something that is being spread deliberately. So the person or the group spreading false allegations know those allegations to be false, which is very important, which is a key distinction between disinformation and misinformation.
00:24:10:14 - 00:24:37:14
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Where the people that spread false allegations do not know them to be false. But something that features quite prominently in our working definition. To be fair, it's been challenging to find matching datasets. So that's the one challenge. I suspect an even bigger challenge is that we are end user oriented in the sense that we attempt to, because we are not funded under a fighting crime and terrorism call.
00:24:37:16 - 00:24:58:00
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
So we are end user oriented in the sense that we attempt to develop tools for law enforcement agencies and our law enforcement agency partners, as you can imagine, have been telling us time and again that, folks, this is all great. But distinguishing truth from lies is not part of our mandate. They're not even allowed to do that.
00:24:58:02 - 00:25:42:16
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Actually, sharing false allegations can be carried by free speech. People have a right to spread falsehood within certain limitations, but still. So that's something we need to bear in mind. So what did we do? Well, long story short, we developed a couple of use cases where the borders of legality are being crossed in the sense that messages disinformation activity is shared on social media, that also across the borders of legality in the sense that illegal stuff is being shared, for example, by inciting violence or inciting terrorism, which is covered by the EU definition of terrorism and something that is illegal across the European Union.
00:25:42:18 - 00:25:59:15
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
So that's something we study in our use cases and we develop a platform that will hopefully enable our law enforcement agency partners and at a later stage customers to investigate such activities and to come up with probable countermeasures.
00:25:59:17 - 00:26:19:24
Abigail Acton
Okay, Super. It must be very difficult to try and help law enforcement to decide when disinformation campaigns are going to tip into real life violence, when the actual notion of disinformation is not something they can really get their teeth into because it's not part of their work. So, yes, I can see that that's a conundrum.
00:26:20:05 - 00:26:34:06
Abigail Acton
When you said use cases, what do you mean? You mean you found stuff going on online that you could study more closely? And if so, how did you study it? Or you mean you generated a simulation? But what did you actually do? Where did you get your data?
00:26:34:08 - 00:27:07:05
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
That's a very important point. Well, first of all, on the use cases we used three different use cases that are all based on the idea that, again, we attempt to study the incitement of violence and terrorism. So the messages that will be a solid by our end-use partners in charge of the pilots. Our messages that are derived from right wing extremism or left wing extremism and COVID related extremism, COVID related extremism, that's particularly interesting from a disinformation perspective, of course.
00:27:07:11 - 00:27:07:18
Abigail Acton
You mean.
00:27:07:18 - 00:27:11:15
Abigail Acton
Things like vaccine hesitancy and vaccine denial, vaccine hesitant.
00:27:11:17 - 00:27:22:00
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Yes but not only that. Also, the spread of allegations that was caused by 5G technology and stuff like that.
00:27:22:05 - 00:27:23:18
Abigail Acton
So conspiracy theories.
00:27:23:20 - 00:27:55:14
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Conspiracy theories, old fashioned conspiracy theories and the sounds that people spread things about that seem to be way out of line of their thinking, but they resonate with numerous people out there. And in many cases they or at least in some cases they carried out violent activities. According to the dataset of the University of Maryland, the conspiracy theories motivating terrorist activities skyrocketed in the first year of the pandemic, and a lot of that had to do with COVID related extremism.
00:27:55:16 - 00:28:11:16
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
So that's one of the use cases that we do, which we think will hopefully lead to new insights, because there are some other studies on right and left wing extremism, not necessarily from a disinformation angle, but I think the case on correlated extremism is particularly interesting and promising.
00:28:11:19 - 00:28:24:18
Abigail Acton
Super. So you can see what's happening. You track the interaction and how does it work? So you're getting information, then you can share with lawmakers through the platform to say this looks like it's going to be serious. This might be something you want to watch. How does that work?
00:28:25:02 - 00:28:52:16
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Well, that kind of goes back to what I just said about the limitations of the law enforcement agency's mandate. That's where the rubber hits the road. So our platform needs to be fed with a tweet or a post by a law enforcer. Otherwise, it doesn't work. So the law enforcer and that's the distinction we need to make for legal reasons, also for ethical reasons, we are very, very conscious of the boundaries we operate in, and we don't mean to violate those in any way.
00:28:52:18 - 00:29:23:01
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
So our law enforcers and even make a decision in the first place whether or not to investigate the tweet or a post. If they have feed our platform with the tweet or the post then needs to investigate that, then our platform can help them carry out the investigation in the sounds of identifying right away or reposts or retweets, likes and dislikes, which we think can tremendously facilitate an investigation because, of course it's a huge effort to do that manually, to collect that evidence manually.
00:29:23:01 - 00:29:43:04
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
It's cumbersome, it's time consuming, it's very error prone. But spotting all of that right away can give law enforcers a very good overview, not just of the popularity of the to-be-investigative message, but also, of course, of all the further messages that are depending on the exact content and context, might also require an investigation.
00:29:43:07 - 00:29:46:14
Abigail Acton
So they can sort of see whether it's going to snowball. Gather momentum.
