media

The 2023 elections, in which we witnessed many facets of disinformation activities with a very high potential to change the voting tendencies of Turkish voters, were characterised by post-truth narratives that exacerbated the existing polarization and appealed to emotions, which were used by both the government and some parts of the opposition.

Countries such as Poland or Hungary frequently face criticism for a lack of media freedom. Their governments dispute that they oppose critical media. Yet, restrictions on media freedom come in many shapes and sizes.

Tasos Telloglou reports on the surveillance of journalists and politicians, the violation of telecommunications secrecy and his research into spyware.

A new law in Turkey that would jail people for spreading “fake news” online has widened the rift with European digital regulations and human rights standards to tighten the muzzle on the press and social media users ahead of elections next year.

Digital Rights Foundation, in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, conducted a series of focus group discussions with researchers from across the globe in order to deconstruct ‘gendered disinformation’, understand existing work on the subject and identify areas for future interventions.

AI in the context of international conflict is more likely to be associated with lethal autonomous weapons (LAWS) on the battlefield. Hiding on the other side of that coin are, however, rewarding questions regarding AI’s possible contribution to peace.

In Turkey, where twenty years of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule has seen the country descend into authoritarianism, mainstream media is almost completely under Erdoğan’s control. Social media remains one of the only outlets for those opposing Erdoğan to voice their discontent. Since the 2013 Gezi protests, the AKP has been trying to control the narratives on social media by employing social media trolls: networks of fake accounts that disseminate propaganda for the AKP and targets the opposition. Studies show that these troll networks are becoming more sophisticated and are changing tactics. Fazıl Alp Akiş explains how.

A conversation with Carlos Hernández- Echevarría from Maldita.es, a Spanish independent journalistic platform focused on the control of disinformation and public discourse through fact-checking and data journalism techniques.