A powerful weapon in a time of global democratic backsliding, election misinformation may undermine democracy via a range of mechanisms. Election misinformation may influence an electorate to cast their ballots for candidates they otherwise might not have on the basis of incorrect information about a country’s economy, the candidates, or some other phenomenon. Other false narratives may cast doubt on the credibility of the electoral process, potentially reducing future voter participation and confidence in democracy and its leaders as a whole – both among those who buy into election misinformation as well as those who are cognizant of the prevalence of the phenomenon and its hold over certain voters. Additionally, that election misinformation often leverages existing social cleavages (across party lines, race, religion etc.) makes consensus-building and compromise that are at the heart of democratic governance, that much harder.

In 2023, LIRNEasia led an IDRC-funded project to 1) understand election influence operations and measures to counter disinformation globally, especially pertaining to Asia; 2) map actors who are involved in election related counter-disinformation actions in five countries in South and Southeast Asia, and 3) document their past and upcoming activities related to countering disinformation around elections. This research was intended to lay the groundwork for a network of actors, enabling them to systematically work towards countering disinformation related to elections and document the impact of their actions. The project report can be found here: https://lirneasia.net/2024/09/election-misinformation-in-south-and-south-east-asia-the-phenomenon-and-measures-to-counter-it-report-draft/

The report explores the scope of election misinformation in Asia and operations to counter the phenomenon in the following two parts: first, a literature review covering the limited literature on election misinformation, both globally and in Asia; second, four country case studies (India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka) that cover the extent of the problem, safeguards, and counter-election misinformation operations within each country.

The literature review finds that there is a dearth of scholarly work on election misinformation in Asia. There is ample study of general misinformation, but next to no peer-reviewed papers that recognize election misinformation as a phenomenon distinct from general misinformation. There is limited study of misinformation during elections, and most of these exist in developed world contexts outside of Asia. The papers covered explore how election misinformation is engineering and disseminated on platforms, the impacts on the electoral process and democracy (through behavioral changes in those who believe misinformation as well as those who are aware of the prevalence of election misinformation and others’ susceptibility to believing it), and the demographics of those who are likely to be more susceptible to election misinformation. The review also finds that AI can be a deadly tool in creating election misinformation (e.g., generative AI) and disseminating it (e.g., the use of bots to amplify misinformation). Peer-reviewed scholarly research on counter-election misinformation initiatives in Asia is also sparse.

After establishing what the literature, the report then presents four country case studies on election misinformation in India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, summarized respectively in the next few paragraphs.

India
Election misinformation is rampant in India, taking various forms such as false claims, manipulated images, and deep-fake videos that target political parties, leaders, and key social issues. These narratives often revolve around highly emotive themes like religious tensions, national security, economic promises, and social welfare policies. There is some government involvement (IT cells favorable to the Modi government have engaged in misinformation operations as far back as 2014). The report also finds AI has become a prominent tool in swaying voters – for example, the creation of deepfakes and resurrections of eminent political personalities. Both social and traditional media are complicit in misinformation production and dissemination: the former (Whatsapp, Facebook, X) is a common vector of misinformation, and upon whose heavy reliance those in more rural areas are typically made more susceptible to misinformation; the latter sees strong corporate control that stifles alternate voices. There aren’t any legal safeguards that explicitly refer to election misinformation, there are a couple that can apply to it, like the Section 79 of the information technology act, which directs that internet service provides may be responsible for content that resides on the websites that they host and must take down content when directed. In terms of counter-election misinformation operations, there are both government and private fact-checking initiatives; the latter are largely dependent on tech giants like Meta.

