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UNESCO-OSCE World Press Freedom Day Conference side event explores how to govern the relationship between media and social media
“The principle of freedom of expression is also the right to receive and seek information. And this right is directly infringed when social media algorithm actively promotes misleading or hateful content to increase engagement or when, on the contrary, social media prevent verified public interest information to be distributed”, said Assistant Director-General Tawfik Jelassi in his opening remarks at a side event that took place in New York on 3 May 2023.
Organized on World Press Freedom Day at the New York Vance Centre by UNESCO together with the , the side-event aimed at discussing how to govern the relationship between media and social media and how to build a healthier online information ecosystem to ensure access to public interest information.
While a growing majority of people consume news on social media, speakers discussed how the business model of social media platforms using technologies to capture attention affects users’ access to public interest information and thereby affect media and pluralism. They also highlighted how this same business model has left several minority languages entirely unchecked as 80% of content moderation is being performed in English.
In Colombia, the found evidence of public interest content in indigenous languages being removed from platforms due to the lack of understanding for these local languages by social media platforms.
For instance, we’ve seen content about the coronavirus pandemic measures in indigenous languages removed from social media as it was conflated with the circling misinformation about the virus.
The speakers then debated the obstacles that stand in the road towards developing solutions for healthier information ecosystems online, including the lack of capacity by independent media and civil society organisations to understand how content moderation of platforms works and the lack of transparency and accountability of platforms. “There is a lot of global inequity in terms of whom social media platforms are consulting, when, and why,” said Robyn Caplan, Senior Researcher at , “There is a power imbalance and discrepancies among social media platforms and the civil society.”
As a response to these issues, UNESCO as part of its project “” funded by the European Union is building capacities of local stakeholders through the setting up of national multistakeholder coalitions on content moderation and freedom of expression in the countries where the project is implemented – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, Kenya, and Colombia. These coalitions will work towards generating ideas and tools for combatting hate speech and disinformation at local level.
Daniel O’Maley, Senior Digital Governance Specialist at the at the y, underlined the various initiatives developed by the media community to create signals to identify what is trustworthy information online and how to connect this also with advertising industry.
With the generative AI, we will be seeing even more content produced so there is an opportunity to engage with platforms to have different stakeholders contribute to their understanding of what can be trustworthy, not in terms of content but about who is producing it.
“Public interest information on social media is often overshadowed by all kinds of irrelevant, even harmful content, due to the engagement rates this type of content receives. Some of these challenges deeply affect key pillars of democracy and the entire fabric of modern society. We must do more than just reacting to the harms and provide a vision of what a healthy information ecosystem should be,” stressed the , Teresa Ribeiro.
The recording of the event can be acceded through YouTube channel of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media on .
