How can civil society organisations monitor elections in the digital sphere and how is the Digital Services Act being implemented in Croatia, Gong's legal expert Sanja Pavić explained in Prishtina at the conference "DISICON - Tech, Truth and Trust" from 9 to 10 December, organized by NDI Kosovo.
Elections have moved to the digital sphere a long time ago, yet there is a lack of sufficient monitoring of online political campaings from competent authorities. At the panel “Elections under the Algorithm”, alongside with panelists from Meta and NDI, Sanja explained the importance of receiving truthful information as well as the challenges that social media poses during the election process in terms of information integrity, with the examples of the super election 2024 in Croatia.
Sanja showed how Gong observes elections on social networks, covering the example when Meta removed a Croatian coordinated network consisting of 150 fake Facebook and Instagram profiles and pages, linked to the Croatian Democratic Union's (HDZ) Youth members, after Gong exposed and reported their daily support on HDZ's official Facebook page. Also, Gong's analysis which explored the political narratives and political environment of TikTok in the pre-campaign and campaign period for the parliamentary elections, was presented
Furthermore, Sanja gave a look on how the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in Croatia will look like, especially in the context of the upcoming presidential elections on December 29.