International Press Freedom Day: the importance of digital sovereignty
To mark International Press Freedom Day, it is worth taking a look at the complex relationships between fake news, press freedom and digital sovereignty and what Karlsruhe contributes as a digital location.
“New crises and wars as well as resurgent conflicts are endangering press freedom worldwide and have put journalists in danger in many countries around the world since the beginning of 2021,” reports the organization Reporters Without Borders.
“The coronavirus pandemic was planned by the German government, microchips are implanted during vaccination and a Covid-19 infection is actually no more dangerous than the flu”. False reports like this haven’t just been around since the coronavirus crisis, but they are becoming more frequent. They mainly spread on social media and cause uncertainty in our society. They not only endanger individual health, but also create a false picture of reality and fuel mistrust of state institutions, scientific findings and ultimately the media itself. But who is responsible for doing something about this? Are network-operating companies allowed to delete false and misleading news or does this open the door to decisive restrictions on freedom of the press and freedom of opinion?
Fake news and lateral thinking threaten press freedom in Germany, and not just online
According to the Baden-Württemberg State Agency for Civic Education (lpb), debates on the internet are also associated with very specific dangers for the freedom of the press. The German Press Agency dpa alone published over 500 fact checks during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.
Because communication on the internet is often anonymous, hate towards politics and the media is deliberately stirred up in some closed groups and the aggression is then taken to the streets. The increasing number of physical attacks on journalists at the Querdenken demonstrations was criticized by the organization Reporters Without Borders on the occasion of International Press Freedom Day. Germany fell three places in the international ranking to 16th place. There are three main reasons for this development: “legislation that endangers journalists and their sources, decreasing media diversity and, above all, violence at demonstrations.”
Detecting false reports on the web with artificial intelligence
The Correctiv research center has set itself the task of making a lasting contribution to an enlightened civil society and strengthening the culture of debate among citizens. In the fight against disinformation on digital platforms, Correcitv now also relies on the use of artificial intelligence (AI). In the fight against disinformation, they are working together with scientific teams from Ruhr University Bochum and the Technical University (TU) Dortmund in the “noFake” project. The aim is to use crowdsourcing and AI to identify and refute false reports.
The AI enables “time-consuming and repetitive work steps” to be completed more quickly and false reports on the internet to be tracked down more efficiently, says Correctiv, explaining the reason for the project. And this is urgently needed, because after the end of most protective measures in Germany, the number of false reports about Covid-19 has decreased, but numerous unverified reports about the Ukraine war and climate change are being published.
Limiting the power of corporations
However, AI and digitalization are both a blessing and a curse for journalism. AI can detect hate comments and fake news on the internet just as quickly as spelling and grammatical errors in texts. However, it is particularly problematic that deleting these is the responsibility of the companies operating the network and they decide which reports are to be classified as fake news. If this were left to the operators of Facebook and the like, they would be in a position to decide which information is made public – or not.
If fact-based reports such as stock market news or weather reports are increasingly written by computer programs in some media companies, the use of these new technologies is also being met with criticism. “But machines still can’t think,” warns technology journalist Jan Rähm in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio. This is because the increasing digitalization of the industry could also be misused for state propaganda or the targeted distribution of specific content by large internet providers.
Digital location Karlsruhe relies on digital sovereignty – also to safeguard freedom of the press and freedom of opinion
According to the lpb, the battle for digital sovereignty in Europe has long since begun. In order to make more independent of US and Chinese technology companies in the future and thus also protect press freedom on the internet, autonomous networks must be set up in Europe to protect against cybercrime and influence .
Digital sovereignty is also a high priority in Karlsruhe as a digital location. “We are increasingly dependent on providers from the USA, especially in the consumer sector,” says Dirk Fox, Managing Director of Secorvo Security Consulting GmbH. “And unfortunately, we have hardly any control options.” The fact that the industry leaders place little value on protecting personal data and curbing disinformation has also become known through the reports of whistleblowers. Fox does not want to accept the status quo. To ensure that people can move safely and independently in virtual worlds in the future, the “Digital Sovereignty” working group of the karlsruhe.digital initiative was set up under his chairmanship. “Improving data protection is one of our most important concerns,” emphasizes Fox. “But we also want to sensitize people to the issues of transparency and security when choosing a provider.”