In TheJournal FactCheck newsletter, editor Stephen McDermott examines what the party manifestos say about mis/disinformation. Sign up to the monthly FactCheck newsletter here.
We’re past the halfway point of the election, and all the major parties have launched their manifestos.
The main talking points from those manifesto launches have been around things like housing, tax cuts, reducing the cost of childcare and access to healthcare.
It might not be top of most citizens’ minds when they’re casting their votes next week, but a number of the parties have also made pledges about the problem of disinformation.
Ten of the Dáil’s current parties have launched their manifestos, six of which contain the terms “misinformation” or “disinformation” (you can check them all here).
The exceptions were Sinn Féin, Aontú, People Before Profit and Independent Ireland, none of whom mentioned either term in their manifesto at all.
Of the two-thirds of parties who acknowledged that misinformation is a societal problem, only three looked to address the issue in a structural way – by which we mean empowering agencies to challenge social media platforms where false narratives spread, or introducing things like media literacy programmes as part of school education.
It’s a little disheartening, given the general awareness of misinformation that’s come to the fore since the last election in 2020 through things like the Covid pandemic and the anti-immigrant movement.
The problem isn’t about those one-off issues: it’s a wider issue related to the online ecosystem where most people get their information these days, in which false narratives spread most easily.
Certain parties understand that, and have pledged to give the likes of Coimisiún na Meán more powers, or to publish strategies and develop education programmes.
Some of these pledges are better than others, but we give the parties credit for at least engaging with the issue (though we should point out that this is not an endorsement of any party or another, but simply an analysis of their pledges in the specific area of misinformation).
The most comprehensive plans feature in the Social Democrats manifesto, which mentions misinformation and disinformation more than every other party.
The party has plans for everything from regulation of AI development, to the establishing of a misinformation unit in the Department of the Taoiseach, the appointment of a Chief Information Security Officer, and making media literacy a part of primary and secondary SPHE curriculums.
It also looks to take on Big Tech by expanding the mandate of Coimisiún na Meán and to make social media companies pay a levy to support public service journalism.
Although the Green Party manifesto contains considerably fewer mentions of misinformation, it also looks to take on Big Tech by reforming the Data Protection Commissioner, whom it says is responsible for holding tech companies across Europe to account because they are based in Ireland.
However, its pledge seems to bizarrely conflate the issues of data protection and misinformation, saying that data breaches are responsible for online hate and misinformation.
While this is true to a certain extent (for example, when deepfakes or images of people’s social welfare payments are shared online), the DPC has no role in holding Big Tech to account for anything beyond data protection.
Fianna Fáil’s manifesto contains more mentions of misinformation, with a similar pledge to the Social Democrats to empower the Electoral Commission to tackle “the scourge of online disinformation”, something it already started doing when it was in Government.
Laws to empower the Commission have already been drafted, and would give it the authority to tell social media companies to take certain material down if it’s deemed to be false.
The party is also pledging to publish and fund a National Counter Disinformation Strategy, which has been in train since early 2023 and was expected to be published in the second quarter of this year.
It’s positive that Fianna Fáil recognises the importance of the strategy and wants to implement it by funding media literacy programmes and education, even if it’s not exactly ground-breaking stuff.
In the case of other parties, however, ideas to tackle misinformation are relegated to broader policy headings.
Fine Gael’s manifesto contains a pledge to launch “local campaigns to highlight the positive impacts of migration” to combat anti-immigrant misinformation – again, without much detail.
Among the multitude of questions the idea presents, the biggest one is why Fine Gael didn’t think to do this at any point during its time in Government over the past two years, when anti-immigrant protests upended the political agenda.
The Labour Party’s only plan to tackle misinformation is the exact same idea, with a promise (phrased similarly to Fine Gael’s) to “roll out information campaigns to inform communities of the positive impact of migration”.
Solidarity’s manifesto (which is separate to that of People Before Profit, with whom it is aligned in the Dáil) at least moves beyond the issue of immigration and focuses on an upsurge in misinformation about LGBTQ+ people instead – but again, it’s the only point the problem of misinformation is mentioned.
To deal with misinformation about trans people, the party says its aim is to “fight the disinformation of the far-right that is seeping into the political establishment” – but it doesn’t specify how it will actually do that.
It is at least welcome to see more parties engaging with the need to tackle misinformation in this campaign compared to 2020, when only two parties mentioned the issue in passing (Sinn Féin in relation to vaccines and the Greens about an Oireachtas Committee on the subject).
Whether any of the new pledges make it into the next Programme for Government is a different matter.
