“People are not aware of their powers and their capabilities as citizens and/or consumers. We try to mitigate that.”

BÉTON BLEU MAGAZINE x citizen d

Domen Savič is the founder of Citizen D, a nongovernmental organization focused on digital rights and active citizenship in Slovenia. With Béton Bleu he spoke about media literacy, misinformation and the possibility of “rebooting” the country in 2022.

BB: You are the founder of “Citizen D” – a Slovenian NGO with a focus on digital rights. Why did you start this project?

DS: My background is in journalism, I studied and worked in this field for a number of years. I looked into advertising, app development and worked as a brand manager before. Then I met some wonderful people from the Share Foundation in Belgrade in 2014/2015. They work on digital rights in Serbia. I wondered if there is a similar organization in Slovenia. It got me thinking: What’s wrong with the Slovenian NGO sector or with the Slovenian society in general that such an organization doesn’t exist? What if these topics related to freedom of expression online, net-neutrality, privacy and security become more frequent? I had some experience in working in the NGO sector as a student, that covered the same area of expertise as this, digital rights, freedom of rights and online activism. I realised that one of the key issues why this field is underdeveloped is the way NGOs are funded. They are mostly funded through EU-grants or local grants, which means that if the entity or the person that gives you the grant doesn’t see a problem and doesn’t tell you to fix it, the problem does not exist. We are funding ourselves through donations and commercial projects – anything that will enable us to be independent, in that way that we ourselves can decide the issues we are going to follow up and analyse. It’s been mission impossible to say the least but now we are heading towards our seventh year of operations. And I would definitely say that we’ve left a mark on several issues that we have been working on – from net-neutrality to security to privacy, biometric surveillance, media literacy and others. 

BB: Your work is partly research and partly workshops and seminars? 

DS: As an organization we try to cover digital rights, media literacy and active citizenship. These are the three main pillars and each of these pillars have different “friends” we call them – different people who are helping out in advisory capacities, with their skills and their knowledge and so forth. We try to engage into decision making process and by that to facilitate a change. 

For example, our work on media literacy focuses on the connection between the media and the active citizen and we teach the logic of media being the fourth estate and the individual having political rights that also manifest through media representation. Another long-term project of ours is the work we do in the field of personal cybersecurity but also in the field of media representation of surveillance society. We realized that the political solutions that pertain to the legal frameworks of cybersecurity and privacy are influenced also by the way the media is reporting on these issues and we tried to beat the politicians to the punch by improving the reporting. 

BB: Citizen Ds approach to activism is a little different than the one at other organizations. Why?

DS: One of the issues that we have generally speaking with NGOs is that they mostly focus on raising awareness to the issue but they don’t follow through with some solutions to the problem. What’s even more problematic is that most NGOs sort of pit the user against the problem so that it looks like the issue only exists between the user and the problem generator. For example, if you have an environmental NGO they are saying the consumer is responsible for everything. You need to eat less meat, you need to cut on gas usage, you need to spend less electricity and so on. I found the systematic approach to this problem-solving is lacking. The NGOs are not putting enough effort into researching the whole field and then saying “Look this problem is divided between several state institutions, actors from the private sector and active citizens from the general public. All of these actors have to work in sync or at least coherently to solve the problem.” We try to do that by first researching the problem, mapping it out, tagging relevant institutions in that field – be it from the public or the private side – and then offering or explaining the user that there is a list of things they can do in terms of relations to the public institutions, or in relations to one’s own capacity as a consumer or as a citizen. I think that approach takes the edge off putting all of the blame to the end user and at the same time the user is then more aware of the complexity of the issue but also of the role he or she plays as a citizen.

BB: What does the role of the citizen look like? 

DS: You can see there is a huge disconnect between the roles of citizens/consumers in a democracy that contributes to the problems we have seen everywhere, not just in local politics, but also in media representation and in solving big issues such as global warming or surveillance. People are not aware of their powers and their capabilities as citizens and/or consumers. We try to mitigate that, we are not an NGO that says, “We are going to take care of this, stand back.” We are helping with investigating a subject and pushing through the legal procedures that are cumbersome and sometimes even last for many years. In the end we are not telling people what to do, but we are offering them some things that they can do to make this better. When we started our NGO, we said that our goal is to self-terminate ourselves, that we are trying to put ourselves out of the business by showing that anyone can do what we do. Anyone can follow up with procedures and with certain institutions that exist within a parliamentary democracy. We are trying to show the way and then it is not just up to few people but to all of us.  

BB: What about the current problem of misinformation – for example the anti-vaxx movement – how would you target something like this?

