FIRST SPEAKER (GOV TEAM)

Motion 1: THIS HOUSE BELIEVE THAT DIGITAL INFORMATION

HAS DONE MORE HARM THAN GOOD IN PROTECTING
DEMOCRACY.
A very good morning I bid to the speakers and members of the floor,

The motion for today is “THIS HOUSE BELIEVE THAT DIGITAL

INFORMATION HAS DONE MORE HARM THAN GOOD IN
PROTECTING DEMOCRACY.”

We, the government team define DIGITAL INFORMATION as database

stored on computers and in other digital media. Whereas HARM is referred to
something that causes someone or something to be hurt. While DEMOCRACY
can be defined as a state of society characterized by formal equality of rights
and privileges.

Ladies and gentlemen, we, the government team strongly and undoubtedly agree
with this motion. We strongly believe that digital information has done more
harm than good in protecting democracy because it is exploitable.

Some of researchers predicted a future information landscape in which fake

information crowds out reliable information. Some even foresaw a world in
which widespread information scams and mass manipulation cause broad
swathes of the public to simply give up on being informed participants in civic
life. The fake news ecosystem preys on some of our deepest human instincts.
They also predicted that manipulative actors will use new digital tools to take
advantage of humans’ inbred preference for comfort and convenience and their
craving for the answers they find in reinforcing echo chambers.

Ladies and gentlemen, my task for today as the Prime Minister is to define
today’s motion as well as to state our team’s very first point. One of the reasons
on why digital information has done more harm than good in protecting
democracy is because digital information reinforces echo-chambers (refers to
situations in which beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and
repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal).

My second speaker will rebut the statements given by the Leader of the
Opposition as well as to state our team’s second point which is digital
information leads to the spread of misleading information.
And our third point is that digital information is easily exploited which causes
digital disruption that ends up hurting democracy.
Last but not least, our third speaker will rebut and refute the various
misconceptions by the opposition team as well as to reaffirm our team’s caseline
for today.

Members of the August house,

Let me continue with our team’s first point. This house believes that digital
information has done more harm than good in protecting democracy as it
reinforces echo chambers!

Ladies and gentlemen, the biggest threat to democracy is echo chambers in your
social’s media practicing. Today’s citizens have the power to assemble through
online medium and it’s disrupting traditional political systems. The Internet has
rewired civil society in unexpected ways, driving collective action to a radically
new dimension. However, it has also given rise to right-wing populist
movements such as Brexit in the UK and the rise of Donald Trump
misconception in twitter in the USA recent president election. This may seem
like a sensitive topic to debate about, however, it is the reality that we are facing
—I won’t go into it any further but it is a few example that is most prominent
today. Through the increasing polarization of opinions online, the Internet has
facilitated this development and has actually increased conflict and ideological
segregation between opposing views, granting a disproportionate amount of
clout to the most extreme opinions that may appear.

Since more members of society are now encouraged to participate in public

discourse and speak up about matters, they deem to be of public concern, the
Internet has rendered the diversity of citizens’ views more critically. This is
particularly visible when there is conflict and disagreement between different
political view or civic interest groups. Whenever there is a controversial policy
announcement, there will always be a highly motivated group of people who use
the Internet to apply enormous pressure on politicians in these moments by
voicing their discontent in a very negative way that effect our minister
sometimes to come up with weird, U-turn or last-minute change in making
decision toward public interest. (example whether school should be reopen or
not during covid19 pandemic)

The greater diversity and availability of digital content implies that people may
choose to only consume content that matches their own worldviews. We choose
who to follow and who to befriend. The resulting echo chambers tend to amplify
and reinforce our existing opinions, which is dysfunctional for a healthy
democratic discourse. And while social media platforms like Facebook and
Twitter generally have the power to expose us to politically diverse opinions,
research suggests that the filter bubbles they sometimes create are, in fact,
worsened by the platforms’ personalization algorithms, which are based on our
social networks and our previously expressed ideas.

Lastly, I would like to highlight that a digital platform is not a place where you
can keep using it without any thought. You better think before you speak, same
goes for thinking before you type. In the digital media, not everyone wants to
hear your opinion-- some just want to argue and not actually have a healthy and
productive debate. Thus, this shows that democratic relations between the
community is always at stake

Socrates, a philosophy, once said, “It is better to change an opinion than to

persist a wrong one.” However, digital information only reinforces the same
opinion and so-called facts over and over again. Thus, this shows that we, the
government team, have proven how this motion is 100% correct.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the August house, we as the government

team have shown that how digital information has done more harm than good in
protecting democracy. Therefore, I, as the Prime Minister would like to reaffirm
that we strongly agree with this motion proposed today. We strongly believe
that digital information has done more harm than good in protecting
democracy because it is exploitable.
SECOND SPEAKER (GOV TEAM)
Motion 3: THIS HOUSE BELIEVE THAT DIGITAL INFORMATION HAS
DONE MORE HARM THAN GOOD IN PROTECTING DEMOCRACY

The motion for today is “THIS HOUSE BELIEVE THAT DIGITAL

INFORMATION HAS DONE MORE HARM THAN GOOD IN
PROTECTING DEMOCRACY.”

