Under Brazil’s G20 Presidency, the T20 Task Force on Inclusive Digital Transformation was developed with RIA’s Executive Director, Dr Alison Gillwald, leading as a coordinator for sub-track 1 on Digital Inclusion and Meaningful Universal Connectivity. This Task Force aims to influence the Digital Economy working group of the G20 Sherpa Track.
Through extensive debates and collaboration, the Digital Economy Working Group has galvanised the G20 Forum’s Minister to include the agenda of tackling disinformation and promoting information integrity in its declarations. These inclusions are vital considering the power that media, platforms, science and technology have to either deepen development or destabilise economies. The G20 has now accepted the paper as its official position, publishing the research and including its key focal points in the G20’s Ministerial Declarations and Agenda.
Commissioned by UNESCO, a Knowledge Partner to the Brazilian G20 Presidency’s Digital Economy Working Group, the research paper titled ‘Possible Approaches to Promoting Information Integrity and Trust in the Digital Environment‘ highlights the following points:
“Driving the digital economy: Key points for the G20 to consider
- As the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted, information integrity is essential for the progress of economies, public health management, and effective governance in the digital era, particularly in times of crisis or disaster. It is also essential if we are to make greater progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- Shortfalls in human-rights based governance or self-governance of digital communication services have contributed to an erosion of human rights and social trust that are essential for a functional modern economy.
- The scale and scope at which digital services generate and distribute information are raising new concerns about information integrity. Fast-paced innovations have driven down the cost of producing inauthentic information such as with synthetic media and Artificial Intelligence (AI) deep fakes, and this content is then amplified and consumed at scale via social media and search services.
- Understanding the interplay between offline and online information sources, and the potential of deep fakes to mobilise and create disorder, is particularly important in contexts such as elections and e-commerce.
- Among the governance and self-governance steps that can be taken in line with international human rights law are: promoting corporate transparency and accountability; ensuring access to information
- and data; protecting vulnerable people especially children online; strengthening privacy, freedom of expression and access to information; and advancing consumer rights and effective data governance.
- Other possible measures include: Using public procurement as a lever to incentivise changes; supporting the scientific, cultural and media sectors; defending election integrity; advancing media and information literacy and improving regulatory and policy coordination and multistakeholder participation in information governance.”
The full paper is currently available here, alongside the official background paper, ‘Mapping the information integrity debate to inform the agenda of the working group‘.
This paper was originally published by the Brazillian Government’s Ministry of Communications on 10 September 2024.
