News – Page 3 – M100 SANSSOUCI COLLOQUIUM

Christopher Walker: “The World has become flatter for authoritarian Regimes”

7 February 2024. “As China has emerged as a global power, it has deepened its relationships with countries around the world,” writes Christopher Walker in his recent essay “The World Has Become Flatter for Authoritarian Regimes” in the Journal of Democracy. Walker is Vice President for Studies and Analyses at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and regularly participates in the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium.
“Many of the societies with which Beijing and its proxies are engaging, however, have only a superficial understanding of the way the world’s largest dictatorship operates,” writes Walker: “The deep knowledge gap about the Chinese party-state in much of the world represents a crucial asymmetry that works to the strategic advantage of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
One example is Georgia, which is seeking a “strategic partnership” with China in the areas of politics, economics, human relations, media, and culture. This is dangerous because Georgia lacks unbiased knowledge about China in science, media and politics, and the Georgian system, “like so many others, is not equipped to reckon with the full implications of such comprehensive engagement with the Chinese party-state.”

DFRLab: How Ukraine fights Russian Disinformation

3 February 2024. A recent research report by Hybrid CoE, a joint project of the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats and the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), looks at Ukrainian best practices in countering disinformation, particularly in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Many of these practices are the result of an evolution that spans the decade since the Euromaidan Revolution.

“Ukraine has been on the front line of Russia’s information aggression ever since the Euromaidan revolution and Revolution of Dignity in late 2013 and early 2014,” the report says. “The ‘most astonishing blitzkrieg of information warfare we have ever seen in the history of information warfare’ has turned into an information war of attrition that has lasted a decade. In that time, the Ukrainians have gained important experience and honed their best practices. However, it was only after 24 February that many Western observers began to pay more attention to Ukraine’s struggle in the information space.
read more DFRLab: How Ukraine fights Russian Disinformation

Platform Svidok: Important source on the war in Ukraine

1 Februar 2024. Olenka Kuk (pictured centre) is a young Ukrainian television journalist who took part in the M100YEJ in 2022. Her photo with Vladimir Klitschko and her colleague Tania Skyba waving the Ukrainian flag on stage at the M100 Media Award is iconic.
In addition to her work as an editor at United News (the main news channel that includes seven major Ukrainian TV stations) and Suspilne, Ukraine’s public broadcaster, she works as a communications expert for the non-profit online social platform Svidok.org.
Svidok (English: witness) is a kind of public war diary where people can anonymously store their war memories, personal stories and testimonies about war crimes. “The platform is a great resource for journalists who can use it to create material based on the stories of those affected,” says Olenka Kuk. “It is the largest and fastest growing archive of personal stories from Ukrainians about the tragedy, hope and daily life during this brutal war. We invite investigative journalists, war crimes investigators and other interested parties to use Svidok for authentic information about Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

DISINFORMATION IS THE BIGGEST GLOBAL RISK

16 January 2024.Elections are being held in over 70 countries around the world this year. Around four billion people will be voting in more or less free elections to decide who should govern them in the future. Not to mention the European elections at the beginning of June.
Anti-democrats are threatening to gain support in many countries. This is not only due to democratic fatigue, but above all to large-scale disinformation campaigns in which autocratic regimes such as Russia and China are investing billions. They are using targeted misinformation to influence elections in the super election year of 2024.

According to an analysis by Dr. Katja Muñoz from DGAP, “Generative AI exacerbates misinformation and election interference on a global scale – a boon for foreign influence campaigns or opportunistic scammers. In tandem, AI-driven voice synthesis and deepfakes could be used to orchestrate fabricated visuals such as counterfeit scenes of ballot manipulation or disrupted polling stations. This fake content could then be augmented by distribution through seemingly reputable news sites. Social media ecosystems extend the reach of misinformation, unleashing further turmoil.”

We mourn the passing of Dr Wolfgang Schäuble

27 December 2023. We mourn the loss of Dr Wolfgang Schäuble, who gave the political keynote speech at the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium three times between 2007 and 2019:
In 2007 as Federal Minister of the Interior (the M100 Media Award went to Bob Geldof, laudator was ZEIT editor-in-chief Giovanni di Lorenzo), in 2012 as Federal Minister of Finance (M100 Media Award went to the then head of the ECB Mario Draghi, laudators were Dr Paul Achleitner and the then head of Ferrari Luca di Montezemolo) and in 2019 as President of the Bundestag (M100 Media Award to Nicola Sturgeon, then First Minister of Scotland, for her opposition to Brexit, laudatory speech: Armin Laschet, then Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia).
His wise, pointed speeches, always spiced with a touch of humour, always revolved around the European unification process, the defence and strengthening of democracy and the role and responsibility of the media.
We experienced Wolfgang Schäuble as an uncomplicated and open-minded politician and person who greatly enriched the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium. Our thoughts are with his family and especially with his wife Ingeborg, who accompanied him to Potsdam in 2012 and 2019.

