Google supporting election integrity in South Africa

With South Africa’s national and provincial elections less than a month away, search giant Google has undertaken a number of steps to support election integrity the country by surfacing high quality information to voters.

This year marks 30 years since the dawn of democracy in South Africa. It’s also the country’s 7th election which is expected to be the mostly hotly contested polls.

While this milestone is certainly major – in an age where misinformation and disinformation place the integrity of the electoral process and safety of campaigns at high risk – technology has a crucial role to play in safeguarding from tactics like online abuse, deceit and the like.

Integrity of elections

Abongile Mashele: Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google said 2024 is an important year for elections across the world, with many countries going into the polls to elect their leaders for the forthcoming years

Mashele said the platform will also have an increased focus on the role artificial intelligence (AI) might play in the elections.

“During elections, both seasoned and new voters in South Africa will be actively seeking information around various candidates, voting locations, and campaign agendas. When people search for topics like “how to vote,” they will find information about ID requirements, voting stations and more — linking to authoritative sources from our partners such as the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).

Mashele said during an election, voters across the country also come to YouTube to get news and information from a diverse set of authoritative news sources.

“When voters search for election-related topics, YouTube’s recommendation system prominently surfaces election content in search results, the homepage and the “watch next” panel. At the same time, human reviewers and machine learning technology combine to detect, review and remove content that violates our policies.

“To support responsible and transparent political advertising, all advertisers who wish to run election ads in South Africa must complete an identity verification process and display an in-ad disclosure that clearly shows who paid for the ad. We also limit targeting of election ads,” Mashele said.

ALSO READ: New app launched to measure party support – Here’s who is winning the ‘polls’ so far

AI focus

Google said it is also working with industry players such as the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), and TikTok through a Framework of Cooperation, designed to protect and safeguard the integrity of the elections and fight against misinformation.

“This framework allows signatories to work together to promote access to information, candidates conduct awareness campaigns on elections, and provides training to political parties, and other key stakeholders on addressing misinformation.”

Google said as more people interact with AI-generated content, they have introduced policies and tools to help audiences navigate ads disclosures, content labels on YouTube and a responsible approach to Generative AI products.

ALSO READ: IEC and TikTok to ensure election integrity in SA