00:29:46:16 - 00:30:10:15
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So that's part of it. So that's the part I alluded to when I said, okay, we attempt to facilitate investigations. We also touched upon facilitating in countermeasures in the sense of figuring out when such messages can lead to offline violence, which is even more challenging. Well, we have developed a tool.
00:30:10:17 - 00:30:40:23
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
We haven't validated it yet, but we have already developed and integrated a tool that estimates the future crime landscape that unfolds where the exact crimes are likely to unfold amidst disinformation activities. How did we do that? Well, we use datasets on disinformation campaigns and datasets on criminal activities. We match those so we could calculate how the former is likely to lead to the latter.
00:30:41:00 - 00:31:08:10
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
And we provide law enforcement agencies with those pieces of information. They will, of course, be in a much better position to be able to respond to the threats that are likely to occur, for example, by dispatching police forces to areas of concern that will be well prepared for whatever challenge they'll be up against. For example, riots that might arise in case of disinformation activities stir up trouble amongst right, left or other extremists.
00:31:10:02 - 00:31:27:02
Abigail Acton
And of course, it must be regardless of the fact that the word disinformation is something tricky for the law makers to get a handle on it must be very useful for them to be able to decide where to place their resources. I mean, it's so challenging, you know, everyone's so stretched. And you mentioned that it's undergoing pilot studies now, I think.
00:31:27:04 - 00:31:34:12
Abigail Acton
Do you have any idea when this will actually become something that will be available for law makers and for law enforcers?
00:31:34:14 - 00:31:58:00
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Yeah, Well, that will take a little while, but we actually develop numerous tools that will now be validated in the second half of the project. So we'll be doing our three use cases again on right wing, left wing and code related extremism when we will be done in a year and a half from now, we will be having an exploitation plan in place and then technical partners developing the platform.
00:31:58:00 - 00:32:09:22
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
And its different tools and we'll take it from there and work on having to bring the tools to a stage where they can be fully explored at a later stage, hopefully be market ready.
00:32:09:24 - 00:32:29:14
Abigail Acton
Well, thank you all. I think that was absolutely fascinating. Particularly interesting to think about ideas that we might have held very comfortably without even thinking that they need to be examined like this idea of trust and distrust not being the same and the different kinds of the same spectrum. Fascinating. Really interesting. Thank you very much indeed for all your time.
00:32:29:16 - 00:32:32:13
Abigail Acton
And good luck with your research. Goodbye.
00:32:32:13 - 00:32:38:07
All
Thank you. Abigail was a pleasure to be doing this with you. Thank you so much, all of you. It was a pleasure to be here.
00:32:38:07 - 00:32:39:15
Jan Kubik
Thank you.
00:32:39:17 - 00:33:02:24
Abigail Acton
You're very welcome. If you've enjoyed this podcast, follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and check out the podcast homepage on the CORDIS website. Subscribe to make sure the hottest research and EU funded science isn't passing you by. And if you're enjoying listening, why not spread the word? Want to know about the latest work being done to make evacuations from ships on fire?
00:33:03:00 - 00:33:26:01
Abigail Acton
More efficient, or how cutting edge technology is determining the precise nutrients needed by an individual premature baby. Did you know that sensors, which can detect if a flying mosquito is a female, how old it is and if it is carrying Zika virus are being tested? In our last 35 episodes will be something to tweak your curiosity. Perhaps you want to see what other EU-funded projects are doing to support democracy.
00:33:26:03 - 00:33:47:15
Abigail Acton
Take a look at our recently published results pack, now available on the CORDIS website. New tools and insights to better connect citizens with democracy. The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of areas and subjects, from wine to weather. There's something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding.
00:33:47:17 - 00:34:07:14
Abigail Acton
Take a look at what others are doing in your domain, so come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line. Editorial at CORDIS dot Europa Dot EU. Until next time.
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:10:03
CORDIScovery
00:00:10:05 - 00:00:16:03
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery.
00:00:16:05 - 00:00:37:18
Abigail Acton
Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me Abigail Acton. Between the 6th and the 9th of June, Europeans will go to the polls to vote for the people that they want to represent them at the European Parliament. Members of the European Parliament will be making laws on the environment, social policies, migration and every other important national priority with a European dimension.
00:00:37:20 - 00:01:03:02
Abigail Acton
Democracy is a collective achievement and 2024 has been called its biggest year. 8 of the 10 most populous countries in the world will hold elections in 2024, but the process will face challenges perceived and unperceived. Internet disinformation campaigns, fake news, the impact of AI, social media echo chambers. Around 1.5 billion people globally will be exercising their right to vote.
00:01:03:04 - 00:01:32:02
Abigail Acton
But just how safe is our democratic process and how can we make it more secure? Our three guests who all received funding for their research from the EU, are here to tell us what they are doing to meet the challenges facing democracy in the 21st century. Working out how trust and distrust are generated, understanding the mechanisms that allow for the rise of far right populism and using machine learning to determine when disinformation can tip from Internet chat into real life threat.
00:01:32:04 - 00:01:52:09
Abigail Acton
Jan Kubik is distinguished professor of the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University in the States and professor emeritus of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. He is particularly interested in the rise of right wing populism, which he studies from different perspectives, combining political, cultural and economic factors. Hi Jan.
