Credit: Electoral Commission
  |   Ben Scallan   |   Irish News

Anti-disinformation force provides no examples of disinformation

Ireland’s official body to counter electoral “disinformation” failed to provide a single example of disinformation when asked, Gript can reveal.

Ireland’s Electoral Commission was established by the government in February of this year to fulfil a variety of roles, including reviewing constituency boundaries, registering political parties, and more.

However, the Commission also has another remit – namely, fighting “misleading” information during election time.

As reported by The Irish Times last year:

“Social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will be forced to take down misleading information at election time under proposed legislation.

The Electoral Reform Bill 2022 envisages the Electoral Commission having the power to investigate online claims that amount to disinformation at election times.

It would be able to order social-media outlets to take down offending posts, correct them or label them as potential misinformation.

It would also be able to order any host of any online platform to publish a statement informing all readers of manipulative or inauthentic behaviour or the use of an undisclosed bot.”

What’s more, the CEO of the Commission, Art O’Leary, told the Consultative Forum on International Security this week that such disinformation was being spread at an “enormous” scale. As reported by the Journal.ie:

“The head of Ireland’s electoral commission has warned that disinformation around elections is at an “enormous” scale. Art O’Leary, the CEO of the Electoral Commission of Ireland, said that key to fighting the risk to elections was by his newly formed organisation engaging with State entities but also with academics and media organisations.”

However, when asked by Gript to provide examples of statements made during Irish elections and referendum campaigns that the group considers to be “misinformation” or “disinformation,” a Commission spokesman simply replied with an explanation of what the terms mean:

“Under this legislation:

“disinformation”, for the purposes of this Act, means any false or misleading online electoral information that— (a) may cause public harm, and (b) by reason of the nature and character of its content, context or any other relevant circumstance gives rise to the inference that it was created or disseminated in order to deceive;”

“misinformation”, for the purposes of this Act, means any false or misleading online electoral process information that may cause public harm, whether or not the information was created or disseminated with knowledge of its falsity or misleading nature or with any intention to cause such harm;”

The group added:

“As a Commission our work will be aligned to the requirements of the Act.”

When asked again if any specific examples of disinformation could be provided, the group simply replied: “Our work and functions since our establishment in February focus exclusively on upcoming electoral events.”

While this organisation is independent of government, it is “reporting directly to the Oireachtas,” and a large number of its members are nominated by the government.

One of the Commission’s members is John Curran, who is a former government Junior Minister who served as a Fianna Fáil TD as recently as 2020.

Another is Professor Caroline Fennell, who is an academic that was recently appointed as the Chair of the Independent Anti-Racism Committee, which delivered the government’s “National Action Plan Against Racism,” including recommendations around hate speech laws.

This newly-created organisation has powers which will come into effect on a phased basis, and it will likely become a force in Irish politics in coming elections and referenda.

Gript previously interviewed Green Party Media Minister Catherine Martin on the government’s strategy against misinformation, during which she repeatedly declined to say whether or not the strategy would target potential false statements by mainstream media outlets, such as RTÉ.

 

 

 

 

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