THE GOVERNMENT STARTED A BATTLE AGAINST FALSE NEWS

On July 24, 2019, the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia, in order to prevent the accentuated danger from the manipulation with information, presented the action plan for fighting false news at a press conference.

The plan for a decisive action against spreading disinformation is in a draft form. The draft action plan has two components: Safety measures and proactive measures.

“Disinformation is one of the main challenges of democracy in 2019 and a tool used to manipulate citizens. The misuse of technology in order to create false entities and non-existent fictional events has become a serious incursion into democratic and electoral processes and seriously threatens to affect the confidence of citizens in institutions and the media.”- said the President of the Government, Zoran Zaev, at the presentation of the text of the Plan for Decisive Action Against Spreading Disinformation, which is in a draft form.

The plan for a decisive action against spreading disinformation will be put up for discussion in the working meetings in the institutions, as well as for consultations with the civil sector, the media and various stakeholders in the society, including the strategic partners of RNM, in order to define its final version.

In the course of the next period, the Government will set up an Action Group for Fighting Disinformation and Attacks on Democracy. Representatives from the office of the President of the Government, the President of the Republic of North Macedonia, the Assembly of the Republic of North Macedonia, the Cabinet of the Minister of Communications, Transparency and Accountability, the Ministry of Interior Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Security Agency, the Intelligence Agency and others will be invited to participate in this group. The task of this group will be to analyze and monitor the processes of disinforming of the public, as well as to coordinate the fight against democracy attacks. The group will be co-ordinated by the Minister of Communications, Transparency and Accountability, Robert Popovski, and on behalf of the Prime Minister’s Office, by the Special Advisor for Public Relations, Marjan Zabrcanec.

The Government will also start a process of creating a National Media Literacy Strategy. Activities of the institutions, the media and the civil sector will be covered within this strategy, with a tendency to make media literacy much more prevalent in the education programs of the Ministry of Education and Science.

Manipulation of information is a global problem that attacks the civil society. What should be kept in mind when analyzing the fight against information manipulation on a global level is the fact that disinformation have a different range in order to be adapted to the audience they are attacking.

Manipulation of information is not a new phenomenon. But what influences the intensity of information manipulations nowadays is a combination of four factors:

• Powerful capacity of social networks over the Internet

• Viral spreading of the speculations

• Speculations through public speech relativizes the truth

• Distrust grows as a result of the devaluation of the truth

In that direction, the Government inserts a set of security measures in the Plan, in which strong emphasis is put on the IT infrastructure.

The security measures in the Plan include:

(1) Revision of the existing and creation of new internal security protocols for communication in the institutions and communication with external entities, in order to reduce the possibilities for leakage of sensitive information.

(2) Upgrading the security protocols for digital communications for all civil servants, for safe use of the Internet, official e-mail, official mobile phone, etc. The enhanced security protocol will be introduced and presented to the civil servants through an internal proactive campaign.

(3) We will strengthen the internal IT infrastructure in the Government and the ministries, and the system for control of the network traffic, in order to prevent the external attacks of the infrastructure in a timely manner.

(4) As we informed the public, I already use a new telephone number and a new mobile device, with an additional security protocol for digital communications.

(5) A protocol for crisis communications between the central government communication service and the ministries will be established for prompt and accurate opposition to disinformation, which is spread through social media and internet portals, in the interests of the truth and in the public interest.

The damage from information manipulations shouldn’t be underestimated. Undermining the democratic capacity of the society remains to be its main goal.

For these reasons, the Prime Minister at the press conference pointed out that: “This is only part of the comprehensive measures taken to resolutely oppose and fight false news and disinformation and media manipulations for the sole purpose of protecting the public and national interest and the interest of the citizens from the damages that these phenomena cause.”