When a wave of online misinformation jeopardized the integrity of primary elections in Colombia, Juan Carlos Galindo, who headed the country’s National Civil Registry, decided it was time to address this emerging threat to democracy. The registry, which worked with the National Electoral Council, would soon conduct the first local elections since the country’s 2016 peace agreements, and Galindo wanted to ensure that voters had correct information about the process, including the locations and open hours of polling stations. He asked his team to find appropriate ways to respond to misinformation, mindful of low public trust, frequent strategic use of disinformation by political parties, and limited resources to target voters at the local level. Building on the experience of the registry’s Mexican counterpart, head of international partnerships Arianna Espinosa led the design and implementation of a plan to deal with the problem. The team struck deals with social media platforms, independent fact checkers, and political parties to take part in the fight against false information and used an artificial-intelligence-powered platform to detect and respond to false news about the election process during the campaign. By election day, the team had refuted a total of 21 misleading claims and published 59 verified news items and videos on social media, but the limited reach of the publications and minimal engagement with some of the key stakeholders prevented the registry from having the impact it aimed for. After the election, the new head of the registry refocused on building more-transparent processes and providing accessible information for citizens about elections while curtailing some of the initiatives Espinosa had introduced. This case is part of a series on combatting false information, including both misinformation (unintentional), disinformation (intentional), and fake news, one form of disinformation.

Alexis Bernigaud drafted this case study based on interviews conducted with officials, journalists, and civic leaders in Colombia and Spain from January through May 2023. Case published July 2023.

After a hack-and-leak operation that targeted a candidate in its 2017 presidential election and a social media campaign against its exports in 2020, France’s government decided to take steps to protect its politics from foreign digital interference. With another national election approaching in April 2022, Lieutenant Colonel Marc-Antoine Brillant began designing a new unit that aimed to detect foreign information manipulation while preserving freedom of speech by separating responsibility for identification of attacks from responsibility for framing and executing a response. After the proposal cleared legal hurdles, Brillant’s team, under the authority of the Secretariat-General for National Defense and Security, set up an interagency governance system, initiated a dialogue with social media platforms, and monitored social media to detect hostile campaigns. During the 2022 campaign, the unit, called Viginum, identified five foreign interference attempts and referred them to other parts of government that could decide whether and how to react. The elections ran smoothly, and the Viginum team started to focus on building stronger public understanding of its mission and activities.  

Alexis Bernigaud drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in France from August through November 2022. Case published January 2023.

As soon as the Republic of Georgia’s National Center for Disease Control and Public Health (NCDC) sounded an alarm about a cluster of unusual pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China, Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia’s government set its pandemic response into motion.  It was early January 2020, and there was still no hard evidence that the infection had spread across borders, but the country’s health leaders were wary. As outbreaks of the virus, identified as COVID-19, began to appear in other countries, the government quickly created a multisectoral coordination council chaired by the prime minister and then adopted a number of emergency response measures. Working with a network of local public health centers, the NCDC launched a communications blitz, with scientists and physicians at the forefront. The public health campaign encouraged compliance with stringent—and unpopular—lockdown measures. Through the first half of 2020, the weekly number of new cases remained low, even as infections surged in many high-income industrial countries. But it was too early for a victory lap. Pressure grew to open up resort centers during July and August in an economy heavily dependent on tourism. During September, October, and November the number of new cases per day climbed sharply, driven mainly by expansion of the outbreak in Adjara, a vacation destination. Compared to most European countries, the incidence of disease remained low, however, and the number of new infections later plummeted, approaching initial levels by March 2021. This case study highlights how a small, middle-income country with a privatized and decentralized health-care system initially succeeded in its pandemic response, struggled with sharp reversals, and then brought the infection rate close to earlier levels prior to vaccine distribution.

Tyler McBrien drafted this case study based on interviews conducted with Nona Tsotseria, MD, PhD, in January and February 2021. Case published June 2021. This case study was supported by the United Nations Development Programme Crisis Bureau as part of a series on center-of-government coordination of the pandemic response.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations, including UNDP, or the UN Member States.

The Russian state information influence attack against the 2016 US presidential election rattled authorities in Sweden. The Scandinavian country of 10 million was already a frequent target of Kremlin-sponsored disinformation. With a general election approaching in September 2018 and public apprehension about a possible influence attack high, officials at the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency began preparing measures to defend the credibility of the country’s electoral process. Rather than attempt to halt the creation and spread of disinformation, the agency aimed to build the resilience of institutions and society overall to withstand information influence activities. The agency trained thousands of civil servants, built and strengthened interagency coordination structures, coordinated with traditional and social media, raised public awareness, and monitored the digital information landscape. Despite a cyberattack on the Swedish Election Authority website that fanned claims of fraud and generated a flood of homegrown political disinformation, the election ran smoothly and the government doubled down on the resilience-building approach for protecting the 2022 election.

Gordon LaForge drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in October and November 2020. Case published December 2020. The Princeton University Liechtenstein Institute for Self-Determination supported the development of this case study.