The scourge of misinformation and disinformation continues to slow down the uptake of vaccines but getting a jab isn’t the only thing that could be stymied by false or misleading information.
As we saw in 2020, misinformation about the US elections reached boiling point on 6th January when US citizens stormed the Capitol building. Could the same happen in South Africa?
Well a new collaborative project being organised locally hopes to avoid that by fighting disinformation and misinformation from the off.
The organisation and individuals taking part in this project include:
- Right2Know
- Code for Africa
- Superlinear
- WITNESS
- Phumzile Van Damme
- Dr David Rosenstein
The partners will operate under the banner Local Government Election Anti-Disinformation Project, but will maintain their independence while collaborating to tackle disinformation in the lead up to the local government elections.
The project has three components:
- Disinformation monitoring and combatting – This will focus on online political discourse as well as the messaging emanating from political parties and government
- Advocacy – This aspect of the project will focus on big tech, PR firms and the use of video to expose human rights abuses as well as combatting disinformation.
- Behavioural science – This will see the partners trying to understand the believability of disinformation in South Africa.
The project says that over the last few months the partners have collaborated to build a network that combines data science, tech tools, behavioural science, media and social analysis as well as fact-checking and civic education.
With that having been said, the goal of the project isn’t to censor. In fact the project says it will campaign against censorship.
“We will carefully monitor and advocate against any attempts of censorship, particularly by the government,” the project states.
Rather, the goal is insure that all political parties are towing the line when it comes to the Independent Electoral Commission’s Code of Conduct.
“For an election to be free and fair, voters need to have accurate information about parties, candidates and other factors in order to inform their voting decisions. For this to happen, disinformation needs to be removed from the equation. While South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission Code of Conduct prohibits political parties from publishing false information, this does not necessarily mean that this is followed,” the project stated.
We’re especially curious to see how this project holds big tech to account especially locally. With the likes of Facebook and Twitter hardly acknowledging the local issues that continue to pop up on their platforms we’re hoping that at the very least this project can hold them to account.
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