Indonesia
Election misinformation has been found to reduce citizen confidence in Indonesia’s political system. The report finds that election misinformation in Indonesia, naturally heightened during the election cycle, reaches its peak once the campaign period ends, with false content targeting political parties, election observers and organisers, with three common strategies—damaging reputation, manipulating photos and videos, and provoking emotions—being used to disseminate false information about the 2024 election. Attacks on Election Commission too. A lot of misinformation is disseminated over social media, and the government does engage with platforms, for example by ordering Facebook to ramp up counter-misinformation efforts. Indonesia has laws that explicitly refer to election misinformation, and other laws that don’t refer to election misinformation but include clauses related to rules and sanctions regarding the dissemination of false information including election periods. While these laws provide legal mechanisms to address false information dissemination during elections, some have been used to suppress free speech. One example is the Electronic Information and Transactions Law that regulates the use of information technology and electronic transactions. In this landscape, the election commission of Indonesia and the election supervisory board have taken steps to maintain the integrity of elections by educating the public on the dangers of mis/dis information. There are other civil society groups on the ground attempting to address the same problem – Kawal Pemilu (“guard the election,” in Indonesian) is one such. The report on Indonesia goes into the inner workings of the Kawal Pemilu website which allows citizens to compare official vote tallies with the original tabulations from polling stations.

Philippines
Election misinformation is common in Philippines and is used as a “battleground” during the run up for elections. Rodrigo Duterte manipulated the media through coordinated misinformation campaigns run by influencers when he entered politics in 2016. Similar tactics were used in 2022 to boost Marcos Jr.’s credibility. The election misinformation landscape in the Philippines includes gendered misinformation and false positive portrayals, with documented government involvement, such as troll farms linked to Duterte’s social media operator in 2019. In the Philippines, Facebook is widely used, with influencer networks on the platform having an especially broad reach. Efforts to counter election misinformation are broadly insufficient, are often entangled with political interests, and are implemented ineffectively. The primary counter disinformation law was enacted during COVID-19 with penalties for spreading covid-19 related disinformation, hence limited in scope. The Cyber Crime Prevention Act of 2012 has been weaponized against journalists and has had “chilling effects” on free speech. Cases of cyber libel have also been used to silent dissent with politicians commonly filing these cases. The problem of crafting effective policies to counter election misinformation is further complicated by the governments that try to bring in such policies themselves being linked to misinformation campaigns. There are counter misinformation initiatives on the ground such as FactsFirstPH (an organization that adopts a multi-layered approach to tackling misinformation through fact checking, amplifying the fact checks, research into long term trends and supporting the layers from legal attacks) and Break the Fake movement (a youth led organization that mentor influencers to counter disinformation).

Sri Lanka
There is a thriving election misinformation industry in Sri Lanka, in which social media pages are created and grown, and then sold to parties and candidates to disseminate false narratives in their favor. This segment also finds that digital and media literacy, and critical thinking skills needed to determine the veracity of information are generally low. Both social media and traditional media are complicit in the spread of misinformation – in the case of the former, platforms do not take adequate measures to tackle misinformation, and users enjoy anonymity, and easy dissemination and high viewership of false narratives; with the latter, sources sometimes align with and spread misinformation in favor of political parties. There is little recourse from the state, because existing legal safeguards are inadequate. The segment ends with a case study of Hashtag Generation, a non-profit civil society organisation that conducts fact-checking and ran media monitoring operations during the 2019 presidential and 2020 parliamentary elections that covered election misinformation, among a range of problematic content. While initiatives such as these are critical in the fight against election misinformation, there must also be complemented is a need for developing media literacy and critical thinking skills among voters.

The findings across the literature review and country report emphasize the need for developments both in academia and on-the-ground counter-misinformation operations. Developments in academia would involve building a body of peer-reviewed work on the impacts of election misinformation on factors like confidence in democracy, likelihood to vote, and social cohesion, in Asia. Scholarly work testing the efficacy of different types of countermeasures ought to also be quantitatively studied, which would help inform on-the-ground countermeasures by helping actors understand what does and doesn’t work in the Asia context. Regarding on-the-ground countermeasures themselves, greater engagement between civil society organizations and government with social media platforms. Finally, further efforts to building democratic, critical thinking, and media literacy skills are imperative to help citizens determine the accuracy of the information they are exposed to.