A NEW POLICY PARADIGM FOR THE POST-COVID WORLD by LSE for Maryam Forum.

Disinformation is a systemic risk to democracy Peter Pomerantsev and Benjamin Grazda Disinformation has polarised democratic societies and threatens to make common, evidencebased debate impossible. There is a systemic crisis going to the roots of democracy. The principles for a democratic information environment need to be reimagined for the digital age. In the past, non-democracies were defined by censorship and control over media, while democracies guaranteed freedom of expression, pluralism, and promoted the free flow of information across borders. Although there has always been space for disinformation in a democracy, there was also an underlying belief that good information would eventually win out in the ‘marketplace for ideas.’ Today all these assumptions have been turned upside down. Dictators, as well as political actors in democracies and ‘hybrid’ regimes, use freedom of speech as an excuse to spread massive amounts of disinformation at the click of a button, while employing online mobs and troll farms to drown out and intimidate critical voices and obscure truth. This constitutes a sort of censorship through noise, but one which does not contravene freedom of expression legislation. The ease with which this digital disinformation can be created, scaled and targeted also questions the validity of the concept of the idea marketplace. As a result, we are seeing pluralism tip into polarisation and fracture so extreme that they risk making a common debate based on evidence and trust impossible. Societies where people live in separate realities are also more vulnerable to subversive campaigns from hostile states and extremist groups, who take advantage of the borderless information environment for malign ends. Authoritarian powers like China and Russia are also rapidly defining their own versions of the online space. They have doctrines of ‘sovereignty’ founded on censorship, and are making technological advances and restricting the rights of their populations, even as they deliver effective online services for them. In short, there is a systemic crisis going to the roots of democracy. The principles for a democratic information environment need to be reimagined for the digital age. We propose a holistic approach to combat disinformation that combines new regulation, innovations within the media and political consensus building. Recommendation 1: The public should be given the ability to evaluate the algorithms governing online platforms through government oversight, academic analysis and public interest reporting. A true democracy has public accountability for how our public sphere is shaped, and a say in its governance. The public should have the ability to evaluate the algorithms governing online platforms through government oversight, academic analysis and public interest reporting. The human right to information and unhindered communication should serve as the benchmark by which to judge these platforms. Greater transparency would also allow the public to understand whether online platforms are designed to uphold rights, whether they truly promote freedom of choice, and what they are doing to slow the spread of disinformation and malign campaigns. The Forum on Information and Democracy proposes 250 specific recommendations for states and platforms to radically change the way the internet is governed and bring it more in line with democratic norms. At the core of their philosophy is greater transparency: transparency 23