"It is crucial to understand that this year, the UK’s adversaries (and those of NATO member states more broadly) have ample opportunity to exploit societal discords and political frictions due to the number of elections taking place. Misinformation is one tool amongst many that the UK’s adversaries can use. Russia’s intelligence services and other hostile states are adept at conducting what might be considered modern ‘active measures’ (covert influence and subversion operations, including disinformation), but democracies like the UK are ill-prepared to defend themselves against these destabilising threats. This is due to the potential countermeasures such as stringent content moderation and/or censorship – that might threaten the very democratic principles on which Western societies are founded.
"Furthermore, there is a wider threat from influence operations, extending beyond the digital realm, and posing a significant threat to social cohesion.
"Existing countermeasures may be insufficient in mitigating the negative effects of disinformation and misinformation, the former referring to the purposeful spread of false information while the latter entailing the unintentional spread of such false information. While methods exist to detect and correct misinformation, these methods are time-consuming and time is of the essence, particularly during snap elections. Malicious actors can seize the initiative, especially because so-called ‘fake news’ spreads more rapidly than fact-based information.
"Overall, unless a multifaceted approach is adopted to defend against the entire spectrum of information and influence operations, the threat posed by misinformation will persist. This threat is likely to reach its peak during critical events such as the election on 4 July."
Dr Marina Miron is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her research focuses on Russia’s approaches to information war as well as Russia’s military technology
Can the UK learn from how other countries have dealt with election disinformation?
Dr Thomas Colley: "Electoral disinformation is a major global concern in 2024, especially with the rise of generative AI. Halfway through the UK campaign, however, disinformation has played a limited role. The most prominent controversies have been about ‘bureaucratic’ disinformation – the use of distorted statistics by the main parties to give misleading impressions of their opponents’ economic policies.
"Yet, just because disinformation has played a limited role does not mean it will not become more prominent. The spread of disinformation, from domestic and international sources, is inevitable. When this happens, examples like Taiwan (whose January 2024 election faced extensive disinformation from China), and the West’s successful ‘pre-buttal’ of Russian disinformation before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, demonstrate the benefit of providing clear, accessible information as soon as possible. In 2019, social media users spread fake BBC articles claiming the election would be held over two days, intended to get right-wing party voters to vote a day too late. Swift, accurate information can limit the effect of such disinformation.
"Disinformation’s spread may be inevitable but its impact is not. This will depend on how leaders, parties and sympathetic news outlets respond. While social media is often blamed for disinformation, it actually gains greatest traction when spread by political elites and supportive mainstream media outlets – as US politics has shown since 2016. In the 2019 election the Conservative Party doctored a video of Keir Starmer to give the false impression that he could not answer a question about Brexit. They relabelled their Twitter account “factcheckUK” during a debate to give the misleading impression that they were a neutral fact-checking outfit. Ultimately the impact of disinformation on the election will be determined by one major factor: whether the main parties choose to create it, amplify it or reject it. The choice is theirs."
Dr Thomas Colley is a Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He researches propaganda, strategic communication and disinformation’s effects on international politics.
How can information-related threats be addressed in the lead up to the UK General Election?
Sir David Omand: "Everyone can be guilty of misinformation, innocently provided with no intent to deceive but then found to be untrue or misleading. The only decent thing to do is to correct the record as best you can. Politicians especially, after fact checkers and independent institutes have pointed out the error. Correcting your mistakes is a virtue.
"Disinformation is different: it is known to be wrong or seriously misleading but is nevertheless deliberately spread. Making up false claims about election candidates’ views sometimes happens at elections and need to be robustly rebutted as false. Although denied by the Conservative party, Rishi Sunak has recently been accused of spreading disinformation regarding his claim of a £2000 Labour tax rise. Where figures are used misleadingly, like the £350 million ‘extra’ for the NHS on the Brexit bus, this counts as dirty tricks. More worrying examples of disinformation include deep fake videos that show leaders appearing to say damaging things that they never did. Artificial intelligence now makes such deceit easier for the non-technical to commit. Such lying (which is what it is) is always to be condemned as undermining democracy itself since it is manipulating the mind of the voter in ways the voter cannot know.
"Finally, there is also malinformation which is in fact true information but never intended to be publicly known. Malinformation comes mostly from malicious hacking into emails and social media to steal personal information and then post it to embarrass the victim. That is criminal behaviour.
"At election time most disinformation and malinformation is created and spread by over-enthusiastic but misguided fellow-citizens. But there is some that comes from a deliberate wish by a foreign power to interfere with our democracy. That can be to encourage a preferred outcome or just to sow confusion and damage confidence in the democratic process. Such external interference needs to be detected by the authorities and called out for what it is – unacceptable subversion of our information space."
Sir David Omand is a Visiting Professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He is a former Director of GCHQ and former Security and Intelligence Coordinator at the Cabinet Office.