Session
Cybersecurity, Cybercrime & Online Safety
Disinformation
Organizer 1: Jacob Mchangama, Justitia
Organizer 2: Owono Julie, 🔒
Organizer 3: Jim Prendergast, 🔒
Organizer 4: Samantha Dickinson, 🔒
Speaker 1: Evelyn Aswad, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 2: Nidhi Hebbar, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Tomiwa Ilori, Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 4: Jacob Mchangama, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Owono Julie, Civil Society, African Group
Jim Prendergast, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Samantha Dickinson, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Round Table - 90 Min
A. How do we best ensure rights-based approaches to addressing mis- and disinformation?
B. What role should governments play in addressing misinformation and disinformation? What about tech companies?
C. How can international cooperation be leveraged to address cross-border misinformation and disinformation?
What will participants gain from attending this session? We want this session to be as interactive as possible because we believe we have much to learn from the participants. Presentations will be short but will pose questions to the audience, such as:
- How do we best ensure rights-based approaches to addressing mis- and disinformation?
- What role should governments play in addressing misinformation and disinformation? What about tech companies?
- How can international cooperation be leveraged to address cross-border misinformation and disinformation?
Description:
Determining the line between truth and falsehood – between opinion and fact, misinformation, and political speech – is impossible to automate fully, as it often requires human judgment and context. Moderation of misinformation raises serious human rights questions related to freedom of speech and access to information.
This panel will explore options for addressing mis- and disinformation from a rights-based perspective. Panelists will discuss ranking as a tool to promote authoritative information and scalable user empowerment tools built with information literacy best practices in mind. Our experts in international human rights law will explain the legal frameworks that address mis- and disinformation, as well as relevant human rights guidance for addressing false speech in a rights-protective manner.
Our priority is to have a deep discussion with the audience so that opening remarks will be brief. Our moderator, Julie Owno, will set the stage for the session. Evelyn Aswad (University of Oklahoma) will share her perspectives as an international human rights law expert. Tomiwa Ilori (University of Pretoria), also an expert in IHRL, will provide a regional perspective, with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa, and Nidhi Hebbar (Google) will discuss how to develop products that increase users’ information literacy.
Our session goals are to explore and discuss rights-respecting tools that address mis/disinformation and to learn from participants what tools they would like to see developed and what key considerations should be for their development.
We want to be solution-oriented, so participants will be asked what types of tools they would like to see developed. Through this discussion, we hope to outline fundamental principles that might guide the development of such tools in the future. We hope this discussion will inspire participants to initiate future conversations about the importance of developing and leveraging rights-respecting tools to address mis- and disinformation.
Hybrid Format: With Zoom, both onsite and online participants will be able to see and hear each other. To ensure neutral management of the question queue, we will require all participants to be logged in, and we will prioritize remote participants as they may be more difficult to identify. Our onsite and online moderators will maintain constant communication to facilitate questions and comments from both groups.
We acknowledge the unique challenges and opportunities that remote participants face, such as time zone differences, technical limitations, and communication style differences. Therefore, we will urge our speakers to use clear and concise language, avoid technical jargon, and provide context for all information discussed during the session to enable both onsite and online participants to follow and understand the content.
Finally, we will explore the use of polling tools, like Mentimeter or Poll Everywhere, to gather feedback from both onsite and online participants in real-time.