RightsCon Tunis 2019

Over the past few years, social media have transformed the way political campaigns and elections are run. 2018 has seen a flurry of initiatives by civil society groups aiming to monitor online public discourse before, during and after elections. Using very diverse methods, they aimed to sample and analyse social media contents relevant to electoral observation. This roundtable organised by 'Supporting Democracy' will explore the ways in which election observers can analyse social media coverage of political campaigns and assess attempts to manipulate voters' choices through deliberate disinformation. 'Supporting Democracy' is a technical assistance project working for the European Commission. Through its working group on social media monitoring, it brought together recent work in this field by its consortium member organisations, Democracy Reporting International (Germany) and the National Democratic Institute (US) and enriched it with input from similar initiatives. This working group has been assessing and testing the methodological tools that may help civic groups design their own tailor-made monitoring projects. Roundtable participants will discuss some lessons learned in recent elections (using concrete examples), present building blocks for a joint methodology, and sketch out possible plans for cooperation among civil society groups that wish to monitor social media in elections.