Sri Lankans voters have been influenced by social media and artificial intelligence, and could become a grave issue in the future, Commission of Elections revealed.
The commission quoted the findings of the research conducted by Democracy Reporting International and Factum said the influence of social media and artificial intelligence have influenced voters in the 2024 Presidential election, Parliamentary election, while the trend was seen during the local government elections last year.
“The situation could reach dangerous levels in the future,” Additional Commissioner Elections (Legal) Chinthaka Kularatne said.
Political influencers continued to play a significant role in electoral communication during Sri Lanka’s 2024 parliamentary election, including after the legally mandated electoral silence period began. Unlike during the 2024 Presidential election, overall influencer activity has declined a bit during the parliamentary election following the start of the silence period, posting activity. However, the situation remained largely unchanged during the general election, the survey has also revealed.
“The National People’s Power (NPP) has been the most frequently mentioned political party among the political influencers monitored, receiving more mentions than the other major parties combined. NPP received 715 mentions across the monitoring period, compared with 177 for the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), 125 for the United National Party (UNP) and 116 for the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB). This pattern persisted during the silence period, when the NPP accounted for 53 of the 100 party mentions identified.
Overall, the findings show that political influencers remained an important component of Sri Lanka’s online electoral communication during the 2024 parliamentary election, including when formal campaigning was restricted. Although election-related content represented a smaller share of influencer output than during the Presidential election, its relative prominence increased during the electoral silence period, from 39% to 46.8%,” as per the research data.
It was revealed that the Election Commission has come up with an operational matrix which comprises nine subprojects to address the situation. These include legal and policy reforms, rapid response and a system to content removal system, voter awareness and education campaign, AI-based content detection system, single source of truth website, a code of conduct framework, introducing a national social media monitoring network, fact-check consortium and a programme of media guideline modernisation.
The Election Commission said it is in the process of talking with social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube on preventing fake posts, especially during election time.
Also, it was revealed that people in Sri Lanka have lost faith in political parties.
However, as many as 41 new political parties have applied for registration by January this year, according to Election Commission Chairman R. M. A. L. Rathnayake.
He said new political parties will be recognised by the end of this year. It was revealed that there are 84 registered political parties in Sri Lanka which are already registered. It was further revealed that 27 political parties are inactive.