The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is also directed against Europe: it is a hybrid war in which, in addition to military weapons, the weapons of propaganda, fake news and the manipulation of public opinion are used.
These weapons are mainly used in the digital space, which is extremely vulnerable despite the EU’s leading role in digital regulation. Disinformation is the greatest hybrid threat to democracies in Europe and to European integration. While autocratic systems are increasingly sealing off their cyberspace, Europe offers the enemies of democracy one of the most vulnerable public spaces in the world.
The classic separation of external and internal security is not viable in cyberspace due to the borderless nature of attacks. Europe must quickly find appropriate responses to this threat. In addition to increased efforts to protect against external and internal attacks, measures must be taken to strengthen trustworthy sources of information.
Liberal democracy has been under threat worldwide for years. “Today, about 38% of the world’s population lives in countries that are not free, the highest proportion since 1997, and only about 20% live in free countries,” is how the American NGO Freedom House describes the global situation in 2023 in its latest Freedom of the World report.
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Along with democracy, freedom is also under threat. Liberal democracies are characterised by free elections, the separation of powers, the rule of law, human and civil rights, and civil and political liberties guaranteed by a constitution. And: Liberal democracies are deliberative democracies, derived from the Latin word deliberatio, which means weighing up, ponder. The term emphasises that public discourse, public deliberation, the participation of citizens in public communication and the interaction of deliberation and decision-making are fundamental to democracy.
The basis for this is free access for all citizens to trustworthy information that creates a generally shared reality. On this basis, citizens must be able to form their opinions in a free exchange, which only leads to free decisions and therefore to democratically legitimised governments in free elections. Plato had already identified the vulnerability of the public to whims and manipulation as a weakness of Attic democracy, which he wanted to replace with the rule of the philosophers. With the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere since the Age of Enlightenment, the question of a free, independent and diverse press became a prerequisite for democratic systems.
Digital structural change in the public sphere
Today, this public sphere is at the mercy of a few globally dominant Big Tech companies, whose algorithms initially direct and “personalise” the flow of information, i.e. decide who receives what information. Since the triumph of generative AI such as ChatGPT, not only the distribution but also the production of information is increasingly subject to the opaque regime of market-dominating platforms.
After twenty years of digital disruption by search engines and social media, both publicly and privately funded quality journalism has been economically squeezed. The high costs of quality journalism cannot be covered in the same way in the digital world as before. Especially as over 59% of the world’s online advertising revenue now goes to two companies that do not employ a single journalist to fact-check and generate news: Alphabet and Meta.
For more than two decades, social media have not taken any responsibility for the content they disseminate. The first rules on organisational due diligence for published content are only beginning to take effect with the European DSA and DMA regulations. But even today, there is a big difference between quality media, which take responsibility for the accuracy of each article and compliance with all other legal requirements.
Social media, on the other hand, can still be used to provide citizens with false information. Misinformation and disinformation can take hold and destroy public trust. In this situation, the hybrid information war that Russia is waging against Europe acts as an accelerant. The 2024 European Parliament elections are taking place under the threat of misinformation and disinformation, and with it an increase in the power of anti-democratic forces that has not been seen in Europe since the Second World War. But Europe has not only the opportunity, but the duty, to free itself from this self-inflicted digital addiction.
Own designing instead of mere regulation
Instead of always complaining about the market-dominating dominance of a few large platform companies and their often negative contribution to the democratic process, it is time for Europe to shape the powerful technology of artificial intelligence according to its own core values and ideals and put it at the service of democracy and freedom. Today, software wields significant power of opinion by deciding what we learn about the world, and that is why a European infrastructure is imperative. In the age of digitalisation, a public service software infrastructure is needed that offers its own search and recommendation algorithms that do not lead into the narrowness of self-confirmation bubbles, but into the breadth of the view for and of others that must secure the basic prerequisites of an open society.
Above all, Europe can use digitalisation to its own advantage by developing and using AI-supported translation software that enables real-time translation into all European languages. Overcoming language barriers with the help of AI-based technology would be a historic step for Europe, and it is feasible, as a study by the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) commissioned by the European Parliament showed last year. For the first time, it would be possible to communicate across language barriers throughout Europe. A European Pentecost miracle of mutual understanding made possible by AI is within reach.
By developing trustworthy and robust translation technologies, Europe can, for the first time in history, overcome language barriers and create a monolingual single market, enabling huge new business models not only for media companies.
A European perspective for public and private quality media
Although structural changes in the media are increasingly undermining their funding, Europe still has a strong media sector: Public service media alone receive 27 billion euros a year in licence fees from EU citizens to fulfil their mission to inform, educate and entertain. But the resulting news and information programmes are only available in national media bubbles. They are invisible across Europe. What is more, the private media mostly cater to national audiences.
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With a minimal investment in translation technology, these news and information programmes could be made available to all European citizens at a stroke. This would dramatically increase the diversity of trustworthy media and also improve mutual understanding between neighbours. As a side effect, this investment would create a single multilingual market of 500 million users, opening up unprecedented opportunities for private media. Finally, it would create for the first time a single European space in which public affairs, the res publica, could be negotiated jointly by all Europeans. The small investment in this technology is a “low hanging fruit” in view of the enormous positive effects for Europe. Everything is already there, it just needs to be made accessible.
If Hanna Arendt is right that the ability to take the perspective of the other is the beginning of the political, then Europe today has the historic opportunity to become truly politically capable. It can do so by creating a news and information network of quality media providers that gives all citizens access to trustworthy information. In all 24 official European languages. Therefore: Sapere Aude, Europe, have the courage to free yourself from your self-inflicted digital immaturity.