Presidential election faced online threats amid sustained attacks on democracy worldwide
President-elect Catherine Connolly arriving for a courtesy call to President Michael D Higgins in Áras an Uachtaráin last Wednesday. Voters could have been gulled by fake videos purporting to come from Ms Connolly circulating online before polling day. Picture: Tony Maxwell/Maxwell’s
Two statements that you wouldn’t expect to hear from any presidential candidate, never mind the frontrunner, who would go on to win that election with 914,000 first-preference votes.
Yet, videos depicting president-elect Catherine Connolly saying these very words appeared online in the final weeks of campaigning.
The videos were entirely fictitious, created using GenAI (generative artificial intelligence), and were highly popular on social media.
They represent the hazards faced by candidates and elections today, in countries around the world, all with the goal of undermining confidence and eroding trust in the democratic process.
In the presidential race, Ireland experienced renewed attempts to target electoral integrity online. This was enabled by repeated platform failures which endangered our most important of democratic exercises.
During the election, my colleagues and I in the Institute for Strategic Dialogue — an NGO which tracks online hate, extremism, and disinformation — analysed such threats to election integrity, together with the Hope and Courage Collective.
We documented and analysed 172 instances of political misinformation and disinformation published across social media in the six weeks leading up to polling day.
Our analysis identified numerous false and misleading narratives about the electoral process and candidates.
These included claims seeking to invalidate the nominations process, interfere with voting on October 24, or allegations the entire election was “rigged”.
We documented smears, harassment and the use of GenAI to create deceptive and derogatory material about candidates.
Long-running activities within the Irish political system, such as political parties backing one candidate at the expense of others, were framed as attempts to ban Independent candidates from running.
In other cases, they were described in conspiratorial terms — likening the process to a plot by “globalists” to disenfranchise Irish voters.
There were even legal cases launched based on these beliefs.
In the final 10 days of the campaign, a case was taken to the High Court challenging the constitutionality of the nomination process. Fabricated quotes from the judge were disseminated online, racking up more than 100,000 views.
The High Court eventually rejected the “entirely baseless” challenge.
Beyond efforts to tarnish the legitimacy of the election, candidates themselves were caught in the crosshairs.
In September, the most popular narrative concerned Jim Gavin with a string of highly defamatory claims, originating from abroad, reaching hundreds of thousands of users.
Most platforms only removed the posts after Gavin’s campaign intervened and publicly condemned them as “malicious smears".
Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys was also the subject of many unsubstantiated claims.
In one TikTok video, viewed more than 18,400 times, she was accused of murder, money laundering, and grave-robbing.
Humphreys, a Presbyterian from Monaghan, also received sectarian abuse in numerous posts that falsely described her as a member of the Orange Order.
Connolly also received such attacks even beyond the GenAI videos.
One false narrative linked her to Nama, based entirely on her husband sharing a name with a former board member of the agency. On X, the Grok AI tool repeated the claim without clarifying the mistaken identity.
False and misleading information during elections is not a new phenomenon.
What has changed is the speed, reach, and influence this can now achieve.
We’ve seen the warning signs from other democracies around the world such as the US, Romania, and Czechia. Elections are under sustained and co-ordinated attacks.
As we saw in the events at the US Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, there is real potential for those totally convinced of demonstrably false claims about “corrupt” or “rigged” elections to take action.
We’ve already experienced this in Ireland, albeit on a much smaller scale.
During the local elections last year, at 5pm on polling day, an anonymous TikTok account posted a misleading, edited video of then minister for justice Helen McEntee announcing that Ireland would begin offering citizenship via email “from today”.
The clip was from 2021, during covid restrictions, but was stripped of context and used to falsely claim the government was rushing to “hand out Irish citizenship via email last minute before the local and EU elections”.
Two days later, a person walked into Tallaght Garda Station to report McEntee for alleged “election fraud”, falsely claiming she had granted mass citizenship to migrants by email and arranged for them to be bussed to polling stations to vote for the government parties.
The person cited the widely-circulated but entirely misleading video as evidence.
On polling day in our presidential election two weeks ago, many posts were published in support of a 'Spoil the Vote' campaign.
This is a legitimate democratic exercise, yet some of those supporting the campaign online encouraged voters to spoil their ballots as a result of the election being “rigged”, “fraudulent”, or not “free and fair”.
Others instructed voters to publish photos of their spoiled ballots on social media (a potentially prosecutable offence). In one widely-shared Facebook post, one user wrote: “Send me yours [a picture of a spoiled ballot] and I’ll add it to this post.”
Social media facilitating misinformation
This raises serious questions for how platforms and regulators respond to emerging challenges.
All major social media platforms prohibit content that risks interfering with people’s ability to take part in civic activities. They similarly prohibit activity that seeks to harass or target individuals. Our analysis of the presidential election shows that platforms continue to fail to meet their obligations in this regard.
Coimisiún na Meán can enforce action against platforms that fail to address illegal or harmful content.
The Electoral Commission continues to operate without the enactment of Part 5 of the Electoral Reform Act 2022.
This provision would provide the commission with powers to investigate threats to electoral integrity including disinformation.
These powers will likely not eliminate misinformation or disinformation entirely, but they would provide the practical means to act when needed during elections.
They could also ensure greater accountability from the social media platforms where so many of us now get our news and information — be it factual or fictitious — and which shape our opinions about the world around us.
- Ciarán O’Connor is a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue
- Edel McGinley is CEO of the Hope and Courage Collective
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