Nishant Shah and Anushree Majumdar
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The Making of Misinformed Choice: The impact of digital technologies in election campaigns - insights from nine Asian countries
by Nishant Shah and Anushree Majumdar
Overview
The ability of citizens to make informed decisions is an essential prerequisite for democracy, but is undermined by the spread of disinformation. It is important to stress that citizens' decision-making capacity is impaired not by a lack of information, but by too much information. The authors of the Digital Asia Hub (Hong Kong) examined the current picture of disinformation and successful countermeasures in nine (South) East Asian countries and concluded that digital disinformation is widespread and contributes to the erosion of democracy. Government and civil society initiatives, sometimes with the support of the private sector, are trying to counter this trend. Most countermeasures aim to promote media literacy, provide easily accessible fact-checks, train journalists and collect information on disinformation campaigns.
This report is part of an international research series commissioned and supervised by the Upgrade Democracy Team from 2023-2024 under the motto “Strengthening Democracy, Countering Disinformation”.
Find the English version report PDF here
Learn more about the research series here