Freedom Interrupted: Electoral Interference

I’m at Attention: Freedom Interrupted, a conference at McGill University this week, an international conversation about information and democracy that brings together scholars, activists and policymakers from the US, Canada and around the world. It’s a timely conversation – the US and Canada seem to be descending into a trade war and Canadians are responding with understandable anger towards their southern neighbor. Conversations about foreign election interference – the topic proposed for the conversation six months ago – now seems like a subset of broader conversations about the future of information and democracy.

That’s not to say we’re not seeing old-fashioned election interference. Marcus Kolga of DIsinfowatch offers a chilling overview of Russian interference in Moldovan and Romanian elections. Russia directly paid hundreds of thousands of Moldovans to vote against a pro-EU candidate, and ran massive pro-Russian campaigns on Telegram. These were unsuccessful and the pro-EU candidate was re-elected.

But Russian disinfo did manage to spoil the first round of Romanian elections, Kolga tells us. Calvin Georgescu, an obscure fringe candidate, rose in prominence during the first round of the elections through a suspiciously successful TikTok campaign. There’s lots of evidence that Georgescu, who advocates ties between Romania and Russia, perhaps most compellingly the fact that investigators found $10 million dollars and a ticket to Moscow buried under his house. While Romania threw out results from the first round of the election, JD Vance spoke in favor of Georgescu, complaining that Romania was unfairly overturning results.

Russian disinfo is showing up in more developed nations as well, Kolga argues. AfD in Germany is carrying water for Russia, advocating for removal of sanctions against the nation and for Germany to end support for Ukraine. The technique of amplifying and supporting fringe parties is a common Russian tactic, he argues.

Mercator senior fellow, Felix Kartte notes that finding Russian propaganda used to involve complex forensic work. Now Russian propaganda is mainstreamed and peddled by the US president. Elon Musk is using his platform to share far-right propaganda regarding the German election. Our toolbox is still designed to study the 1.0, and we are instead dealing with broadcast propaganda, he warns.

Shirin Anlen from Witness connects issues like deepfakes and non consensual imagery with attacks on democracy. We’re still in the “prepare, don’t panic” stage of deepfakes, she suggests, but we are seeing some worrying indications. AI is being used to translate speeches into multiple dialects, letting a leader like Modi speak to multiple audiences at the same time. Also, deepfakes are being used to create entertaining memes, less than for fooling the electorate. But the specter of deepfakes makes it easier to accuse real information of being faked and runs the risk of making us doubt real audio and video evidence.

A question to the panel asks whether younger voters are more vulnerable to influence of people like Andrew Tate. Kartte notes that young people are co-creators of these narratives, not just consumers. The far right has mastered integrating political messaging with lifestyle codes and know better how to meet the emotional needs of young people than the left. Shirin notes that human rights no longer seems to trigger a response in young audiences – right-wing extremists seem better able to identify issues that resonate with these audiences.

A questioner from Colombia mentions that Russia is not the only country that interferes in overseas elections – American interference in Colombia is more subtle than Russian interference, but still problematic. How should we draw the line between politics and interference? Moderator Paul Wells references a referendum in Quebec in 1995 where Bill Clinton spoke about the importance of a unified Canada: “That was clear foreign election interference. The difference is that I liked it.” Kartte talks about the distinction between Russian propaganda media and state-supported media like Deutsche Welle – “it’s not like a law of physics, it’s a finer line”.

Another questioner points out that Canada is going to be facing a very brief electoral campaign – how do we “prebunk” narratives designed to undercut the election? Shirin notes Zelenskyy’s success in debunking a deepfake that announced a Ukrainian surrender – speed and clarity is key in this work.

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