CIPR International holds elections-centric webinar; US, India, and Africa in focus

CIPR International held an online webinar on 29 October 2024, Tuesday, titled 'Navigating complexity and unintended consequences in the world's biggest ever election year.'

The webinar was moderated by CIPR International Vice Chair Taazima Kala-Essack, and featured a panel consisting of Rahul Verma - Fellow, Centre for Policy Research; Tina McCorkindale - President and CEO, Institute for Public Relations; and Abimbola Ogundairo - Advocacy and Campaigns Lead, Africa No Filter. Each panellist provided expert insights on a range of topics relating to elections.

Disinformation in election campaigns

Rahul Verma, who is also a political scientist, stated that some political campaigns aren't concerned about the accuracy of their messaging: "In politics, you will see communicators actually engaging in disinformation to help them win elections. Elections also become about narrative wars - in creating those narrative wars, political parties and campaign teams are going to twist certain information in a way that becomes advantageous to their own side."

Rahul explained that the speed at which disinformation spreads, particularly on social media, means that "the damage has already been done" before information can be fact-checked online - before predicting that disinformation will always be present in elections.

Tina McCorkindale revealed that an annual survey conducted by the Institute for Public Relations, which has been carrying out disinformation research since the 2016 US presidential election, found that "61% of respondents say that public relations practitioners are at least somewhat responsible for spreading disinformation." The survey also showed that respondents believed that "really everybody should be combating disinformation in some way, and that includes communicators." 

Tina gave an example of a newspaper in the Philadelphia area instructing readers to turn up on November 6th to vote, one day after the 2024 US election - and pointed out that "it does matter (to federal prosecutors) if it is disinformation or misinformation." Another survey concluded that "80% of voters in America want organisations to help contribute to a free and fair election," rather than being fed "partisan rhetoric", linking to Rahul's point.

Abimbola Ogundairo, who is an advocate for the power of storytelling in dispelling bad narratives through Africa No Filter, believes that storytelling is vital in election campaigns too. "Storytelling is a powerful way to make elections relatable and understandable to everyone. I think organisations can really play to the strength of using simple storytelling approaches that do not rely on reductionist or biased narratives, so it's not about what everyone already expects to be said." 

Abimbola described information conveyed through storytelling as "not dramatised, but contextualized, and I think that goes a really long way in addressing the nuances that are usually left out in cases of misinformation and disinformation." Abimbola highlighted that election campaigns are all about connecting with people, and so introducing a human aspect through storytelling is a much healthier way of appealing to voters "that is devoid of existing or preexisting biases".

Public trust and media scepticism during complex elections

Tina McCorkindale stated that communicators play a crucial role in maintaining the public's trust. "We have to make sure that we're communicating transparently and accurately at all times, not just during election season, because internally if you say something and it's not accurate or you don't have the full picture, you've destroyed trust.” She described trust as the cornerstone of the communications industry, and noted that earning the public's trust is critically important for communicators. 

In terms of media scepticism, "what we're seeing in the US with polarization is how people are consuming news and how people are consuming media, which is different," Tina explained. "We do have an increase in polarization and partisanship that we didn't have before, and a lot of it is because there's a lot of hate being spread." Tina deduced that hateful rhetoric within election communication and public discourse in the US has led to people clinging to what they believe is the "right side". She gave the example of a speaker at a Trump rally calling Puerto Rico "an island of garbage", which Tina described as "abhorrent commentary about people - because of that, people are going to the (news) sources that align with what they believe is their position," which is leading to further polarization in her view. 

She also pointed out the differing levels of trust in news outlets between political groups. Tina noted that a survey showed that "about 67%" of Democrats trust the New York Times, whereas only around 30% of Republicans trust the same newspaper. However, "local journalism is trusted by both political parties more than any other type of news or media," and Tina highlighted the importance of companies investing in local news, especially after "one third of (America's) newspapers have shut down".

Abimbola Ogundairo stated that "the impact of losing that trust in the media cannot be overemphasised.” She described media figures as pivotal in shaping how people think, and recognised that these figures are in highly powerful positions. "Abusing that power, whether intentionally or not, just because there is a gap in the capacity, has far reaching impacts." Therefore, Abimbola's advice to media sources would be to "show all your cards", and exercise transparency around any agendas they're trying to force upon their audience, however unlikely this may be. "It's just that cyclical use of the same tactics over and over and over again that causes that detachment, and news avoidance is on the rise," Abimbola said. 