00:01:52:11 - 00:01:55:18
Jan Kubik
Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here with you guys.
00:01:55:21 - 00:02:14:01
Abigail Acton
Nice to have you. David Dueñas-Cid is an associate professor of Kozminski University, Poland and the director of Public Sector Data-Driven Technologies Research Center. His research looks at the intersection between digital society and e-government, with a clear focus on electronic democracy and Internet voting. Welcome, David.
00:02:14:02 - 00:02:16:21
David Dueñas-Cid
Hello, Abigail. It is truly privilege being here.
00:02:16:22 - 00:02:39:04
Abigail Acton
It's really an honor to have you. David Thank you. Sven-Eric Fikenscher is a researcher with the Center of Excellence for Police and Security Research at the Bavarian Police Academy in Germany. His particularly interested in refining our understanding of how disinformation campaigns online can result in criminality and how that knowledge can be used to help law enforcers focus on potential threats.
00:02:39:10 - 00:02:40:15
Abigail Acton
Welcome, Stan.
00:02:40:17 - 00:02:43:01
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Thank you, Abigail. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
00:02:43:02 - 00:03:08:23
Abigail Acton
Great. Jan, you were behind the POBREBEL project, which drew on data and models from various disciplines to conduct an in-depth study of forces at play behind the rise of populism. You were clear that your focus is not just scholarly. The project serves as a platform for mutual learning. Like David, I know that you're interested in cultural dimensions, the subtleties of context in this case of the rising support for what you're calling authoritarian right wing populism.
00:03:09:00 - 00:03:11:23
Abigail Acton
What are you finding?
00:03:12:00 - 00:03:46:17
Jan Kubik
I guess the main finding is that this process that we observe is not just a political process. It is not just driven by economic factors, but it has a very strong cultural component, meaning that there are certain subcultures that exist that are particularly prone to accept this same more radical right wing discourse. And on the other hand, there are political activists who are politicians who are ready to push this discourse.
00:03:46:22 - 00:04:25:14
Jan Kubik
And this is often done. And that is perhaps the main thing, not just by political institutions, but by institutions of what we call cultural production. So most it is religious organizations, churches, but also school systems, art galleries, particularly the museums, particularly museums dealing with historical memory and such. So this is the process in which, you know, I call this impact of those factors as coming sort of sideways.
00:04:25:16 - 00:04:50:01
Jan Kubik
It is not the bottle bottom up mobilization of the people. It is not just top down manipulation by politicians, but there is the sort of the third force generally which comes from those cultural institutions, and we often overlook the significance. On the other hand, right wing populists these days seem to be very aware of the significance of those institutions.
00:04:50:05 - 00:05:01:00
Jan Kubik
And when they come to power, they immediately try to achieve a control over that. Sometimes they succeed better, sometimes not. But the effort seems to be very similar.
00:05:01:02 - 00:05:18:21
Abigail Acton
To it's something that we sometimes overlook. It's sort of more insidious and more gradual, perhaps, and more far reaching in a strange sort of way. And you mentioned when they come to power, I know the part of your project was looking at the mechanisms behind these rises to power. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that actually manifests itself?
00:05:18:21 - 00:05:22:11
Abigail Acton
How do they come to power so easily? Why don't we see through them?
00:05:22:13 - 00:06:01:23
Jan Kubik
I think that the first step in the analysis is to make a distinction between the mechanisms through which they come to power and then the mechanism through which they stay in power. So the factors that influence their coming to power are a multitude, and they are sometimes accidental. One factor mobilization. Another factor is some kind of accident at work that happens to the others and our third factor is corruption and disillusionment of existing governments, more centers, certain left, whatever they are, but, you know, after a while people get fed up.
00:06:02:00 - 00:06:23:10
Jan Kubik
And this is in the democratic society, you have this paradox that the enemies of democracy are free to advertise their products and they may be hiding them a little bit initially, but they say, you know, we need to get rid of all those bums. We need to get them out of power, and then we will come and everything will be beautiful.
00:06:23:10 - 00:06:34:17
Jan Kubik
And then they're right and they stay. They grab, you know, systematically 30, 40, sometimes a little bit more percent of the electorate.
00:06:34:19 - 00:06:37:10
Abigail Acton
What do we need to do to defend our democracies?
00:06:37:12 - 00:07:06:15
Jan Kubik
Well, so far we have three or four ideas that are a bit more concrete. One is that we need to teach people the difference between right wing populism conservatism. A lot of young people do not make this distinction at all, and they do not make a distinction between, you know, fascism and conservatism and so on. And second, the element that I mentioned that we need to teach people that you need to pay attention to more than politics.
00:07:06:21 - 00:07:28:20
Jan Kubik
You need to look at those cultural institutions and you need to in this context, you need to teach people the value of pluralism. What I mean by that is, you know, if you look at the world, obviously nothing is perfect, but you have systems in which, say artists and museum curators and so on self-govern themselves for good or bad, right?
