Srishti Jaswal
AI accountability fellow Pulitzer Center
Surya Mattu
head of Digital Witness Lab Princeton University (via video)
Victoria Turk
features director Rest of World
We’ve all seen the influence of social media platforms on elections, but closed platforms like WhatsApp are much harder to track than Facebook or Twitter. Increasingly, however, this is how people get their news and share their views - not in the public ‘town hall’ but in messaging groups.
In this session, Rest of World journalists and Digital Witness Lab’s Surya Mattu will walk through how they analyzed data from hundreds of WhatsApp groups to show how propaganda, misinformation, and other political messages spread. They’ll explain how they combined data analysis with on-the-ground reporting to give a window into how messages originate and spread before reaching voters, including those created by political parties and those occurring ‘organically’ in communities. They will break down how they were able to gain insight into specific incidents, as well as how to analyze thousands of messages to give a macro view of the bigger picture.
Organised in association with Rest of World.
At the request of at least one of the speakers, this session will not be live-streamed and the video will not be placed online.