Political parties play an essential role in a democracy, for which they must exercise good leadership, conduct regular outreach to their constituents, and demonstrate that government is delivering on citizen concerns. When parties cannot fulfill this role, democracy suffers.

It’s 8:30 AM and Fatiha* is walking into the Moroccan Parliament. In a few minutes, she’s scheduled to sit down with her member of parliament (MP) for their weekly one-on-one meeting. Fatiha plans to propose a new strategy to increase the MP’s social media visibility. By 9 AM, Fatiha is at her desk putting the final touches on a Facebook update to publicize the MP’s visit to a local market, which falls in line with her proposed new social media strategy. “I have enormously appreciated the exchanges with [my MP].

The Open Internet for Democracy Initiative (OIDI) announced the selection of the first cohort of open internet advocates for the Open Internet for Democracy Leaders Program. The six outstanding leaders (see their profiles below) were chosen from nearly two hundred applicants, and represent a diverse group of global advocates from local civic, media, and private sector organizations that are passionate about protecting and promoting an open internet.

Brussels, Belgium — The Defending Digital Democracy project (D3P) at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center joined the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) for the public launch of the “The Cybersecurity Campaign Playbook: European Edition” in Brussels on May 22, 2018.

While disinformation in traditional media has been used for decades, digital disinformation and computational propaganda, which uses artificial intelligence and political “bots” or pieces of code to manipulate public opinion online, have grown exponentially. An increasing number of elections across Europe and Eurasia are influenced by disinformation tactics.

To address this challenge, NDI conducted a four-day academy for 15 citizen election monitoring organizations from 11 countries. The event, which was held in Belgrade in April 2018, provided citizen activists with new strategies, skills, and tools to identify and expose disinformation during elections and to use electoral data to raise the level of fact-based discourse.