00:07:28:24 - 00:07:59:12
Jan Kubik
Sometimes they go this way, sometimes that way. But they're responsible for the whole area of life, of social life in any system that destroys pluralism the central government wants to take control over those institutions. And people do not always understand that. So simple teaching about the value of pluralism. And the third element is the significance of children and teaching kids that you can have the system that is run according to some basic principles of justice.
00:07:59:14 - 00:08:07:10
Jan Kubik
My wife teaches young kids, and she always tells me that they are very sensitive to the message of justice.
00:08:07:13 - 00:08:10:12
Abigail Acton
The word fair is very, very strong in a child's mind. Fair?
00:08:10:17 - 00:08:29:11
Jan Kubik
Fairness is the concept. And at some point people kind of lose this in the sense that everybody should be the subject of the fairness, consideration. And some people are then found deserving of fairness whereas others are not.
00:08:29:13 - 00:08:31:03
Abigail Acton
And that's where it slips. Yeah.
00:08:31:05 - 00:08:35:16
Jan Kubik
And then it literally flips. And this, this polarization emerges.
00:08:35:20 - 00:08:46:08
Abigail Acton
Yeah. Listen, so yeah, I mean, this this is something you obviously care passionately about. It's research that you've been doing for a long time beyond this, just this project as well. Why? Why do you care so much?
00:08:46:10 - 00:09:19:04
Jan Kubik
I think that the main factor is my family story, which is very, you know, normal for someone born in Eastern Europe, which is the enormous suffering and tragedies brought about by two totalitarian systems by the Soviet and Nazi and the people who died. My mother was tortured by the Gestapo her first husband was disappeared literally by the Soviets.
00:09:19:04 - 00:09:48:10
Jan Kubik
We don't even know what happened to him. So this looking back, the history of the twenties and the thirties, which I tried to read as much as possible about, which is difficult sometimes, but the similarities are absolutely striking. That this was the time where people were didn't want to use fascism to label those phenomena. So they kind of danced around the term neofascism, semi-fascism, demi-fascism.
00:09:48:12 - 00:10:02:15
Jan Kubik
But there are similarities, obviously. And the similarity is the rejection if not simply the hatred of liberal democracy, which is simply the rule of majority constrained by the rule of law.
00:10:02:17 - 00:10:18:23
Abigail Acton
Fascinating. Is there a way that we can actually use that generation of distrust against the people who are using distrust to undermine democracy? I mean, can we take their tools and turn it back on them, make other people distrust them?
00:10:19:00 - 00:10:49:03
Jan Kubik
Well, this is something I'm trying to work on now. This process of redoing all the damage done in eight years proves to be extremely difficult. And it raises the question: is it possible to fix the legal system that is badly damaged? So there is an idea maybe we should start from scratch, like, you know, a new revolution of sorts and the constituent assembly and restart the system and whatever they call it, the Third Republic.
00:10:49:05 - 00:11:16:01
Jan Kubik
You know, it happened in France few times. The start the fourth Republic or something, because the gradual change proves to be tedious. It is being blocked in through a number of strategies that I'm though trying to study by those right wing populists who lost power. And people are getting impatient. There is this concept in the literature of militant democracy.
00:11:16:02 - 00:11:39:18
Jan Kubik
Can we ethically use the tools that they were using against us? Let's call it this way. And to be quite honest with you, I don't know. I kind of waver. I mean, moments of anger. I said, Yeah, sure. Show them how it tastes. But on the other hand, you think, no, you cannot do that. You cannot be like them, right?
00:11:39:20 - 00:11:42:24
Abigail Acton
Because otherwise there'd be nothing to fight against. You'd become absorbed.
00:11:43:01 - 00:11:49:15
Jan Kubik
Tremendous, tremendous dilemma. And basically what happens, the system kind of muddles through.
00:11:49:17 - 00:12:11:03
Abigail Acton
When it's permitted to. Excellent. Thank you very much. David, I'm going to turn to you, the ELECTRUST project, or to give it its full title, “The Dynamics of Trust and Distrust, Creation and Internet voting” looks at how trust and distrust shape public discourse around Internet voting and those promoting it. So what is your research thrown up about the use of the Internet and other forms of distance voting?
00:12:11:03 - 00:12:12:01
Abigail Acton
00:12:12:03 - 00:12:34:22
David Dueñas-Cid
First of all, let me put a bit of background on my research. We are living more and more in mobile society that people are moving from one place to the other. And that creates a situation in which the turnouts are generally declining in many places. And technology has been labeled as one of the options for solving these kind of issues.
00:12:34:24 - 00:12:53:15
David Dueñas-Cid
So Internet voting has been considered as the future of elections for quite some time, but its implementation has not been easy so far. So we would go back to 1999. We would think that in the future we are going to vote on using the Internet. And if we ask ourselves this question nowadays, we would probably reply the same.
00:12:53:17 - 00:13:11:17
David Dueñas-Cid
But we are still not there. One of the things that we have done in my research is checking the places where Internet voting has been implemented. So for example, Estonia since 2005, using Internet, Switzerland they were using it, they stopped it temporarily and they brought it back last year. And they are using it.
