Democratic Roadmap: Building Civic Resilience to the Global Digital Information Manipulation Challenge

Democracy depends on open, free, public debate and consistent access to diverse sources of fact-based information.  These features are essential for citizens to inform their opinions and exercise their human rights, including freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and the right to vote.  Citizens’ access to and trust in accurate information is necessary to effectively participate in open, democratic societies.  The functionality and vitality of democratic societies, as well as the ability to address transnational challenges such as climate change and pandemics, depend on the integrity of the information realm. 

An evolving lexicon has been developed to describe different dimensions of the information manipulation challenge – foreign information manipulation, including disinformation and propaganda, misinformation, and “fake news.”  The essential problem all of these terms point to, but don’t fully capture, is that the erosion of trust and integrity in the digital information realm has become a threat to the future of democracy.  While the term “disinformation” frequently is defined as false and intentionally misleading content, but is often used as shorthand for the entire spectrum of information challenges, we are using in this Roadmap the term “digital information manipulation” to capture the range of challenges related to the erosion of integrity in the digital information realm.  In a rapidly evolving information ecosystem, the global response to digital information manipulation has not matched the gravity of the threat, and the consequences are playing out, very visibly, as a dimension of the democratic recession around the world. 

Challenges to information integrity are not new, but digitization of the information realm has exponentially increased the speed, scale, and reach of all forms of misleading and manipulated content. Digital platforms have had a dramatic globalizing effect on the information realm and provided new modes of amplification. State and non-state actors alike now have the means and mechanisms to instantaneously manipulate civic discourse within communities and across borders, eroding the quality of the information citizens depend on to form opinions and voters use to make decisions in democratic societies around the world.

Many democracies are struggling to address the digital information manipulation challenge without falling into the trap of unintentionally undermining freedom of expression.  Some nations have opted for content-based regulations that criminalize disinformation or manipulated content in ways that are not consistent with their international human rights law obligations regarding restrictions on freedom of expression.

Meanwhile authoritarian regimes leverage concerns about “disinformation” and “fake news” online as a guise when passing regulations intended to stifle political dissent and censor individuals, including human rights defenders. Some authoritarian states have embarked on a strategy to advance their global “discourse power,” including by exploiting global digital platforms.

New capacities to manipulate civic discourse across borders via global information platforms have exposed asymmetries between open societies and closed ones, where the digital information realm is closely controlled by the state. Democratic, rights-respecting governments will need a more sophisticated understanding of how to protect individuals’ freedom of expression online to showcase democratic resilience.

Simultaneously, GAI presents new and evolving dynamics in the global digital information realm. While AI and algorithmic filtering and promotion of content have long been features of global digital platforms, new GAI-enabled tools are distinctive in that they provide the means to generate seemingly credible content for both constructive and malign purposes. GAI-created content risks further impacting the information realm, making it harder for citizens to assess the validity of sources they rely on to form opinions. Importantly, GAI also has the potential to enhance the ability to detect digitally manipulated content. That said, in the short term, it is not hard to imagine that GAI-enabled tools may favor malign actors who seek to erode the quality of civic discourse within democracies. Simply put, GAI could turbocharge the digital information manipulation challenge for democracies.

We are at an inflection point: globally, 2024 could be one of the most consequential election years in history; national elections have already occurred and are anticipated in 40 countries representing about 40 percent of the world’s population. Citizens need accurate sources of information to form opinions and participate in free and fair elections. Without reliable information, citizens cannot participate in government in an informed manner. Citizens also need skills to critically assess the digital information that will influence the exercise of their fundamental freedoms. Democratic stakeholders must continue to actively engage to mitigate potentially harmful effects of GAI on the digital information realm in the context of our elections.

Over the past decade, a great deal of time and energy has been invested in monitoring how social media encrypted chat apps, and other digital information platforms have been misused and exploited to undermine the quality of civic discourse within democracies. We must now focus on developing an affirmative, action-oriented plan to build civic resilience to digital information manipulation and to strengthen the integrity of the digital information realm in support of democracy. This must start with greater collective understanding of how digital information platforms work, how algorithms shape users’ information context, and how to prepare for the potential impact of GAI-generated content.

This roadmap offers affirmative steps to strengthen civic resilience to digital information manipulation.

Highlight the Importance of the Digital Information Manipulation Challenge as a Threat to the Functionality and Vitality of Society

The first step in addressing the digital information manipulation challenge is to emphasize that it poses a threat to the future of global democracy.  Degradation in the integrity of the global digital information realm has contributed to the erosion of citizen trust in democratic values and institutions around the world.  Digital information manipulation can also impair a shared sense of reality, making responding to global threats such as climate change or pandemics more complex and difficult to address.

Authoritarians and other malign actors have capitalized on digital platforms to shape discourse internally and across borders, and to exacerbate social divisions and increase polarization within and across democratic societies.