DS: I would disagree with the notion that misinformation is a problem now. I think this has always be an issue. The thing that was working for us for a while is that we have never had to face a problem so quickly and so intensely as the corona pandemic. Disinformation always existed but these people weren’t a factor, weren’t an issue and weren’t publicly visible. They didn’t have the reach, they didn’t have the monetary support behind them and no one paid attention to them. And since no one paid attention, the problem got bigger and bigger until it clashed with the corona pandemic and then it just exploded. If you go back – at least in Slovenia, but in many other countries as well – if you go back to 2010 and even before you can find some media reporting on the anti-vaccination movement. You can find local incidents with measles or something like this. But I think that back then these incidents were too small to attract a broader reach or a broader focus and now we are paying interest on our own ignorance. If you address the problem when it is localised, when it is smaller, you have a better chance of putting the fire out. But once it is everywhere… I don’t think we can effectively, as it stands now, address it or prevent it. I think now it is like the corona virus: We have to learn to live with the prevailing disinformation and misinformation because that has become a part of culture, of politics and of everyday life. 

BB: But you just said before that your organization is about teaching people how to have media literacy?

DS: I agree but I am not saying that the tools aren’t there. If a person decides to arm him/herself with knowledge and with skills to detect and prevent or limit the spread of misinformation – that person can do that. Another issue is that the European Commission focusses on the media literacy and usually completely ignores the political aspect of media. They focus on individual skills on how to detect and prevent misinformation. That’s in my opinion not the right way. We adapted our media literacy courses in the way that they include also the political aspect of media, the fourth estate, the concept of watch dogs and so on, precisely because we need to explain to citizens that this issue has a lot of ins and a lot of outs. It's not all up to an individual consumer and/or citizen. It is something that needs to be addressed more broadly and from different perspectives. Misinformation is still a booming industry because it is still presented as an issue that exists between the user and the keyboard. Some say that misinformation exists because people are sharing lies and propaganda on Facebook – but that is simply not the case. 

BB: Is your organization also working in other countries? 

DS: Yes, we are a member of different organizations. One is the European Digital Rights Initiative (EDRI), then there is a different organization that covers the southern-eastern region of the Balkan peninsula called SEE Digital Rights Network. We also connect with individual organizations that share our field of expertise and work. The issue being that in other countries the NGOs are depending too much on EU grants or on public funding and tthis causes them to miss out on different opportunities that need addressing but since they are not funded by big grants, they don’t get the attention they deserve. 

BB: Looking to elections in Slovenia in 2022 and back to the attacks from ex-prime minister Janez Janša on the press: How would you describe the situation now and what might change with the elections?

DS: 2022 is a mega election year in Slovenia: We have the parliamentary elections, the presidential elections and the municipality elections, all coming in the same year. I like to say that we got the chance to reboot the whole country. I think the issue of disinformation and attacks on public media outlet by the last coalition wouldn’t be as problematic if it weren’t for several other factors. Those factors are that the general sentiment of the media, the general trustworthiness or the belief in the media from the general public has decreased significantly in the past few years for several reasons. The media industry and the political lead in Slovenia has completely ignored the issue of anti-vaxx movement for way to long. We had a ministry that organized a public debate between scientists and the anti-vaxx/anti-5G movement in 2020. It was horrifying to see how you had the doctors, physicists and engineers on one side and on the other side you had anti 5G conspiracy theorists that completely obliterated the scientists. And this was organized by the ministry of public administration that is in charge of implementing the 5G policies in Slovenia. To me it was heart-breaking to see that kind of disconnect between the awareness of what the politics should be and the perception of these 5G conspiracist. We are seeing it now in this super election year: You see parties not willing to take a very firm stance against anti-vaxx movements or against pseudo-science. They gamble with not saying too much against them, so as to not offend them, but at the same time not being openly pro-anti-vaxx because that would alienate the other public. This will have horrifying results because ultimately this will legitimize the anti-vaxx or pseudo-science movement. 

BB: Another thing that also gets normalized is the right rhetoric that is anti-vaxx and anti-immigration.

DS: What is even worse is that you can then see how these sentiments are changing over time. Now the biggest anti-vaxxers are at the same time the biggest Putin supporters in Slovenia. You have people who are claiming that the invasion of Ukraine never happened, that this is all propaganda, that Putin is right. It’s not just anti-vaxx movement, it’s also anti-5G, not just anti-vaxx and anti-5G, but also anti-climate change. It moves from topic to topic and because it uses completely insane and completely irrational arguments, you can apply that irrationality to basically everything. It’s not a very good place to be in because it causes irreparable and very concrete harm.

BB: Could you name the topic right now that could be targeted when it is localized and small before it becomes the big and problematic disinformation?

DS: Today when we talk about new conspiracy theories or the new pseudo-science movement, I think these movements stand on the shoulders of giants. It’s not a smallpox denialism that it was ten years ago. I think now the public and the political clout of these movements is stronger and if I have to pick one topic it would be the normalization and legitimization of pseudo-science. We are facing the threat of a pseudo-science political party that may not have a chance of winning the general election but is making progress in legitimizing these stances. 

BB: What could be a path out of this situation? Having more media literacy, being more critical with information from media?