Survey: Influence of disinformation on election results

20 December 2023.Survey: Next year will see a number of important elections: In addition to the European elections in June and the US elections in early December, many countries will elect new parliaments, some of which will have a significant impact on the future of Europe, including presidential elections in Finland, Croatia, Lithuania, Moldova, Austria and Georgia.
The influence of disinformation on the results of these elections will be crucial, which is why the next M100 Young European Journalists workshop will also focus on “Disinformation in Election Campaigns”.
The international market research company Ipsos recently conducted a survey with UNESCO on “Elections and social media: the fight against disinformation and issues of trust”. It surveyed people in 16 countries that will hold parliamentary elections next year: Algeria, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Romania, Senegal, South Africa, the United States and Ukraine, but due to the war the planned elections will not take place.

Götz Hamann: Disinformation in the Middle East Conflict

11 December 2023. In a recent essay (in German), Götz Hamann, Reporter Technology and Digital Society at ZEIT ONLINE and a regular participant in the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium, investigates “information pollution” and images as a tactic of war.
In it, he describes, among other things, how the Israeli company Cyabra from Tel Aviv searched the major networks TikTok, Instagram, Telegram and X for posts about the massacre in the first 48 hours after the Hamas murders. One result: “A quarter of the posts came from fake users. And the speed with which manipulated videos were circulated, their quality, the sheer number and also the number of slightly different versions point to state actors. No one else has such possibilities.”
According to Hamann, the goals of the state actors were almost identical: “to discredit the West for its policies in the Middle East, but at the same time to incite as many Muslims as possible and thus the large immigrant communities in Europe and the US against those governments that support Israel. The campaigns reinforced the Hamas narrative: it tried to turn terrorists into freedom fighters and brutal kidnappers into caring caregivers. In this way, the propaganda obscenely twisted an already horrific reality and used it for its own purposes. According to Cyabra, these campaigns reached up to 500 million people in the first 48 hours after the murders. Many of them took up the theme. The propaganda fell on fertile ground.”
The anti-Semitic demonstrations worldwide, combined with the slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” calling for the destruction of Israel, are sad proof of this.

George N. Tzogopoulos: The Israel-Hamas War: What is Next?

27 November 2023. The terrorist attack orchestrated by Hamas against Israel on 7 October 2023 has inaugurated a new circle of violent tensions in the Middle East. This attack with over 1,200 dead and the kidnapping of over 200 children, women and men, created an unprecedented trauma to the Israeli society and almost immediately led both the USA and Europe to express their solidarity. The condemnation of the atrocities by the Western community came as a natural reaction. The joint statement issued by the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the USA on 9 October, for instance, echoed common logic and clarified that ‘there is never any justification for terrorism’.

Israel decided to respond to Hamas atrocities by using military force in the Gaza Strip and combining its aerial and naval bombardment with a ground invasion. The purpose is to push for the liberation of hostages, dismantle the arsenal of the terrorist organization and make sure that no similar attack would be allowed to happen in the future.

Anna Romandash: Women of Ukraine

24 November 2023. In her book “Women of Ukraine: Reportages from the War and Beyond” (ibidem, 2023), Anna Romandash, award-winning journalist from Ukraine and M100 alumna, has collected stories from 33 Ukrainian women whom she interviewed between February 2022 and June 2023. The women, from different regions and professions, talk about how they are trying to cope with the conflict and the particular difficulties they face.
You can read the chapter “Fighting for Her fiancé’s legacy in Ukraine” here:

April 2023
“It was a friend who told me that Oleksandr died,” Anastasiia said, “I don’t remember too well what happened next. I just screamed and screamed.”
This is how Anastasiia Blyshchyk learned that her fiancé was killed in action. It was May 4, 2022.
“For three days, I was in denial, hoping that it was a lie,” Anastasiia recalled, “Then, I got a text from a military medic from Oleksandr’s unit. The text said: ‘I am sorry I could not save him.’ It was the worst thing that could have happened to me.”

Wolfgang Ischinger honoured with “Prize for Understanding and Tolerance

15 Novemnber 2023. On Saturday, 11 November, the Jewish Museum Berlin awarded the “Prize for Understanding and Tolerance” to M100 Advisory Board member Prof. Dr Wolfgang Ischinger, President of the Board of Trustees of the Munich Security Conference Foundation. The laudatory speech was given by former ambassador Ronald S. Lauder. Congratulations!
In a recent interview with the German Handelsblatt (paywall), Ischinger warned of “wildfire-like developments” in the Middle East and that Israel was threatened with a two-front war with unforeseeable geopolitical consequences: “In the south against Hamas and in the north against Hezbollah, which is demonstrably many times more powerful than Hamas,” Ischinger said. “Measures by Israel against Iranian positions in Syria or against Iran itself can then no longer be ruled out. Iran will then resort to completely different means. What matters now, he says, is “that the government in Israel does not overstep the mark”.
He advises, however, that “given the dimensions of this terrorist tragedy, it would be best to refrain from giving cheap advice to the Israeli side from the German sofa at the moment. I am sure, however, that Israel knows that its imminent military action could lead it into a political trap set by Hamas: They want nothing more than as many Palestinian martyrs as possible and the bloodiest possible pictures from Gaza, so that they can whitewash their own terror by blaming Israel. As we can already see, this will not only resonate in the Arab world, but also in (Berlin-)Neukölln, for example, even if it is the height of cynicism. (…) These chants of joy by partly youthful Hamas supporters on German streets are unbearable.”