Tag Archives: Whatsapp

After an unsuccessful legal challenge by All the Citizens and the Good Law Project, where next on WhatsApp use in government?

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Cassandra Somers-Joce and Joe Tomlinson discuss the use of instant messaging technologies within government, arguing that good government does not mean the eradication of such technology from government practice, but that it must be used in a way that is sensitive to the state’s duties to maintain a record.

The last few years have seen several prominent examples of instant messaging technologies – some with the capacity to auto-delete messages – being used within the UK government. Examples ranging from the articulation of the rationale behind the controversial prorogation of parliament to the securing of government medical device contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic have arisen in the press. Instant messaging technologies clearly play an important role in government communication and decision-making. These technologies are seemingly utilised daily across all levels; for instance, the BBC has reported that since November 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been sent a summary of his ‘red box’, containing prime ministerial business to attend to, via WhatsApp. These reports of high-profile usage have been followed by the emergence of a Cabinet Office policy that arguably encourages the use of self-deleting instant messaging, and research from the Institute for Government that shows divergent policies on this issue across government.

What should we make of these quickly evolving practices? Instant messaging technologies such as WhatsApp undoubtedly have their benefits for public officials, and the effective functioning of government overall. Perhaps most notably, they can enable officials to exchange messages and share information more easily than other systems. However, they create a range of complexities as regards the preservation of the public record, particularly where these technologies are used in place of documented meetings or official email communications. Not least amongst these complexities is that the use of these technologies engages a variety of public law norms related to governmental record-keeping and the disclosure of information. As practices have emerged, it has become increasingly clear that the use of WhatsApp by the UK government may be at risk of being in violation of these public law norms.

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Responding to the coronavirus ‘infodemic’: some lessons in tackling misinformation

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Michela.Palese (1)alan.jfif (1)The proliferation of false, misleading and harmful information about the coronavirus has been described as an ‘infodemic’ by the World Health Organisation. Government, social media companies, and others have taken concerted action against it. Michela Palese and Alan Renwick here examine these responses and consider potential lessons for tackling online misinformation more broadly.

COVID-19 is rightly dominating the international agenda. Besides the crucial health, economic, and social dimensions, considerable attention is being paid to the information on COVID-19 that is circulating online. 

Ever since the virus emerged, false, misleading and/or harmful information has spread, especially online. Newsguard, which ranks websites by trustworthiness, found that, in the 90 days to 3 March, 75 US websites publishing coronavirus misinformation received ‘more than 142 times the engagement of the two major public health institutions providing information about the outbreak’. Ofcom found that ‘[a]lmost half of UK online adults came across false or misleading information about the coronavirus’ in the last week of March. The World Health Organisation (WHO) described the misinformation as an ‘infodemic – an over-abundance of information – some accurate and some not – that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.’

The capacity of social media and 24/7 news to proliferate misinformation was already manifest. But this is the first time the potentially nefarious effects of an unregulated online space have combined with a global pandemic. As Conservative MP Damian Collins put it, this is the ‘first major public health crisis of the social media age’.

Governments and tech companies across the globe are responding. In this post, we highlight key steps and consider lessons for dealing with misinformation in general. Continue reading →

Responding to the challenges of digital democracy during Ireland’s abortion referendum

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com.google.Chrome.eocx2f (1)On 25 May, Ireland voted by a two-to-one margin to allow its parliament (the Oireachtas) to change the constitution in a way that would legalise abortion. In this post, Liz Carolan discusses the role of digital media in the referendum campaign, the challenges it poses for democracy, and potential solutions to the problems she observed.

Background

When it was announced that there was to be a referendum on abortion in Ireland, not many people anticipated a landslide; I certainly did not. I had spent the previous five months trying to monitor the financial and information flows behind digital political advertising, witnessing attempts at overseas interference, disinformation campaigns, and unregistered spending. With a tight result predicted by both polls and campaigns, I thought it was naive to think that the digital campaign would not be a deciding factor.

The Irish vote had real and concrete implications at home, but there were international stakes as well. Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion was held up by activists in the US and elsewhere as an example to be emulated. Pro-choice advocates globally were watching too, as Ireland’s vote to legalise same sex marriage in 2015 had emboldened equal marriage activists around the world.

So long before polling day, threats to the proper functioning of the referendum were evident to those of us spending time thinking about technology and democracy. The first threat was that overseas or untraceable financing would be used to try to influence the vote. The second was that deliberate disinformation campaigns could spread untruths, disparage campaigners, and polarise or isolate voters. The last was that a large amount of campaign spending could happen under the radar.

Digital advertisements are particularly interesting because they bring together money, information, and the algorithms that determine who sees what, and importantly who doesn’t. They are often only seen by those targeted with them and they are ephemeral, with the ability to appear and vanish without leaving a trace. They had been an avenue for the alleged overseas interference and deliberate disinformation campaigns during the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election.

The work of the Transparent Referendum Initiative

Looking at the ongoing investigations into these cases, it appeared that investigators and legislators alike were having challenges even knowing what had happening online during the voting period. So in February some colleagues and I launched the Transparent Referendum Initiative (TRI). We decided to build a database of as many ads as we could, to make it available to as many people as possible, in as close to real-time as possible. We did this so the ads could be exposed to scrutiny, fact-checking, and source-tracing, so that any media or regulatory response could be swift and contemporaneous, rather than retrospective. Continue reading →