00:13:11:17 - 00:13:32:10
David Dueñas-Cid
They are experimenting with it again. And in many places they considered that this is a good solution, for example, for tackling expats. So, for example, in France, in Panama, they are using it for expats. In other places for some minor elections, like in Canada, it's being used for for local elections. That's of course, there have been other cases that have not been successful.
00:13:32:12 - 00:13:51:04
David Dueñas-Cid
So, for example, in Norway tried it in 2015, 2017, and then they cancelled. In Australia they were using and then they cancelled. In Finland, in the Netherlands, something similar. So one of the things that is the core of everything is that the concept of trust, which is central on my research.
00:13:51:04 - 00:14:10:20
Abigail Acton
We consider the notion of trust. Obviously it's really crucial with regards to casting a long distance vote. But I think you're finding some interesting things with regards to trust and distrust, not actually being at the opposite ends of one single spectrum. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you're finding about the nature of distrust in trust?
00:14:10:22 - 00:14:28:18
David Dueñas-Cid
Of course. And let's say that in elections, everything at the end relates to trust. I mean, in order to trust the outcome of the elections, we need to trust the process. And the outcome is the important part because it represents the delegation of power. Somebody is giving the power to someone else, the citizens are giving the power to the president.
00:14:28:20 - 00:14:48:04
David Dueñas-Cid
The previous president is giving the power to the new president. Trust is the concept. Trust and distrust, they have been considered as the two opposites logical ends of the same similar, same continuum. And in my research I'm trying to use a different approach, not considering that the opposite of trust is distrust. And the opposite of distrust is trust but the trust and distrust.
00:14:48:04 - 00:15:21:19
David Dueñas-Cid
There are two complementary concepts that they go in parallel and they are obviously logically related. They are obviously opposite, but they have their own internal dynamics and their own understandings. So the same process bringing to trust the absence of it does not necessarily bring to distrust. So that makes this issue a bit more complex and it opens the door to understanding that some elements can be to trust and distrust at the same time, or that some elements that they were bringing in trust in the past when they disappeared, they are suddenly bringing distrust.
00:15:21:21 - 00:15:38:04
Abigail Acton
Okay, that's very interesting. Could you tell me a little bit more about that kind of idea? Because the idea that something could inspire trust and distrust at the same time it sounds very, very interesting. Can you give us some examples of what you're thinking of, a context that might do that?
00:15:38:06 - 00:16:05:01
David Dueñas-Cid
For example, in the Netherlands, they were using machines for casting ballots till 2005-2006, and there was a group of hackers that demonstrated that the system was not trustworthy. And therefore, this group of hackers, first, they did a brilliant job even demonstrating that the system was probably not trustworthy. But also they were bringing trust to the democratic system, by creating distrust on the technology that was being used.
00:16:05:03 - 00:16:14:05
David Dueñas-Cid
So both elements, they were going hand by hand do they know. If we understand trust and distrust that the same logical continuum, we cannot feed this type of explanation.
00:16:14:07 - 00:16:36:21
Abigail Acton
You're absolutely right. The fact that it was shown not to work then leads people to believe that the situation is robust enough to permit that analysis, that it doesn't work. And that gives you a feeling of confidence. Yeah, I get that. Okay. That's interesting. So can you tell us a little bit more, please, about what some triggers might be for distrust and trust?
00:16:37:02 - 00:16:46:07
Abigail Acton
Because, I mean, we tend to think fairly superficially. You distrust because you think someone's lying and you trust because you believe that they're not or something like that. But it's more sophisticated than that, isn't it?
00:16:46:10 - 00:17:07:11
David Dueñas-Cid
In fact, yeah. One of the core questions that I was trying to respond to in my research, it was when we talk with experts on Internet voting, which are the elements that are bringing trust, they're normally putting the focus on the technological robustness, which obviously is crucial element for building trust, but it's not enough.
00:17:07:11 - 00:17:32:19
David Dueñas-Cid
For example, my father would not trust an Internet voting system because it's extremely secure and complex cryptography is in use. But he would trust Internet voting for other reasons, that they are societal, that they are not related with the technology itself. And that makes the concept much more wide and much more interesting. So, for example, quite many elements that are building trust relate with positive previous experiences.
00:17:32:21 - 00:17:56:10
David Dueñas-Cid
So we can see from some of the countries that are using Internet voting, they continue using it even if they find problems because they already had some positive experience. But those who never implemented Internet voting, they found it really complicated to take the decision to start using internet voting because there is not an experience legitimizing the positive use of that and distrust, on the other hand, works in a different way.
00:17:56:10 - 00:18:18:22
David Dueñas-Cid
I mean, normally the cases that we saw where distrust was appearing it was also absolutely not related to technological issues quite often or it was appearing in a disruptive manner on a system that was being used. So trust is a process that is being built slowly and distrust it's an element that was appearing from different interests.
00:18:18:24 - 00:18:37:09
Abigail Acton
Yes, that's human nature. It's interesting, isn't it? It takes us a long time to build confidence in something, but no time at all to lose that confidence. What do you think we can actually take away from this, this work that you've been doing, David? What would be the key message that you would have to policymakers or people deciding whether to implement Internet voting and so on?
