{"id":2190,"date":"2021-04-16T23:10:25","date_gmt":"2021-04-17T03:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.law.temple.edu\/lppp\/?p=2190"},"modified":"2021-04-16T23:10:28","modified_gmt":"2021-04-17T03:10:28","slug":"ukraine-shows-the-way-forward-on-combating-disinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.law.temple.edu\/lppp\/ukraine-shows-the-way-forward-on-combating-disinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine Shows the Way Forward on Combating Disinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander Rojavin ’20, Law & Public Policy Scholar<\/strong><\/p>\n

On April 5, Ukraine\u2019s new Center for Countering Disinformation officially came online<\/span><\/a>. Framed by its inaugural director Polina Lysenko as aiming to “<\/span>to counteract propaganda, destructive disinformation and campaigns, as well as to prevent manipulation of public opinion<\/span><\/a>,” the Center is designed to be a flagship of the Zelensky administration\u2019s counter-disinformation efforts. The administration has every reason to hope for the Center\u2019s success, and if it is indeed successful, the resulting benefits would be widespread\u2014global, in fact.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such an outcome is exactly part of President Zelensky\u2019s ambitious vision: he sees this Center becoming a vital hub of counter-disinformation strategy and resources not just domestically, but internationally. His vision is grounded in sound logic. Though many democracies have been plagued by the Kremlin\u2019s disinformation efforts, Ukraine, as the President\u2019s office put it, has served for several years as a “testing ground” for the Kremlin\u2019s disinformation experiments. Much as Ukraine\u2019s military has spent seven years in a de facto state of war, so have Ukraine\u2019s journalists and civil society spent seven years operating on the front lines in a state of information war. Consequently, journalists like Savik Shuster and Dmytro Gordon, and NGOs like StopFake<\/span><\/a> can offer a veritable arsenal of knowledge on what forms disinformation takes, what works well against it, and how it is likely to evolve. And the new Center would do well to foster intimate cross-sector ties with Ukrainian civil society, draw on this considerable, battle-tested arsenal, and relay it to its international partners.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, how specifically the Center will implement its broad mandate remains to be seen. Though the Center seems to be enjoying buy-in from both domestic and international partners\u2014in a meeting with the Zelensky administration on April 6, the ambassadors to Ukraine from the G7, Finland, and Israel, and the heads of the NATO and EU missions to Ukraine discussed potential collaboration with overt interest\u2014it needs to explicitly identify the activities it will undertake.<\/p>\n

\n

In an interview<\/span><\/a> on April 6, Alesya Batsman, the editor-in-chief of online news portal Gordonua.com, remarked that the creation of the Center is long-overdue and though its future activities are currently unclear, there are two major goals the Center can formulate: (1) organizing a robust, effective, and trustworthy Ukrainian media and journalism industry that could shape narratives and its audience\u2019s perceptions on its own terms rather than in response to the Kremlin\u2019s disinformation, and (2) neutering online sources of disinformation, including troll networks on social media and disinformation hubs masquerading as legitimate news sources. Regardless of which goal the Center adopts, Batsman correctly asserted that it must be proactive in its engagements, since chasing after disinformation and doing nothing but yelling that something is untrue is a losing strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n

While both of Batsman\u2019s highlighted goals are existentially important, there is another goal that undergirds them both: improving media literacy domestically and globally. “To be informed is to be powerful,” Batsman says. Yes, but it is difficult to be informed without first knowing how to become informed. Only 40% of Americans<\/span><\/a> can correctly answer questions designed to test digital literacy. In <\/span>a study spanning 25 countries<\/span><\/a>, 86% of respondents said that they had believed various falsehoods they encountered online or on TV. While the Center must certainly engage with disinformation directly, the most important long-term goal must be to strengthen Ukraine\u2019s immune system by improving its citizens\u2019 media literacy, teaching them how to identify reliable news sources, how to verify whether something is true. Were the Center to accomplish this, the seeds of disinformation would be denied fertile ground without which they cannot take root, and the Center\u2019s expertise would be invaluable worldwide.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is also equally critical that the Center enshrine in its mission statement and all foundational internal and external communications an unwavering commitment to the freedom of speech and of the press. It will be all too easy to accuse the Center of tumbling down a slippery slope that results in a state-controlled information space as in Russia, which is why the Center must assert its commitment now at its very formation and begin demonstrating the transparency of its operations.<\/p>\n

While there has been quite a bit of demagogic, if not entirely incorrect, rhetoric on the subject\u2014for example, on the February 5 livestream of the political talk show Savik Shuster\u2019s Freedom of Speech<\/i><\/span><\/a>, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov declared that “freedom of speech does not mean freedom of propaganda for an aggressor state”\u2014the Center has at its disposal a useful resource: the Zelensky administration\u2019s short history of well-received counter-disinformation acts. On February 25, <\/span>a regional court blacklisted<\/span><\/a> several Russian sites that served as disseminators of disinformation. On February 2, President Zelensky <\/span>closed three TV channels<\/span><\/a> owned by a Kremlin ally. However, rather than cause much controversy, the move was a popular one, as it was done on advice received from the intelligence community, and once the channels were taken down, Ukrainian journalists and NGOs working to protect the freedom of speech <\/span>published an open letter<\/span><\/a> in support of the move. In plainly asserting its commitment to the freedom of speech, the Center should use these scenarios to begin distinguishing malignant disinformation from legitimate journalistic activity and signal what measures it may take. The Center must be shamelessly transparent in its definitions and its activities, and communicating this at its inception would be strategic and reassuring.<\/span><\/p>\n

A robust fourth estate is instrumental to a democracy\u2019s immune system and the effective workings of its information space, and with the end of the Covid pandemic inching into sight, disinformation will resume its reign as one of the most insidious global epidemics today. It is reassuring, then, that with the new Center for Countering Disinformation, Ukraine can now share the wealth of counter-disinformation experience it has amassed as the Kremlin\u2019s disinformation laboratory with the world, and democracies worldwide have the opportunity to learn from Ukraine\u2019s extensive firsthand experiences with the Kremlin\u2019s information war machine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alexander Rojavin ’20, Law & Public Policy Scholar On April 5, Ukraine\u2019s new Center for Countering Disinformation officially came online. Framed by its inaugural director Polina Lysenko as aiming to “to counteract propaganda, destructive disinformation and campaigns, as well as to prevent manipulation of public opinion,” the Center is designed to be a flagship of the Zelensky administration\u2019s counter-disinformation efforts. The administration has every reason to hope for the Center\u2019s success, and if it is indeed successful, the resulting benefits … <\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-2190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","infinite-scroll-item","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"yoast_head":"\r\nUkraine Shows the Way Forward on Combating Disinformation - Law & Public Policy Program<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www2.law.temple.edu\/lppp\/ukraine-shows-the-way-forward-on-combating-disinformation\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ukraine Shows the Way Forward on Combating Disinformation - Law & Public Policy Program\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Alexander Rojavin ’20, Law & Public Policy Scholar On April 5, Ukraine\u2019s new Center for Countering Disinformation officially came online. 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