Transcript
On election night, Ashwin Raj of the Media Industry Development Authority said parties of all political stripes had complained to the election authorities about false news stories going round on the internet.
"Social media's now saturated with this stuff so this is a completely new phenomenon but obviously we know who the culprits are and why they're doing what they're doing."
The falsehoods ranged from items about a party offering visa-free access to Australia, another planning to pass the gay marriage act and one getting rid of the public holiday for Diwali.
The Fiji Times was among those who had to put out appeals to social media users to ignore masquerading websites.
There was also sharing of true stories possibly designed to impact the election.
"The former Fiji prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, has agreed to pay 15-US dollars a week in support of a child he fathered with a Fiji Times journalist."
That RNZ story from 2002 peaked at 5300 website views on election day.
Data shows it was driven by shares on Facebook.
Facebook wouldn't give details of the extent of fake news circulating on its platform around election time but in a statement its director of policy Mia Garlick said:
"For the recent Fiji election, we continued to implement our existing content governance processes and also ensured that we were able to respond to promptly to any issues that were raised with us by the Fijian Electoral Office in relation to content that either violated our policies or were unlawful in Fiji. We also ran a News Feed prompt to Fijians on Facebook on election day to remind them to vote."
Facebook says by using technology like machine learning, artificial intelligence and computer vision, it can detect more bad content and take action more quickly.
Media watchdogs like the Pacific Freedom Forum were concerned that misinformation was heightened by a 48 blackout enforced in Fiji before the election and later extended for a further three days when rain forced some polling to be delayed until the weekend.
Journalists were only allowed to report technical aspects of the election and the blackout extended to everyone in Fiji when it was an offence to:
" .... distribute in any manner (including through telephone, internet, email, social media or other electronic means) any campaign material or communicate political messages, including calls to vote for or against a particular political party or candidate in the election."
Political activist Roshika Deo says the blackout, with heavy penalties, silenced important discussion on social media.
"People are, like, really self-censoring themselves and being really overly cautious and there's no discussions happening. I've had people ask, and they even send a private message to someone asking something, can they make a phone call? And here I'm not talking about political parties or candidates or the media. I'm talking about private citizens."
Mr Raj of Fiji's media authority said there was all the more reason for a blackout given the misinformation being spread.
"This is why we need something like the 48 hour blackout period. This is why we need a mainstream media that is going to be the voice of reason, is able to help the public delineate fact from fiction."
The co-chair of the Multinational Observer Group observing the election Jane Prentice says a 48 hour pre election blackout is not unreasonable.
"I think more to the point is not that it exists, but the clarity around it and clarity around what you can report on and what you can't report on in that time and I think perhaps there need to be some clearer guidelines for the media around those issues."
The observers say they'll be making recommendations on the issue in their final report.