00:18:37:09 - 00:18:38:16
Abigail Acton
What would you say to them?
00:18:38:18 - 00:18:59:22
David Dueñas-Cid
In fact, my research is not per se trying to say that Internet voting is the solution or not, but I'm trying to understand which are the insights that occur when it's adopted, because this is still a gap on that, since there are not so many experiences and we are still working on them and we are still learning a lot from them.
00:19:00:03 - 00:19:20:08
David Dueñas-Cid
So I'm trying to contribute and that's for things to give guidelines for people who are interested in implementing Internet voting, to know what can happen when this system is implemented, which can be the elements that can bring trust, which can be the element that can bring distrust, the strategies for building trust. They should be different than the strategies for managing this trust.
00:19:20:10 - 00:19:31:12
David Dueñas-Cid
And this is an important difference because trust is working in one way and distrust in another one. But we need to consider both of them because we might find them when we are saying to deal with the system.
00:19:31:14 - 00:19:49:21
Abigail Acton
Okay, that's excellent. Thank you very, very much. It's particularly interesting because as soon as you've spoken, it feels very understandable and very logical. But until you speak, until you've explained that one would have thought that they are two opposite ends of the same spectrum but there are two things running in parallel. Very interesting. Does anyone have any comments or observations for David?
00:19:49:23 - 00:19:50:05
Abigail Acton
Yes. Jan.
00:19:50:05 - 00:20:41:10
Jan Kubik
Yes, I do. So in your project, did you try to look at the variable of, let's call it ideological polarization? Because I suspect that in a culture that is more accustomed to cultivating pluralism and tolerance, that process of simultaneous trust and distrust, what's happening is possible and may happen in the culture of, you know, like driven by the right wing populist discourse where everything is binary and polarized, they will produce ideas that will refuse the possibility of this duality because they want to see everything in a negative way or positive way, depending.
00:20:41:10 - 00:21:00:05
Jan Kubik
So, for example, the distinction that you made was very interesting between trusting those hackers, but distrusting the democracy or the other way around. But it is not possible, it seems, in this highly polarized discourse of, say, at this moment, right wing populists. So did you try to look at this?
00:21:00:07 - 00:21:23:03
David Dueñas-Cid
Yeah, we were considering I mean, we had one limitation, which is like there are not so many countries that are using Internet voting and this is reduced in the sample to a certain number of countries. So therefore, we cannot freely choose where we are going to make the research. We explored the case of Poland as a country- zero, let's say, where Internet voting was never implemented, so therefore they are free of experience.
00:21:23:03 - 00:21:33:14
David Dueñas-Cid
And we are working now on the results to see how these different types of discourses are raising. And I think Poland is an example itself, a country that has been that is politically polarized.
00:21:33:16 - 00:21:49:24
Jan Kubik
Right wing populists simply hijacked any discussion of pluralism and put everything in the black and white colors. But immediately. And so I would suspect that they will not hear this argument that you can have trust and distrust realized simultaneously.
00:21:50:01 - 00:22:15:18
David Dueñas-Cid
Not, in fact, they have a really good strategy quite often because they take concepts that they are highly technical to reduce them to something that is easy to understand, to then undermine that the quality of the system that is being used, connecting with technical issues, but at the end not related to them because the technical issues they referred to have been solved, but they still use them repeatedly to spread the message that is undermining the quality of democracy in the end.
00:22:15:18 - 00:22:44:22
Abigail Acton
Fascinating. Thank you very much. I'm going to now turn to Sven. Sven, the system kind of muddles through. But of course, if you get lots of disenchantment and frustration and this idea of promises not being kept, then people resort to campaigns on the Internet and disinformation and fake news and so on. Your project, Sven “FERMI” which was the “Fake news risk mitigator”, it's only halfway through...
00:22:44:24 - 00:23:04:02
Abigail Acton
but you've already got some very interesting findings to share with us. It's looking at generating tools that can help lawmakers determine the nature of the threat from online disinformation campaigns. So that can distinguish between stuff that's just hot air and stuff that actually might genuinely result in violence. Can you tell us a little bit more about this?
00:23:04:02 - 00:23:19:22
Abigail Acton
We've heard about trust and distrust not being the same spectrum and populism being more than just a political phenomenon. So for me, looked at the complexity that comes when you try to define what disinformation actually is. How's that going for you?
00:23:19:24 - 00:23:41:17
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Yeah, well, Abigail Well, first of all, thanks again for having me on this. Great pleasure to do this with you and my colleagues. Well, actually, we've been facing a couple of challenges. The one that was defined disinformation in the first place. Because as it turned out there is no such thing as a universal accepted definition of the term disinformation in the EU and beyond.
00:23:41:19 - 00:24:10:12
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
So what we did is we studied the definitions we could find and looked for a common themes, common focal points. Turns out one of those common focal points was that disinformation is something that is being spread deliberately. So the person or the group spreading false allegations know those allegations to be false, which is very important, which is a key distinction between disinformation and misinformation.
