With over 4 billion people eligible to vote worldwide in 2024, including up to 400 million voters in EU parliamentary elections, digital giants Google and YouTube pooled efforts to bring together European media literacy experts, NGOs, media organizations, academics, and tech companies to collaborate and share knowledge around tackling misinformation in a rapidly evolving policy and technology landscape.
Michał Szczerba, president of NATO's Parliamentary Assembly, addresses the Fighting Misinformation Online conference in the Polish capital on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. Photo: Danuta Isler/Radio Poland
Michał Szczerba, a Polish lawmaker who heads NATO's Parliamentary Assembly, in a keynote speech emphasized the need for a unified stand for "election integrity in the digital age," outlining how NATO governments and parliaments are stepping up against disinformation as a threat to democracy and security.
Szczerba said: "We are at war in the information space. We must respond to the autocrats' army of lies by building an army of truth. We need all our citizens to become defenders of the truth, defenders of democracy."
He announced a plan to set up a special unit at NATO's Brussels headquarters to monitor threats and respond to disinformation attempts.
"We decided to prepare a Democratic Resilience Center as a new unit at NATO headquarters in charge of monitoring the situation and to create the tools to respond to disinformation challenges," Szczerba told Radio Poland in an interview, expressing hope that the establishment of the center would be approved by all members of the Alliance at the NATO summit in Washington on July 7-9.
The Fighting Misinformation Online CEE event in Warsaw, held under the title "Election Integrity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)," was hosted by Google, YouTube, the European University Institute, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, alongside partners such as Demagog and Mixer.
Previous Fighting Misinformation Online gatherings have welcomed speakers including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa and European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová to events in London, Bratislava, Helsinki and Prague.
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Source: newsonair.withgoogle.com
Click on the audio player above to listen to Michał Szczerba's interview with Radio Poland's Danuta Isler.