News highlights from the Future of Elections
It’s the year 2025 and there are three important news stories airing on the 6 o’clock news today. In the world today, countries are experiencing impacts of technologies as they near election time. Some impacts like rising internet shutdowns and algorithm manipulation have been feared since they were first witnessed at the beginning of the decade, while evidence of tech being utilised for mass participation has led to celebration from Election Watch bodies.
And others are not so clear. As influencers take to stages beyond social media we’re realising how much more influential they may become, and there’s concern around the role of big tech organisations behind them…
Watch the 4 minute news highlights below👇🏽
[NEWSREADER TRANSCRIPT]
[RECORDED FOR BBC9 18:00 19.04.2025]Citizens of a large South Asian country are back online after a week-long shutdown that began two days before Election Day. A shockingly regular occurrence that has had impacts across the region. The previous administration shut down access to broadband and mobile internet to the whole country, justifying this as a precautionary measure to prevent the spread of fake news and hate speech.
The leader of the opposition and digital rights campaigners argued that the tactic was being used to manipulate the debate, preventing access to information to influence the outcome of the election, and restricting citizens’ human rights to freedom of speech. Whatever the real reason behind the shutdown, the incumbent won a second term.
These actions lie in stark contrast to a neighbouring country which faced a similar issue, with the sitting government also intentionally shutting down the Internet a few days before election day.
But in that country, connections and information exchange continued through a combination of mesh networks and access to low-earth orbit satellite connections.
The opposition’s election campaign focussed on highlighting these new technologies and criticising the government for trying to take away people’s internet access and ability to communicate ahead of election day.
More now on elections, from Sara.
To East Africa now. A new report from Global Election Watch announced that three East African countries are the most influential pioneers when it comes to digital engagement with elections. It's been three years since three East African countries rolled out their digital citizen assembly initiatives. These innovative new approaches to mass participation have seen the rates of discussion and political engagement increase at a pace unmatched by any other nation across the world.
They achieved this through using low-tech communication tools to reach remote communities, and combining it with high-tech artificial intelligence to process millions of simultaneous conversations at once. With these new digital citizen assemblies, Global Election Watch reports that citizens feel more empowered to engage in conversations about both provincial and national issues.
Across these three countries there are now regular, open invitations to input into policy directions beyond the traditional 4-year election cycle. In areas where officials have started to record levels of wellbeing and citizen satisfaction, the impact of these initiatives can clearly be seen.
Global Election Watch reports that: “people really believe and feel that they have a voice.”
These East African countries are now set to join forces with several other nations across the world to start the global Digital Citizenship Alliance (DCA), to guide people and technology companies in designing, testing and managing these large-scale conversations.
With the results of these experiments so swift and positive, citizens in other countries are now beginning to put pressure on their own governments to follow suit, and make use of technologies available.
Now to our final story on elections, with Constanza.
Last week an online influencer best know for advertising niche sustainable homeware brands, with millions of followers won a local municipal election in a European country, after being encouraged by their followers to run for the position. Throughout the campaign, youth activists have advocated their support for the candidate, believing that their interests are best represented by the influencer.
The hashtag #NewFaces trended briefly on Twitter, which celebrated having younger, newer candidates running for government whose messaging is focused on empowering the younger populace.
The national government responded to these campaigns and this surprise victory by stating that democracy will be compromised if: “we let social media dictate who should be leaders in our country.”
At a press conference today, the President announced that investigations were being carried out on the potential manipulation of algorithms and “incorrect information” used to sway the public’s vote with regards to the influencer’s win.
There is pressure on governments to regulate online companies and prevent routes for future electoral manipulation through the collection of citizens’ online data. Six countries so far have expressed their opposition to regulate these actors, on the basis of insufficient evidence on their electoral manipulation.
Unsurprisingly, the heads of those countries’ governments have received some form of funding from Big Tech actors in the past three years.
That’s all for tonight. Thanks for watching.
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