00:24:10:14 - 00:24:37:14
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Where the people that spread false allegations do not know them to be false. But something that features quite prominently in our working definition. To be fair, it's been challenging to find matching datasets. So that's the one challenge. I suspect an even bigger challenge is that we are end user oriented in the sense that we attempt to, because we are not funded under a fighting crime and terrorism call.
00:24:37:16 - 00:24:58:00
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
So we are end user oriented in the sense that we attempt to develop tools for law enforcement agencies and our law enforcement agency partners, as you can imagine, have been telling us time and again that, folks, this is all great. But distinguishing truth from lies is not part of our mandate. They're not even allowed to do that.
00:24:58:02 - 00:25:42:16
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Actually, sharing false allegations can be carried by free speech. People have a right to spread falsehood within certain limitations, but still. So that's something we need to bear in mind. So what did we do? Well, long story short, we developed a couple of use cases where the borders of legality are being crossed in the sense that messages disinformation activity is shared on social media, that also across the borders of legality in the sense that illegal stuff is being shared, for example, by inciting violence or inciting terrorism, which is covered by the EU definition of terrorism and something that is illegal across the European Union.
00:25:42:18 - 00:25:59:15
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
So that's something we study in our use cases and we develop a platform that will hopefully enable our law enforcement agency partners and at a later stage customers to investigate such activities and to come up with probable countermeasures.
00:25:59:17 - 00:26:19:24
Abigail Acton
Okay, Super. It must be very difficult to try and help law enforcement to decide when disinformation campaigns are going to tip into real life violence, when the actual notion of disinformation is not something they can really get their teeth into because it's not part of their work. So, yes, I can see that that's a conundrum.
00:26:20:05 - 00:26:34:06
Abigail Acton
When you said use cases, what do you mean? You mean you found stuff going on online that you could study more closely? And if so, how did you study it? Or you mean you generated a simulation? But what did you actually do? Where did you get your data?
00:26:34:08 - 00:27:07:05
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
That's a very important point. Well, first of all, on the use cases we used three different use cases that are all based on the idea that, again, we attempt to study the incitement of violence and terrorism. So the messages that will be a solid by our end-use partners in charge of the pilots. Our messages that are derived from right wing extremism or left wing extremism and COVID related extremism, COVID related extremism, that's particularly interesting from a disinformation perspective, of course.
00:27:07:11 - 00:27:07:18
Abigail Acton
You mean.
00:27:07:18 - 00:27:11:15
Abigail Acton
Things like vaccine hesitancy and vaccine denial, vaccine hesitant.
00:27:11:17 - 00:27:22:00
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Yes but not only that. Also, the spread of allegations that was caused by 5G technology and stuff like that.
00:27:22:05 - 00:27:23:18
Abigail Acton
So conspiracy theories.
00:27:23:20 - 00:27:55:14
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Conspiracy theories, old fashioned conspiracy theories and the sounds that people spread things about that seem to be way out of line of their thinking, but they resonate with numerous people out there. And in many cases they or at least in some cases they carried out violent activities. According to the dataset of the University of Maryland, the conspiracy theories motivating terrorist activities skyrocketed in the first year of the pandemic, and a lot of that had to do with COVID related extremism.
00:27:55:16 - 00:28:11:16
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
So that's one of the use cases that we do, which we think will hopefully lead to new insights, because there are some other studies on right and left wing extremism, not necessarily from a disinformation angle, but I think the case on correlated extremism is particularly interesting and promising.
00:28:11:19 - 00:28:24:18
Abigail Acton
Super. So you can see what's happening. You track the interaction and how does it work? So you're getting information, then you can share with lawmakers through the platform to say this looks like it's going to be serious. This might be something you want to watch. How does that work?
00:28:25:02 - 00:28:52:16
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Well, that kind of goes back to what I just said about the limitations of the law enforcement agency's mandate. That's where the rubber hits the road. So our platform needs to be fed with a tweet or a post by a law enforcer. Otherwise, it doesn't work. So the law enforcer and that's the distinction we need to make for legal reasons, also for ethical reasons, we are very, very conscious of the boundaries we operate in, and we don't mean to violate those in any way.
00:28:52:18 - 00:29:23:01
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
So our law enforcers and even make a decision in the first place whether or not to investigate the tweet or a post. If they have feed our platform with the tweet or the post then needs to investigate that, then our platform can help them carry out the investigation in the sounds of identifying right away or reposts or retweets, likes and dislikes, which we think can tremendously facilitate an investigation because, of course it's a huge effort to do that manually, to collect that evidence manually.
00:29:23:01 - 00:29:43:04
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
It's cumbersome, it's time consuming, it's very error prone. But spotting all of that right away can give law enforcers a very good overview, not just of the popularity of the to-be-investigative message, but also, of course, of all the further messages that are depending on the exact content and context, might also require an investigation.
00:29:43:07 - 00:29:46:14
Abigail Acton
So they can sort of see whether it's going to snowball. Gather momentum.
00:29:46:16 - 00:30:10:15
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So that's part of it. So that's the part I alluded to when I said, okay, we attempt to facilitate investigations. We also touched upon facilitating in countermeasures in the sense of figuring out when such messages can lead to offline violence, which is even more challenging. Well, we have developed a tool.
