2024 will be a historic year for elections. Globally, more voters than ever in history will head to the polls with at least 64 countries (and the European Union) holding elections. Representing almost half of the world’s population, these elections will have a significant impact on the state of democracy around the world. While increasing attention is being paid to the threat that (AI-driven) disinformation can pose to the integrity of electoral processes, crucial gender-sensitive and feminist perspectives are largely missing. The absence of feminist perspectives in prominent discourse and legislation on disinformation will only exacerbate the gendered harms caused by disinformation before and during elections and its impact on women and candidates with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC).
In addition to this, neglecting the gendered nature and implications of disinformation poses a threat to the health of our democracies. As CFFP’s extensive research on the transnational anti-feminist movement has demonstrated, key actors have been instrumentalizing disinformation as part of a larger effort to increase polarisation within and between states and to weaken our multilateral structures. Authoritarian leaders and anti-gender actors have weaponized gendered disinformation as a tactic to unsettle faith in democratic institutions, to hinder human rights advocacy, to sow division, and to deter governments from pursuing particular policy goals.
Together with Microsoft, CFFP will implement a project on the impact of AI-driven gendered disinformation on elections. The project will promote the integration of intersectional, feminist perspectives into the discourse and policy development on disinformation, allowing us to understand the scale of this threat in all of its facets and to develop the appropriate solutions.