“We are not currently prepared to effectively act against the spread of disinformation,” stated Carla Martins, a member of the Regulatory Council of ERC, at the event “Public Policies, Youth and Media Education,” held at Lusófona University in Lisbon.
Carla Martins observes that the rapid proliferation of disinformation and the slow efforts to combat it contribute to “a very complex problem (…) that is growing at the European level.”
“At the European level, the threat is growing to such an extent that the mechanisms developed are not proportional to the problem,” noted the ERC representative.
The member pointed to major digital platforms as “the center of the problem, as they allow for large-scale distribution of disinformative content, which increases their responsibility.”
In this context, the official advocated for a collaborative platform with various entities, such as during election times, to more agilely flag manipulated informational content.
The regulatory entity has been focusing on collaborating with academic observatories, developing work that began with the European elections, continued through the legislative elections, and is currently ongoing for two months during the presidential elections, in partnership with LabCom at the University of Beira Interior (UBI).
The project monitors and tracks the phenomenon of disinformation, based on the communication of political parties.
In the last legislative elections, 16 instances were identified, resulting in nine processes initiated by ERC related to disinformation.
Thus, Carla Martins further advocates that “the more awareness there is about exposure to this type of content, the less effective its diffusion becomes.”
