Digital Democracy and the Challenge of Disinformation 

The divide between citizens and political representatives is a primary reason for decreasing trust and confidence in democratic institutions. This results in greater political disengagement, with many individuals either disregarding or not participating in democratic processes, and even showing indifference toward the country’s political path. It has been proposed that technology could help close this gap, enabling the development of a Digital Democracy. Digital Democracy generally encompasses various meanings but usually pertains to utilising digital tools to enhance information transparency, boost public participation in democratic processes, and enable citizens to make decisions directly via digital means. Some techno-optimists even contend that this could revolutionise democracy. Sceptics, however, warn that this access to greater information – and the ability to make one’s opinion known on social media – has contributed to further polarization, radicalization, and post-truth politics. As Lydia Khalil summarises this shift: “The internet was once considered an open door to democracy and liberty. Today, it is seen as an agent of democratic erosion.”[1]  For digital democracy to thrive in the UK, policymakers need to pay attention to information and find ways to enhance legitimacy and trust in digital spaces. 

The State of Digital Democracy in the UK

In 2015, the UK parliament set out its ambitions for revolutionising and rejuvenating UK democracy through the implementation of technology.[2] This ambition highlighted the power of technology to improve the public’s understanding of politics and parliament, reaching out to under-represented groups and widening participation in political decision-making. Technology is regarded as a crucial instrument for enhancing democracy. This perspective was embodied in the UK Government’s 2022 Digital Strategy, which aims to build a robust digital economy that facilitates improved engagement with politics and democratic processes. And in March of 2024, the Conservative Government released its “Digital development strategy 2024 to 2030”, which further highlighted the importance of utilising digital solutions “that support fundamental freedoms and democratic values.”[3] 

More specifically, digital participation can be broken down into three key functions, each involving different tools: monitoring, agenda setting, and decision-making. Regarding monitoring, citizens can use digital channels to observe, question, and provide advice to their political representatives. Citizens may also employ “e-petitions” to influence the setting of political agendas and priorities. In 2002, an e-petition feature was officially introduced on the Downing Street website, with the aim of giving citizens a more direct way to influence governmental initiatives and policies. According to current legislation, when 100,000 signatures have been reached a proposal will be debated in the House of Commons. Since its introduction, 36,000 proposals have been submitted.

Citizens can also engage in political decision-making through crowdsourcing for law proposals and policy development, online consultations by political parties, and electronic voting. In the UK, TheyWorkForYou (theyworkforyou.com) allows citizens over 12 to track activities of the House of Parliament, Scottish Parliament, and Northern Ireland Assembly. It offers details on MPs, such as written questions, debate participation, appearances, and expenses.

According to the Fabian Society, “all reasonable indicators point firmly towards digital democracy” yielding a positive impact on political participation and engagement.[4] This view was echoed in a 2021 study by Hanne M. Stegeman, which found that the online sphere provides new ways for emerging adults to “rebel against the status quo” of ordinary politics and “express themselves politically”[5], protest policies, form groups, and even control policies put forward by governments.[6] If done right, “Digital democracy can support the realization of democratization in a country.”[7]

The Challenge of Disinformation

An emerging challenge to the realisation of digital democracy is mis- and disinformation, and the ways in which false information is taken up and spread across virtual channels. Although they are frequently conflated, misinformation connotes the idea of false information that is spread regardless of intent, whereas disinformation is false information that is spread deliberately to achieve some outcome. 

The problem of disinformation was acutely felt during the COVID-19 pandemic when hoaxes and conspiracies spread quickly across social media platforms, undermining the trust in Governmental interventions and the scientific community.[8] The Brexit referendum was similarly plagued by disinformation campaigns, as shown by the number of automated accounts on X (then called Twitter) infecting political debates.[9] 

A report by the V-Dem Institute highlights how disinformation severely impacts democracy. It undermines trust in elections, with electoral management bodies being the most common targets of such campaigns. During election periods, the rapid spread of false information hampers people's ability to accurately assess candidates' performances and make well-informed decisions on key issues. It also increases political polarisation by, for example, exacerbating divisions between “winners” and “losers”.[10] Social media has been shown to amplify the spread, reach, and impact of disinformation, and is considered a crucial factor for understanding trends towards polarisation. Social media differs from previous forms of mass communication and traditional media because it is interactive and constructed to sustain conversations, whether they are based on true information or not.[11] Why do people spread disinformation? A commonly proposed explanation for this phenomenon is that those with lower levels of digital media literacy (such as older adults) are less able to detect untruthful claims and estimate the reliability of different sources. People are also more likely, on average, to spread false information if it is consistent with pre-existing attitudes, regardless of whether the original source seems authoritative and trustworthy. Statistics show, overall, that the percentage of unintentional fake news spreaders is approximately five times higher than that of intentional spreaders, showing that the “lack of human awareness” remains a significant reason why disinformation flourishes online.[12]

Disinformation campaigns targeting trust in democratic processes are often intensified by social bots. These algorithms automatically generate content and engage with both human and other bot accounts to advance particular agendas. They amplify content to seem credible and boost public visibility. Social media is indeed a double-edged sword: it offers a powerful avenue for participation and dialogue, yet it also serves as a major source of false information and contributes to polarisation. 

