A shortage of resources and investment from major digital platforms has left the Pacific region battling a campaign of misinformation and under-moderation.

The Pacific is currently a global hotspot for misinformation.

The ability of Pacific island countries and territories to respond to “infodemic” risks online has been exposed by the covid-19 pandemic.

Misinformation about the pandemic has persisted online, despite efforts by Pacific governments, civil societies, citizens, media organisations, and institutions to counter it.

The Pacific presently has the smallest percentage of their population using the internet and social media compared with the rest of the world.

Internet difficult, costly
Internet provision is made more difficult and costly in the Pacific due to the region’s unique geographic features. A lack of high-capacity cables and other technical infrastructure has also held back Pacific connectivity.

New undersea cables are arriving in the region, such as the Australian-financed Coral Sea Cable, connecting Sydney to Port Moresby and Honiara, ending decades of reliance on slow and expensive satellite connections.

These cables, along with other planned reforms and upgrades, are expected to increase the number of mobile internet users in the Pacific by about 11 percent annually between 2018 and 2025, according to estimates by industry groups.

More access has rapidly changed how government officials communicate with the public and shifted perceptions of politics.

Both Kiribati and Vanuatu broadcast their national election results live on Facebook.

In Kiribati, the 9400-member Kiribati election 2020 group posted photos of handwritten vote totals. In Vanuatu, the national broadcaster streamed the entire ballot-counting process on Facebook Live.

Sparked by the rollout of mobile broadband across Papua New Guinea, hundreds of thousands of citizens now read the latest news and monitor happenings in Port Moresby through blogs and Facebook groups filled with lengthy discussions and heated calls to action.

Flipside over access
The flipside to such access is that false online rumours and scams directly targeting Pacific people have spread rapidly through Facebook groups and closed messaging applications.

Rising internet access may be exacerbating the problem of child sexual exploitation online.

In some regions of Papua New Guinea, hate speech, harassment, and harmful rumours can sometimes lead to actual acts of violence.

Local politicians in the Pacific are starting to recognise the potential of social media, but unethical online influence techniques can go undetected if proper transparency measures and safeguards are not implemented.

Facebook, for one, has implemented its transparency systems to curb hidden manipulation of its advertising features for partisan ends.

Journalists and investigators in dozens of larger markets use these tools to reveal voter manipulation, but most Pacific island nations are yet to adopt them.

The lack of transparency makes it very difficult for observers to track what political actors are saying online, especially as Facebook’s advertising system allows different messages to be targeted to different parts of the population.

Fake Facebook accounts
Social media companies make little effort to reach out to Pacific leaders, which may explain why so few public figures in the region use the “verified” badges that are useful in helping distinguish official accounts from personal ones.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape found that out the hard way — fake Facebook and Twitter accounts were created in his name, and his lack of verification made the real profile harder for users to distinguish.

Some governments have threatened to completely block social media to curb the spread of content they deem immoral, harmful, or destructive to established norms and values.

Nauru’s government blocked Facebook from 2015 to 2018, and Papua New Guinea and Samoa hinted at blocking the platform multiple times over the past few years.

In 2019, Tonga considered a ban on Facebook to prevent slander against the monarchy.

Social media bans are rarely implemented, and face fierce opposition from free speech advocates and users.

The frequency with which such measures are proposed in the Pacific reflects a sobering reality: communities in the region often lack the protections that communities elsewhere in the world rely on to address harmful content and abuse on social media.

Rule-breaking content
Current systems for moderating content on social media are not effective in the Pacific. These systems rely on algorithms that flag rule-breaking content in multiple languages, human reviewers who make determinations on flagged material, users who voluntarily report content violating the rules, and legal requests from law enforcement officials.

Social media platforms do not prioritise hiring from the Pacific region, where there are comparatively fewer people. They do not invest in developing language-specific algorithms for languages like Tongan, Bislama, or Chuukese, which have a smaller user base.

Despite the growing importance of third-party fact-checking partnerships, no Pacific Island country is home to a dedicated fact-checking team.

All claims in Australia and the Pacific islands are referred to the Australian Associated Press’s fact-checking unit. Pacific social media users are missing out on one of the few tools that global social media companies use to strengthen information ecosystems due to the lack of a robust local fact-checking organisation.

All signs point to an increase in the dangers posed by false and misleading information in the months and years ahead, as both state and non-state actors attempt to steer online discourse in service of their strategic goals.

Politically-motivated domestic and foreign actors (or proxies) regularly attempt to manipulate online platforms and social media worldwide. These efforts are highly diverse, always in flux, and frequently related to more extensive political or national interests.

At least one organised effort to spread false information online about the West Papuan conflict has already occurred in the Pacific.