Ladies and gentlemen, we, the government team strongly and undoubtedly agree
with this motion. We strongly believe that digital information has done more
harm than good in protecting democracy as it is exploitable.

As a second speaker of the government team, before I proceed with our team’s
second and third arguments, I would like to refute the first point of the
opposition team.

REBUTTALS
______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________

Members of the august house let me continue with our team’s second argument
to support our case line which is digital information has done more harm than
good in protecting democracy as it is exploitable.
Ladies and gentlemen, now it is my turn to clarify why we as the government
believe that digital information is actually harming our democracy and not in
any way protecting it. Digital information is undeniably vast and useful, but
everything in life comes as a pair. With pros, come cons. As for this matter, our
2nd point as the affirmative side is digital information leads to the spread of
misleading information.

As time passes, the information reach capability increases exponentially. Plus,

with the ever-growing technology inventions, the amount of information
available to us is limitless. Before we go any further, let's take a moment to
understand how digital information is exploited. Like I said earlier, the amount
of information available to us is very huge, therefore it's actually hard to keep
track of which one is true or wrong just based on your perception and not actual
research. That opens a very huge window of opportunity for an information
point to be suppressed and replaced with others.

This misleading information exploit is happening on a daily basis that is seen to

happen in our own country not so long time ago. Back almost a year ago, when
Covid-19 resurged in our country, a certain group of people started to cause
disinformation. This is different than misinformation whereas that is caused by
honest true mistake while disinformation is deliberately created information to
mislead and deceive.

Some people will blame literacy skills that some people, just don't have. While
this is undeniable, the truth is actually a lot worse than we thought. Even the
government’s more valiant efforts in the form of fact-checking – spearheaded by
websites such as Sebenarnya.my, the government-operated one-stop center for
debunking false information, and the Quick Response Team, established in
March last year to rapidly verify any viral news – will, unfortunately, be
hamstrung as merely reactive measures. We’re not saying the whole ecosystem
of digital information is not trustworthy, we want to emphasize that the large
size of the information being output risks being false and goes unnoticed.
At the end of the day, even if we are then clarified which information is correct,
the harm sometimes is already done and some effects are just irreversible.

3RD POINT:

Moving on, the third point of the government team is that digital information is
easily exploited which causes digital disruption that ends up hurting democracy.

The years of almost unfettered enthusiasm about the benefits of the internet have
been followed by a period of backlash as users worry about who exploits the
speed, reach, and complexity of the internet for harmful purposes. Over the past
four years – a time of the Brexit decision in the United Kingdom, the American
presidential election, and a variety of other elections – the digital disruption of
democracy has been a leading concern.

Digital disruption has been especially prevalent in today’s day and age. Plus, the
journalism that we are seeing today has been increasingly more underwhelming
as most media sort to steer people away from the truth by modifying the actual
content to sound controversial or worse than it actually is to produce more clicks
and reactions from users. Lesser people are staying to their true purpose and
instead focusing more on profits and fame. We fear that this downward spiral
towards exploiting people’s emotions will lower the value of truthful and
independent journalism.

Moreover, many digital information experts say they worry about the future of
democracy because the power of major technology companies plays a big role in
democratic discourse. Let’s take look at Facebook as an example. In 2019, the
CEO of Facebook was questioned at The US Capitol due to allegations of
selling their users data to other third parties to be used by third parties including
Cambridge Analytica with the goal of providing a dataset of target
demographics for advertisements to promote propaganda and biased
journalism-- all this results in a democracy that is compromised in all aspects
and shows how easy it is to exploit the users.

Research made by Robert Eipstein, a psychologist at American Institute for

Behavioral Research and Technology has stated, “As of 2015, the outcomes of
25 of the national elections in the world were being determined by Google’s
search engine. If authorities do not act to curtail the power of Big Tech
companies – Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and similar companies that might
emerge in coming years – Choosing what’s the best for yourself, your family
and your country should not be as easy as searching up a few articles on the
Internet, it is something much more important than that.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the august house, we, the government team
have shown how digital information has done more harm than good in
protecting democracy. I would like to reaffirm that we strongly and definitely
agree with this motion proposed today. We strongly believe that digital
information has done more harm than good in protecting democracy as it is
exploitable.
Thank you.