1. New, affordable tactics available to anyone  

State and non-state actors, international actors, Public Relations Firms, and others running disinformation campaigns can access increasingly advanced and affordable tools aimed at disrupting the information ecosystem. These actors can target electoral processes from almost anywhere in the world.  

2. Political micro-targeted messaging 

Tech companies’ advertising and promotion services can be easily exploited to target specific groups with tailored messaging. Political actors and their affiliates can now use micro-targeted advertising to sway the political views of precisely defined groups based on a wide range of criteria such as political tendency, location, gender, and ethnicity. In this way, micro-targeting allows political actors to send different sets of messages to different groups. They can also aim to manipulate voters with misleading messages, including actively discouraging those who may oppose them from voting at all. The content of these micro-ads is generally poorly regulated. 

3. Manipulation for hire: public relations, strategic communications, and ‘creative’ agencies 

The increasing demand for control over online narratives has created a burgeoning “dark or negative PR” industry seeking to gain profit by deploying manipulative practices and spreading information pollution through digital and mainstream media, often on behalf of political actors. These loosely titled “creative” agencies or public relations companies are working as “guns for hire,” sowing discord and seeding false narratives. These agencies can rapidly deploy online tactics to influence public opinion, harass individuals or push political agendas in both developed and developing countries. This growing industry works with political actors, and national or foreign governments to further their aims, while providing sufficient distance from direct campaigning and allowing for plausible deniability of involvement. Once again, developing conflict and post-conflict states, lacking capacity to effectively respond, are proving ready markets for those who seek to manipulate the information landscape in search of profit. The often-shadowy actions of these companies also increase the challenge for governments and EMBs to ensure transparency of political campaign financing. 

4. Gendered disinformation  

Gendered disinformation is actively discouraging participation of women in elections and in public life more broadly. Online attacks, disinformation and harassment are disproportionately targeted towards women candidates, electoral officials, and journalists. Gender-focused attacks are part of a larger strategy to discredit elections but too often result in shutting down women’s voices and democratic participation, especially online.  

5. Underinvestment by social media companies  

Social media and other large internet companies deprioritize non-strategic markets- often less developed countries- by investing far less in enforcing policies to counter harmful content and practices. This manifests in the lack of capacity to monitor local languages, a poor understanding of context and a general lack of response and oversight. Engaging with social media companies is challenging due to inaccessible and siloed structures, unclear or constantly evolving internal guidelines and a general lack of transparency regarding policies. More recently, public policy teams serving developing regions have been decimated by job losses and a reduction in departmental headcount. This has left many countries with little to no protection against the widespread production and dissemination of harmful content online. 

6. The rise of messaging apps  

The increased prevalence of private or semi-private messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, Meta Messenger, Telegram, Viber- many with encrypted end-to-end connectivity- poses new challenges for efforts to stem information pollution. In these more private spaces, people are more likely to trust those sharing information as they have some connection to them. As such, receivers of polluted information are more likely to believe the information and, therefore, share the content with their networks in real life and across platforms. Organized influence campaigns increasingly use private and semi-private messaging platforms, where oversight is limited and content moderation almost impossible. 

7. Role of “influencers” 

Online influencers are increasingly promoting narratives and messages in support of political actors. These individuals, with sometimes massive online followings and significant influence, can call into question the integrity of election mechanisms, or levy accusations of fraud or misfeasance about routine electoral processes (e.g., the trustworthiness of voting machines). Influencers can also work to persuade voters to distrust official sources of information and independent media while seeking to promote polarized information sources, effectively nudging voters to engage with parallel alternative information networks.  

8. State responses that violate Human Rights  

State legislative and non-legislative responses to disinformation are increasingly at odds with fundamental Human Rights. These include heavy-handed regulation, internet shutdowns, repressive cybercrime laws, and the surveillance of journalists, civil society organizations and Human Rights defenders can be used to effectively silence critical voices and opposition candidates during electoral periods. This muzzling of information and opinion infringes the right to freedom of expression and assembly and access to information.  

9. Weakened legacy media  

The importance of independent traditional media in elections remains a core consideration, especially in countries where television and radio particularly remain valued sources of information. However, traditional media outlets face several interlinked challenges to their financial sustainability and credibility. The media industry has been greatly undermined in recent years, largely due to the diversion of advertising revenue to online platforms. Local and community media are particularly vulnerable to these market forces, creating dangerous information gaps at the local level. This has resulted in a number of detrimental knock-on effects. Facing shrinking revenue, independent media can be forced to make drastic cuts to staffing and capacity or rely on the patronage of business and political elites. State-owned and public media remain poorly funded and therefore more susceptible to government and other pressures to skew electoral coverage. This is especially true of political reporting, which can be seen as a high risk undertaking in volatile contexts due to threats of harm as well as malicious legal action directed against journalists and media outlets. Harassment, attacks and killings of journalists and subsequent impunity for these crimes have been increasing over the past several years and is particularly problematic during elections.   

These structural challenges are leading to lower salaries, diminished professional status, limited opportunities for advancement, and high personal risk for journalists. They have also resulted in media intentionally or unintentionally amplifying information pollution, increased editorial bias, self-censorship, and an erosion of core journalistic principles. Thus, the ability to create in-depth, professional public-interest journalism has been curtailed, further eroding trust in traditional media as a reliable source of information. All of this can become even more pronounced in contentious political processes such as elections. 

10. Capacity of Electoral Management Bodies  

EMBs are often under-resourced, unprepared, and not sufficiently capacitated, and can lack the structures and mechanisms to meet the challenge of election-related information manipulation. This can leave EMBs ill-equipped to safeguard the integrity and transparency of elections, particularly when those processes are particularly contentious, strategic, or politically complex. Safeguarding information integrity in elections, in an increasingly complex information landscape, requires appropriate capabilities, dedicated activities, and a commitment to resourcing. EMBs are often obliged to redirect resources from other aspects of election organization to protect the integrity of the process and the EMB themselves from online political attacks.