Dangers posed
External pressures and crises will amplify the dangers posed by these campaigns, as they did during the covid-19 pandemic when an excess of data and a lack of apparent credibility and fact checking allowed rumours to spread unchecked.

Rising tensions between the developed world and China add to the already complex political situation, and the narrative tug-of-war for influence among significant powers on Covid-19 is likely to continue.

There is a risk that online misinformation from foreign media will increase due to this competition for narrative dominance, leaving countries in the region vulnerable to influence operations that target online discourse, media, and communities.

More robust local capacity (outside of government) to identify problematic content and bad actors online is necessary for the region to recover from Covid-19 and respond to future crises.

This includes better coordination among regional institutions and governments, increased engagement between social media companies and Pacific leaders, and more thorough reporting of online problems.

Foreseeing and preparing for future potential threats to health and safety is something that leaders can do now.

Romitesh Kant is a Fiji PhD scholar at the Australian National University, and a research consultant with more than 10 years’ experience in the fields of governance, civic education and human rights. He is also a contributor to Pacific Journalism Review. This article was originally published on 360info under Creative Commons and RNZ Pacific. It has been republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

While I am always happy to celebrate any accolades my country and city might garner on the international stage, seeing Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau awarded the top ranking in a recent “most liveable cities” survey left me somewhat flummoxed.

In particular, I would argue that many Māori whānau in Auckland do not enjoy the benefits of this supposed “liveability”.

This is important, given Māori comprised 11.5 percent of the Auckland population in the 2018 Census. Roughly one in four Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand are living in the greater Auckland region.

The survey was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sister company of The Economist, and looked at 140 world cities. Auckland was ranked 12th in 2019, but took top spot this year for one obvious reason:

Auckland, in New Zealand, is at the top of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Liveability rankings, owing to the city’s ability to contain the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic faster and thus lift restrictions earlier, unlike others around the world.

Most cities in Europe plunged in the rankings this year as the EIU’s liveability index incorporated new indicators related to covid-19 https://t.co/8555hY1f2U

— The Economist Data Team (@ECONdailycharts) June 9, 2021

Alternative liveability criteria
Each city in the survey was rated on “relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure”.

Overall rankings depended on how those factors were rated on a sliding scale: acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable, intolerable. Quantitative measurements relied on “external data points”, but the qualitative ratings were “based on the judgment of our team of expert analysts and in-city contributors”.

The methodology, particularly around culture and environment, seems somewhat subjective. It’s predicated on the judgement of unnamed experts and contributors, and based on similarly undefined “cultural indicators”.

To better understand the living conditions of Māori in Auckland, therefore, we might use more robust “liveability” criteria. The New Zealand Treasury’s Living Standards Framework offers a useful model.

This sets out 12 domains of well-being: civic engagement and governance, cultural identity, environment, health, housing, income and consumption, jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, time use, safety and security, social connections and subjective well-being.

The Māori experience
Applying a small handful of these measures to Māori, we find the following.

Housing: According to recent reports, Auckland house prices increased by about NZ$140,00 on average in the past year. That contributed to Auckland being the fourth-least-affordable housing market, across New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and Hong Kong.

Next to that sobering fact, we can point to estimates that Māori made up more than 40 percent of the homeless in Auckland in 2019. We can only assume this rapid increase in house prices has made homelessness worse.

Poverty: Alongside housing affordability is the growing concern about poverty in New Zealand, and particularly child poverty. While there has been an overall decline in child poverty, Māori and Pacific poverty rates remain “profoundly disturbing”.

Employment: As of March 2021, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recorded a Māori unemployment rate of 10.8 percent, well above the national rate (4.9 percent). This is particularly high for Māori youth (20.4 percent) and women (12.0 percent).

Health: Māori life expectancy is considerably lower than for non-Māori, and mortality rates are higher for Māori than non-Māori across nearly all age groups. Māori are also over-represented across a wide range of chronic and infectious diseases, injuries and suicide.

The digital divide: The Digital Government initiative has found Māori and Pasifika are among those less likely to have internet access, thus creating a level of digital poverty that may affect jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, safety and security, and social connections.

Making Auckland liveable for all
Taken together, these factors show a different and darker picture for far too many Māori than “liveable city” headlines might suggest.

I say this as someone who has lived in Auckland for the majority of the past 60 years. It is a city I love, and I acknowledge the grace and generosity of the mana whenua of Tāmaki Makaurau, with whom I share this beautiful whenua and moana.

I am also part of a privileged group of Māori who enjoy job security, a decent income, a secure whānau and strong social networks.

But, until we address and ameliorate the inequities and disadvantages some of our whānau face, we cannot truly celebrate being the “most liveable city in the world”.

Dr Ella Henry is an associate professor at Auckland University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz