Maria Ressa Warns Democracy is Fragile

Ressa (left) shared the stage with CBC anchor Arsenault

Last night I had to opportunity to listen to journalist and Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa speak at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Held at the Chan Centre for Performing Arts, the almost sold-out audience gave her a standing ovation as she walked on stage, and she was so excited by the warm reception.

It's not easy to have Ressa come half way around the world, when she still has charges in court to fight; Ressa explained to CBC host Adrienne Arsenault that every time she wants to travel, she has to ask the courts for permission.

The talk was held at UBC in Vancouver

She didn't explain whether all her travel requests are granted or not, but we were thrilled to have the democracy activist and tech geek on stage.

The first time I heard Ressa speak was in 2018 at the SOPA or The Society of Publishers in Asia, where I received an Honourable Mention for my story. As the keynote speaker, she talked about her media company Rappler and how they use Facebook to disseminate their stories.

However, they found there were opposition voices on the social media site, proxies that would spread disinformation about their stories on Facebook, and those posts got more attention, thanks to algorithms. This created distrust in Rappler, and media in general. It was frightening to hear.

While Ressa and her Rappler team have been able to systematically analyse how this all happened, things have gotten substantially worse in the virtual world, as she outlined in last night's lecture.

Through her powerpoint presentation, Ressa showed how the opposition created horrible memes of her -- putting her face on top of a scrotum -- and showed us the image -- though she joked that her skin wasn't that dry.

The intensity of the personal attacks have gotten worse, and her team has found that it is particularly bad for female journalists, and even worse for female journalists of colour.

Ressa's 2022 book

She also talked about how seeds of disinformation are planted years in advance in social media, and then constantly repeated; once a real event happens, those bogus seeds quickly sprout and spread online like wildfire and it's near impossible to rectify the situation.

Why is this all important? Ressa believes facts, truth and justice are crucial in a democracy. When you have the facts you have the truth, and when you have the truth, you can pursue justice.

However, why is it that over 70 percent of countries today have authoritarian governments? And just south of us, Ressa noted that Donald Trump has turned the United States into a dictatorship within his first 100 days in office. She said former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte did it in six months.

Sounds chillingly familiar to Hong Kong after the national security law was enacted in 2020.

In the case of Trump, he has managed to sideline the media, senate and judiciary, and use social media to promote his policies without any checks and balances. He signed 142 executive orders in 100 days; in his first term he signed 220 EOs.

Already in the first term Trump discredited the media, saying they were fake news. Now he just disseminates his thoughts on his own social media platform, Truth Social.

Ressa asks why Canada has not built its own social media platform! Why rely on tech bros like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk to spread journalistic stories online? They had prime time seats during the inauguration! 

Zuckerberg removed fact checkers from Facebook too, and refuses to allow people to post legitimate media stories online. What we are left with are opinions of people that are without integrity.

More people joining No Kings protests

But there is some optimism. Ressa says the No Kings protests are getting bigger each time. she cited Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth's research that it takes around 3.5 percent of the population actively participating in protests to ensure serious political change.

Last week some 8 million Americans took part in the latest No Kings protests in all 50 states; perhaps the next one will galvanise 12 million people, or 3.5 percent of the US population...

Ressa says we are lucky in Canada to still have democracy... do we? She warns us to be vigilant and to stand up to things we believe are wrong, otherwise it will be normalised.

Many in the audience bought a copy of her 2022 book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator, and they quickly lined up after the talk, waiting for her to sign their copies.