If the erosion of trust in the integrity of information and elections continues, the future of democracy will be further undermined, which itself would constitute a grave national security threat. Protecting the integrity of digital information is essential to protecting democracies across the globe. Building civic resilience to digital information manipulation is a national security and foreign policy imperative.

Recognize that Building Information Integrity Can Be Consistent with Freedom of Opinion and Expression

Digital information manipulation should be recognized as a threat to the exercise of freedom of opinion and expression, rather than as an unfortunate biproduct of protecting free expression.  The right to freedom of opinion and expression is set forth in both Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

A key step in addressing the digital information manipulation challenge is to recognize that the tension between a commitment to protect freedom of expression and the goal of preventing the spread of “harmful” content is a false dichotomy.  A binary framing misses the real issue:  digital information manipulation undermines one’s ability to exercise the freedom to seek and receive information necessary to form opinions.

Access to fact-based information, especially in the context of elections, is essential for citizens to form opinions and exercise their rights, including their right to vote.  We must understand all aspects of freedom of opinion and expression – not only the freedom to impart information, but also the freedom to seek and receive information, as well as the freedom to hold opinions – especially in the digital context.  All of these elements are fundamental to citizens in democratic society.

Freedom of expression is further impacted when technology is misused to facilitate gender-based violence to undermine the full and active participation of women, girls, and LGBTQI+ persons in political and other civic spaces.  When more than half of a national community is forced to retreat from participation in civic engagement online, it undermines full participation in democratic processes and debate.

Reinforce Private Sector Digital Platforms’ Ability to Strengthen Civic Resilience to Promote Information Integrity

Private sector platform efforts to respect freedom of expression can entail more than a single-minded focus on platform “users’” ability to express themselves or impart information.  It is important to acknowledge that platform community guidelines and other policies play a role in shaping civic discourse.  Digital platforms can play a role in building healthy information ecosystems in the societies in which they operate.

Private sector platforms also can contribute to building civic resilience to digital information manipulation.  An essential first step is enhanced platform transparency.  Lack of understanding of how their digital information feeds are shaped has made citizens less resilient to digital information manipulation.  The addition of GAI content, including deep/cheap fakes, audio fakes, and more, has magnified this challenge.

Private sector digital platforms can enhance transparency and communication about the following:

Prioritize Efforts to Address GAI, Particularly in the Context of Global 2024 Elections

Generative AI (GAI) has captured the world’s attention and democratic stakeholders must capitalize on that attention to quicken the pace of progress in building civic resilience to digital information manipulation.  GAI-enabled tools have been released to the public and “into the wild” without a full understanding of how these new tools might be applied, which could have significant implications for the quality and integrity of the information realm.  New capacities to generate synthetic content are now widely available to everyone, for both beneficial and malign purposes.  GAI may allow bad actors to more effectively micro-target and automate the creation of misleading information at scale, in ways that are cheaper and faster than pre-existing means.  Citizens will need to quickly develop new skills to adapt to the potential effects of GAI.

The blockbuster 2024 election year context has inspired new urgency around the responsibility to mitigate risks posed by GAI to freedom of expression and election integrity.  GAI-manipulated content already has been deployed in Slovakia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. AI-generated disinformation has the potential to alter civic discourse, public opinion, and narratives around the integrity of democratic elections.  It is not hard to imagine the global digital information realm flooded with deepfakes and synthetic media, designed to deceive citizens about candidates or impact voter turnout with misleading information about election processes.  GAI could fuel public concern about election fraud.

A big part of the solution to mitigating GAI-related risk is incentivizing private sector investment in beneficial applications of GAI that build civic resilience to digital information manipulation and enhance the quality of the digital information realm.  For example, greater investment in the development and use of methods to detect and label AI-generated content could help individuals better identify synthetic content.  GAI also could support higher quality civic debate online, by alerting users when they are using vitriolic and incendiary language.

White House Voluntary Commitments Ensuring Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI (July 2023) 

Hiroshima Process International Guiding Principles and Code of Conduct for Organizations Developing Advanced AI Systems (October 2023) 

Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections (February 2024) 

As articulated in the White House Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, the United States must lead key global conversations and collaborations to ensure that AI benefits the whole world, rather than exacerbating inequities, threatening human rights, and causing other harms.

As part of the same broad effort, the United States is committed to leading efforts to build civic resilience to digital information manipulation and strengthening information integrity as intrinsic to our core national interests, recognizing that tech innovation driven within the United States has been enabled by our commitment to human rights, including freedom of expression.

Degradation in integrity of the digital information realm has already significantly eroded citizen trust in democratic institutions and elections around the world. If this ominous trend continues, the future of democracy is at risk. This in turn will constitute a grave national security threat. It’s time for democracies to come together more effectively to take on the information integrity challenge together, as called for in the Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online. In the context of the blockbuster year of elections 2024, we must find effective, practical ways to address the information integrity challenge.