I think that currently there is a lot of things we can do as citizens, as consumers, as organizations and as media outlets. Everybody is playing a part and for the media it would be to stop giving media representation to pseudo-science representatives. Stop giving them the limelight of the media, because that is one of the key elements of the legitimization of their ideas. The second one would be in my opinion that political parties form a unified stance against pseudo-science because there is no angle that you can legitimize it. Then it would be the process  analysing why this thing happened in the first place. People agree with these conspiracy theories and I agree with people who are saying that this is an easy way out of a very complex world. We are living in a society, in a system, that is becoming too complex, too big, too dangerous, too incomprehensible so that it has become impossible to grasp every single thing that is happening. We use the pseudo-science and conspiracy theory to give us an easy way out. Once you have this notion of a conspiracy theory then at least you are thinking that somebody has at least something under control be it Soros or the lizards from Mars. I think that offers some sense of comfort. I think addressing this issue from a point of public mental health crisis would go a long way into solving these issues. Compared to media literacy – and I say this to everybody that we are organizing media literacy trainings with – media literacy is not a silver bullet. Even with our approach, where we aim to present the case of media literacy through political activation, we are always saying, don’t put all of the eggs into the media literacy basket because it doesn’t work like this. 

BB: Could you give an example?

DS: Our campaigns are a living example: We’ve been analysing and sounding the alarm about public funding of propaganda outlets in Slovenia since 2018. We’ve analysed several of the advertising campaigns that are funding propaganda outlets from the local budgets. We’ve taken these issues to the parliament, to the national police force, we’ve talked about it in Brussels, we’ve basically done everything that there is within the power of an active citizen for this to stop. What happened is that since none of the state institutions think that they are responsible for this field – the court, the opposition, the police, the government even – they are still to this day ignoring this issue and are not doing anything about it. I think this causes the most severe cases of systematic disorder: when people stop believing in institutions. They stop believing in a democratic parliamentary system that has checks and balances, that has roles, that has individual organization groups that are all doing its own part. I think that is actually the biggest threat: That at one point you realise that the system is not existent, that no one pays attention to you, that it doesn’t matter what you do. What’s even worse is that this is happening in the field of propaganda outlets that are funded by public money. In Slovenia state advertising contracts amount up to 8 million euros per year, so every year the state spends 8 million Euro for all of its advertising campaigns. Then you see procurement of arms in the NATO, for the vaccines and the prevention of the corona virus, the public procurement of masks and other protective gear. All of these public procurements go beyond 8 million Euros. They are far more expensive. Then you start thinking “If such misappropriations of public money are happening on the 8 million per year contract, there is no way to tell what happens when the amount is ten times or 100 times bigger.” It is again the case of living in an environment you don’t fully understand, and at the same time you are amazed at all the things that aren’t performed as they should be performed. Because on paper we have all of these independent institutions, we have rule of law and the courts, but in practice once you address a specific issue the lack of activity is surprising. I truly didn’t expect that. 

BB: In the paper that you published at the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung on this topic you also mention the influence that Hungary has on the Slovenian media through media like Nova24.

DS: You could say that Orbán in Hungary, Janša in Slovenia, Vučić in Serbia, and other oligarchs are not thinking that far ahead. They are basically hoodlums trying to get as much money as they can before they are forced to retire. These oligarchs don’t have a single unique, progressive, developing idea about anything. They don’t offer any solutions to the issues even if these solutions would be different or alternative to the prevailing scientific ideas that are currently out there. They are these head of states that are trying to position themselves in the best way possible and at the same time they are trying to deflect anything or anybody that threatens that position. Other than that, there is no substance. There is just xenophobic rhetoric, pandering to the masses and trying to survive the election cycles. What disturbs me is that at least in Slovenia everybody else is playing their game: the opposition, the media and the general public. These are the entities that are jumping on their wagon and are playing their game according to their rules. When Jansa insults journalists, everyone is trying to explain that you should be critical about that and saying that you shouldn’t insult journalists. When Janša calls for a ban on certain NGOs everyone jumps on the wagon and starts explaining that these NGOs are crucial to our society, they are doing critical work, they create values and so on. The moment you start legitimizing oligarchs, the moment you start replying to their ideas, the moment you start including them in public debates, that’s the moment when you’ve lost the game. Because they are the ones who are leading the game, they are the ones who are always producing new bizarre attacks, that you then have to respond to. The solution is really simple. You just ignore them. You put forward progressive ideas, you put forward new ideas, something that shows to people that you are able to see a world where oligarchs or other autocrats do not exist, where they are not a critical part of everything that happens.

BB: Thank you for your time.

Biography:

Domen Savič studied Journalism and is the founder of the organization Citizen D in Slovenia. He works on the topics of active citizenship, media literacy and digital security. In 2021 he published two papers on state funded propaganda and hate speech for the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.

Website: https://www.drzavljand.si/en/

Twitter: @DrzavljanD

Interview: Antonija Cvitic

25/04/2022

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