Moderator: Mr. Noam Manella
Dr. Elizabeth Bodine-Baron | Prof. Karine Nahon | Mr. Noam Rotem | Mr. David Siman-Tov
In this panel, three speakers presented their take on the battle for minds in the digital world.
Prof. Karine Nahon spoke about her research on politics of information and the role of the media in challenging democracy. As there are very few content suppliers, they have power to control the network. This power is the ability of one player to change our behavior during an election. She noted Facebook, which has a monopoly in every country. Fake news spreads quickly to audiences over the network. The name of the game is intervention of strong powers, both external and internal. For example, the US elections did not focus on important issues, but rather on the fact that Hilary Clinton used her personal emails for political purposes. This was pushed by the Russians.
Social media in particular represents a distorted reality where marginal groups have more power, while the mediators, that is the platforms of Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. determine the rules of the game, Facebook decides which information flows at the time of an election. The moment something becomes viral, it is impossible to control it anymore. Prof Karine Nahon gave the example of the Me Too movement. It spread to 84 different countries within 24 hours.
She concluded with several insights, namely that technology is very political and it is where the power struggles occur. The platforms are very strong players. The state also has been privatized as the one in control is the social media platform.
Dr. Elizabeth Bodine-Baron focused on Russian language populations in former Soviet states and looked at the content that they produced on Twitter over three months in 2016. She found two communities, a pro-Russian one and a pro-Ukrainian one. Smaller communities were connected to both of these larger ones. Those smaller ones were those who were on the fence. Whereas the goals of the Russian influence campaign in the US was to create distrust of democratic institutions, the goals here were to drive a wedge between the Russian speaking populations in these former Soviet states.
Mr. Attila Somfalvi spoke about the dangers of social media and fake news. Although fake news was possible in the traditional media, the difference is the accessibility as the dissemination is in a matter of seconds. He noted how easy it was to disseminate fake news through Whatsapp on personal groups and platforms upon which people use all the time. Journalists need to cope with fake news, as they see it too. It’s very dangerous and people publish it without thinking. He noted that the lies are disseminated six times more than the truth. The established media must continue to do its job of bringing all opinions, all sides, together, and in the war between fake new and truth, the truth will prevail.