Policy Recommendations 

• The Government need to support the development of baseline digital skills across the UK. Without a sufficient level of digital skills, a number of people will (a) struggle to meaningfully participate in an age of digital democracy and (b) more easily fall prey to mis- and disinformation. 
   
• UK education should focus on teaching students and young people how to recognise disinformation. Finland leads in this area, with media literacy being incorporated into the curriculum and the country consistently ranking at the top of the Media Literacy Index since its inception in 2017. In secondary schools, resources like the ABC Book of Media Literacy are employed to train students in detecting image and video edits, half-truths, fake profiles, and more intimidation.[13] As a leader in the global educational landscape, Finland provides an inspiring example of how students can be equipped against anti-democratic disinformation campaigns.[14] 
   
• While we endorse the 2023 rollout of the Online Safety Act—designed to hold social media platforms more accountable for their content—its success in addressing mis- and disinformation still remains uncertain unclear. As Lorna Woods and Alexandros Antoniou of the University of Exter point out, for criminal disinformation, the duties under the Act would be triggered if it was possible to establish a “link between the actor spreading the disinformation and the foreign power”, and this remains a challenge.[15] When it comes to false information, it has to be shown that the person spreading such information understands the information to be false – and this is especially problematic if the false information is spreading virally.

References

[1] Khalil, L. ‘Overcoming Digital Threats to Democracy’. Lowly Institute (2024). Available at:   https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/overcoming-digital-threats-democracy 

[2] Digital Democracy Commission. Open Up! Report on the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy. UK Parliament (2015). Available at: https://digitaldemocracy.parliament.uk/documents/Open-Up-Digital-Democracy-Report.pdf 

[3] Digital Development Strategy 2024-2030. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (2024). Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/digital-development-strategy-2024-to-2030/digital-development-strategy-2024-to-2030 

[4] Chowdhury, A. ‘Bridging the Democratic Divide in the UK. Fabian Society (2016). Available at: https://fabians.org.uk/bridging-the-democratic-divide-in-the-uk/ 

[5] Stegman, H.M. ‘The Matter of Online Political Participation: A New Materialist Experiment on Emerging Adult Participatory Practices in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Netherlands’. LSE Media and Communications (2021). Available at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/assets/documents/research/msc-dissertations/2020/254-Stegeman.pdf 

[6] Congge, U., Guillamón M-D, Nurmandi A., Salahudin and IT Sihidi. Digital democracy: A systematic literature review. Frontiers in Political Science (2023). Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/articles/10.3389/fpos.2023.972802/full 

[7] Ibid. 

[8] Culture, Media, and Sport Committee. Trusted Voices. House of Commons (2024). Available at:  https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/44147/documents/219487/default/ 

[9] See Bastos, M. ‘Social media “bots” used to boost political messages during Brexit referendum’. City University London. This research showed that more than 13 thousand probable Twitterbot accounts were active around the referendum, only to disappear quickly after the polling stations closed. 

[10] See Mauk, M, and M. Grömping. Online Disinformation Predicts Inaccurate Beliefs About Election Fairness Among Both Winners and Losers. Comparative Political Studies 57(2023). Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00104140231193008 

[11] Post, R. ‘The Internet, Democracy, and Misinformation’. In Disinformation, Misinformation and Democracy, edited by Koltay, A. and R. Krotoszynski. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2023).

[12] Aïmeur, E., Sabrine Amri, S., and G. Brassard. Fake news, disinformation and misinformation in social media: a review. Social Network Analysis and Mining (2023). Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13278-023-01028-5 

[13] Nash, A. ‘Media Literacy A to Z: How Finland is Arming Students Against Misinformation’. Print Mag (2024). Available at: https://www.printmag.com/culturally-related-design/media-literacy-a-to-z-how-finland-is-arming-students-against-misinformation/ 

[14] Mackintosh, E. Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy. CNN (2019). Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/europe/finland-fake-news-intl/ 

[15] Woods, L., and  A. Antoniou. ‘Is the Online Safety Act “fit for purpose”’. LSE (2024). Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2024/09/03/is-the-online-safety-act-fit-for-purpose/