00:30:10:17 - 00:30:40:23
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
We haven't validated it yet, but we have already developed and integrated a tool that estimates the future crime landscape that unfolds where the exact crimes are likely to unfold amidst disinformation activities. How did we do that? Well, we use datasets on disinformation campaigns and datasets on criminal activities. We match those so we could calculate how the former is likely to lead to the latter.
00:30:41:00 - 00:31:08:10
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
And we provide law enforcement agencies with those pieces of information. They will, of course, be in a much better position to be able to respond to the threats that are likely to occur, for example, by dispatching police forces to areas of concern that will be well prepared for whatever challenge they'll be up against. For example, riots that might arise in case of disinformation activities stir up trouble amongst right, left or other extremists.
00:31:10:02 - 00:31:27:02
Abigail Acton
And of course, it must be regardless of the fact that the word disinformation is something tricky for the law makers to get a handle on it must be very useful for them to be able to decide where to place their resources. I mean, it's so challenging, you know, everyone's so stretched. And you mentioned that it's undergoing pilot studies now, I think.
00:31:27:04 - 00:31:34:12
Abigail Acton
Do you have any idea when this will actually become something that will be available for law makers and for law enforcers?
00:31:34:14 - 00:31:58:00
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
Yeah, Well, that will take a little while, but we actually develop numerous tools that will now be validated in the second half of the project. So we'll be doing our three use cases again on right wing, left wing and code related extremism when we will be done in a year and a half from now, we will be having an exploitation plan in place and then technical partners developing the platform.
00:31:58:00 - 00:32:09:22
Sven-Eric Fikenscher
And its different tools and we'll take it from there and work on having to bring the tools to a stage where they can be fully explored at a later stage, hopefully be market ready.
00:32:09:24 - 00:32:29:14
Abigail Acton
Well, thank you all. I think that was absolutely fascinating. Particularly interesting to think about ideas that we might have held very comfortably without even thinking that they need to be examined like this idea of trust and distrust not being the same and the different kinds of the same spectrum. Fascinating. Really interesting. Thank you very much indeed for all your time.
00:32:29:16 - 00:32:32:13
Abigail Acton
And good luck with your research. Goodbye.
00:32:32:13 - 00:32:38:07
All
Thank you. Abigail was a pleasure to be doing this with you. Thank you so much, all of you. It was a pleasure to be here.
00:32:38:07 - 00:32:39:15
Jan Kubik
Thank you.
00:32:39:17 - 00:33:02:24
Abigail Acton
You're very welcome. If you've enjoyed this podcast, follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and check out the podcast homepage on the CORDIS website. Subscribe to make sure the hottest research and EU funded science isn't passing you by. And if you're enjoying listening, why not spread the word? Want to know about the latest work being done to make evacuations from ships on fire?
00:33:03:00 - 00:33:26:01
Abigail Acton
More efficient, or how cutting edge technology is determining the precise nutrients needed by an individual premature baby. Did you know that sensors, which can detect if a flying mosquito is a female, how old it is and if it is carrying Zika virus are being tested? In our last 35 episodes will be something to tweak your curiosity. Perhaps you want to see what other EU-funded projects are doing to support democracy.
00:33:26:03 - 00:33:47:15
Abigail Acton
Take a look at our recently published results pack, now available on the CORDIS website. New tools and insights to better connect citizens with democracy. The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of areas and subjects, from wine to weather. There's something there for you. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding.
00:33:47:17 - 00:34:07:14
Abigail Acton
Take a look at what others are doing in your domain, so come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line. Editorial at CORDIS dot Europa Dot EU. Until next time.
Insights and ideas Democracy is a collective achievement and 2024 has been called its biggest year. Eight of the 10 most populous countries in the world will hold elections in 2024. But the process will face challenges, perceived and unperceived. Around 1.5 billion people globally will be exercising their right to vote. With internet disinformation campaigns, fake news, the impact of AI, social media echo chambers, just how safe is our democratic process, and how can we make it more secure? Our three guests, who all received funding for their research from the EU, are here to tell us what they are doing to meet the challenges facing democracy in the 21st Century: Working out how trust and distrust are generated, understanding the mechanisms that allow for the rise of far-right populism, and using machine learning to determine when disinformation can tip from internet chat into real life threat. Jan Kubik is distinguished professor in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University in America, and professor emeritus of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. He is particularly interested in the rise of right-wing populism which he studies from different perspectives, combining political, cultural and economic factors. Kubik coordinated the POBREBEL project. David Dueñas-Cid is an associate professor at Kozminski University, Poland, and the director of the Public Sector Data-Driven Technologies Research Center. Through the ELECTRUST project he considered the intersection between digital sociology and e-government, with a clear focus on electronic democracy and internet voting. Sven-Eric Fikenscher (site in German) is a researcher with the Center of Excellence for Police and Security Research, at the site in German (Bavarian Police Academy) in Germany. He is particularly interested in refining our understanding of how disinformation campaigns online can result in criminality. The FERMI project is looking at how that knowledge can be used to help law enforcers focus on potential threats.
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Keywords
CORDIScovery, CORDIS, FERMI, POPREBEL, ELECTRUST