The recent behaviour of some social media companies seems explicitly designed to provoke governments into enacting much more stringent regulation of the sector. Elon Musk’s very loud refusal of the governments’ order to wipe violent imagery around recent stabbings in Sydney from its platform is a prime example, drawing ire from across the political spectrum in Australia last week. And a few days later at the National Press Club AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw was equally frank in his assessment:
Social media companies are refusing to snuff out the social combustion on their platforms. Instead of putting out the embers that start on their platforms, their indifference and defiance is pouring accelerant on the flames.
A regulatory mood seems to be gathering strength in Canberra, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next iteration of the government’s proposed Misinformation and Disinformation Bill. But is checking the power of social media platforms enough to clean up an information environment increasingly polluted by disinformation?
A new report published by the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue argues that while social media companies are big enablers of information harms, and should absolutely attract more regulation, Australia needs to do much more, especially in developing social media public literacy and strengthening credible journalism.
To be able to fully take advantage of the opportunities and effectively understand, pre-empt and respond to the threats in the information domain requires Australia to clearly understand what it needs from the information environment in order to safeguard its national security, prosperity, sovereignty, rule of law, and democratic freedoms. In this it needs to be recognised that much of Australia’s information power comes from the non-government cultural, social and economic spheres, and these sectors should be actively engaged.
This is already acknowledged by government in the cyber domain, with the Cyber Security Strategy “shifting cyber from a technical topic to whole-of-nation endeavour”. In contrast, efforts to counter malicious information operations and disinformation have been piecemeal and reactive. The report is a synthesis of consultations with some of Australia’s foremost experts on information and communications practices and outlines several policy options by which Australia can shape the information environment.
With regard to social media companies, government should seek to co-design a binding framework around platform content moderation that involves the participation of civil society, government, media, researchers and industry. Current regulation relating to child exploitation material, or the livestreaming of terrorist attacks offer a useful precedent of social media entities collaborating with government to prevent the propagation of harmful material.
Alongside legislation the government should develop a long-term and engaging public communications strategy that actively supports truth-based communication and consistently makes the case for science, facts and accurate information. Digital media literary must be included in education curriculums from early childhood onwards to help children and young adults build resilience against the many harms targeted at them in the information environment.
As part of this public digital literacy strategy adequate and long-term funding should be provided to non-partisan factchecking authorities operating at arm’s length from government. This would help elevate the work of factcheckers in public debates and would demonstrate a commitment to transparency and accuracy. The government should also urgently support measures to develop large-scale alternative sources of funding for public interest journalism, which has been in jeopardy ever since the advertising model that sustained it migrated to social media. Some options could include tax incentives for news producers and philanthropic support or means-tested government funding for news subscriptions.
There also need to be mechanisms created to connect researchers with civil society advocates and problem solvers on the issue of digital rights, and policymakers would be well served by better, comprehensive and consistent research on public attitudes towards social media and online life. The government should increase resourcing for bodies that oversee professional standards in the information environment in line with the impact that this space has across all aspects of Australian society.
Ultimately, a national body should be established to identify and pre-empt emerging problems in the information environment and marshal the requisite resources and expertise to find solutions. This body would draw together, and coordinate work being done in individual agencies across government and include mechanisms to engage in dialogue with, and draw on the expertise of, non-government actors such as industry, civil society, non-governmental organisations and academics working in the space. This would help government create a strong, enforceable regulatory framework that sets a standard of conduct, as well as legal parameters for foreign technology companies operating in Australia. It would also function as a vehicle to promote constant dialogue between government, industry and the Australian public.
The information environment cannot be treated as an infinite space to be ignored or left to self-sustain. Just like the living environment, it requires a definition of what is healthy and the associated caretaking effort to maintain that health. Social media companies clearly have a responsibility here, but so do we all.