She also took issue with why the media often focuses on two political parties when there may be eight others running for office, asking: "Who has given the media this all and mighty power to determine that?" Furthermore, Abimbola Ogundairo suggested that a way to reduce news avoidance and media scepticism amongst the public is for media sources to encourage people to reach their own conclusions "and validate information however they want to", instead of the "mental conditioning" she suspected is resulting from the public consuming news without applying critical thinking to each story.

Rahul Verma said: "Trust in media institutions over the last 10 years has declined, public opinion polling data indicates. Secondly, voters or citizens trust traditional media sources, such as newspapers and TV news, more than social media platforms through which different kinds of information are generated." However, traditional media itself is sometimes attacked during election campaigns: "You see people like Elon Musk saying that traditional media is anti-Republican and is going to take the Democrat position." In terms of non-traditional media, "you now have YouTubers or social media influencers who also provide information and news, and they have decent followings - some in India run into millions of followers," and many of these followers are people who wouldn't otherwise be interacting with news or political content.

Addressing traditional media, Rahul said "Local news outlets are getting closed, but you're also seeing monopolization at the top. Both fragmentation and monopolization are part of this political economy," which is the main reason opposition parties traditionally came along and attacked the establishment media who favoured the other side, Rahul Verma explained. "Media in itself has not been a very deeply representative organisation, not in terms of who they hire, but also the kind of stories they focus on," making it easier for opposition parties to accuse establishment media of bias. He also noted that new technologies emerge and evolve between election cycles, namely the prevalence of artificial intelligence which can completely change the landscape of media and communication during an election. He mentioned that India saw 2014 being called the year of Twitter elections, 2019 was the year of WhatsApp elections and now 2024 is being dubbed the year of YouTube elections.

Interconnectedness of elections causing spillover effects

The audience Q&A began with a participant asking how communicators should prepare for potential spillover effects impacting multiple regions, in a world where elections are increasingly influenced by global events.

Abimbola Ogundairo said: "It may not be intentional, but there's a blindness to how things really are before you report on it, and that's a big issue. What we advocate for is nuance. How much more are you not seeing or talking about? How much more could you bring to the attention of the decision makers or the voters?" She also highlighted the importance of covering young people's stories, or giving more coverage to smaller political parties, or community led movements to reflect the aspects of society often overlooked by the media. "The final thing would be to recognise the media and storytellers as the fourth estate - there's that accountability role as well." 

“I think that the spillover effects are pretty significant," Tina McCorkindale explained: "We don't operate in a vacuum. What we do in any country affects what happens to another country. For global companies, you have employees all over the world and depending on the country that you are in, there are significant issues in terms of free and fair elections." Tina believes that giving people time off work to go and vote is crucial, as well as providing information and news literacy programmes to improve employees' critical thinking skills. "Prebunking" can also warn people of potential disinformation they will encounter in election cycles so they are warned beforehand, Tina noted. "Supporting local journalism and making sure you have strong relationships with reporters in the area," are other measures to help people combat disinformation.

Free and fair information flow for elections

This topic addressed specifically to Rahul Verma who opened with the example: "There was a BBC documentary which the government of India said we could not play - their ruling was that it was anti-Modi propaganda," which Rahul viewed as state censorship of the documentary which criticised Modi's handling of the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat. In terms of the Indian government banning the documentary, Rahul pondered: "Should this have happened? No. Was the documentary seen by students across the campuses and did it become more famous after the ban? Yes." 

For this reason, Rahul Verma sees government censorship as counterintuitive as it draws more attention to content they did not want the population to see. "We are seeing, in the last 20 years across the globe, greater surveillance by the state on information flow. While the world is getting more connected, states are getting much more insecure about what kind of information they want to pass on," he emphasised, while expressing the opinion that states do not succeed in trying to prevent information flow that would harm their electoral reputation.

Taazima Kala-Essack wholeheartedly thanked Rahul Verma, Abimbola Ogundairo and Tina McCorkindale for their contributions to the CIPR International webinar.

The full recording of this CIPR International webinar is available here on YouTube.