The 2021 Local Government Election Anti-Disinformation Project launched in South Africa on September 1. The collaborative project is intended to pool resources in the fight against disinformation and misinformation.
CfA’s role in the project will be to provide members with access to media monitoring platforms and investigative resources, through its digital forensics team, the iLab, as well as its research and analysis department, CivicSignal.
“Code for Africa has considerable experience in identifying and challenging misinformation and disinformation through its work in over 20 Africa countries, and we’re excited about making our techniques and technologies available to the project partners, said CfA’s Deputy CEO, Chris Roper.
“Misinformation and disinformation is a major threat to democracies and civil society. The Reuters Digital News Report for 2021, on which Code for Africa collaborated, identified concern about misinformation as very high globally, with 58% of people expressing concern about what is true or false on the internet when it comes to news. And this number is much higher for the African countries surveyed, with an average of 74% concerned about misinformation.”
Joining Code for Africa (CfA) in the project are a variety of partners, both individuals and civil society organisations. These include ex-member of parliament Phumzile Van Damme, advocacy NGO Right2Know, digital forensics expert Superlinear, behavioural scientist Dr David Rosenstein, and video forensics experts WITNESS.org.
The project’s partners will maintain their independence and, on a voluntary basis, collaborate to tackle disinformation in the lead-up to the elections.
Each brings a variety of skills, expertise, tools, resources and experience. These include disinformation policy, fact-checking, research, data science, behavioural science, psychology, civic technology, communications rights, and advocacy.
The project has three components. CfA is primarily concerned with the first, which is the monitoring and analysing of mis/disinformation. This will focus on online political discourse, including messaging emanating from political parties and government.
The second component, the preserve of the advocacy groups in the network, will address the role of technology platforms, PR firms, and the use of video technology to expose human rights abuses and combat disinformation.
A third component uses the precepts of behavioural science to understand the mechanisms behind how disinformation in South Africa flourishes.
Over the last few months, the project’s partners have worked together to build a collaborative network that combines data science, tech tools, behavioural science, media and social analysis, fact-checking and civic education.
As the project’s official press release states, “the project is in no way intended to infringe on the rights of South Africans to express their views freely online. Upholding the right to freedom of expression is a core tenet of the project.
“The project’s members will carefully monitor and advocate against any attempts of censorship, including state interventions. In its first phase, the project will focus on public education about disinformation and misinformation in its nature, identifying it and its associated terms.”
More initiatives will be announced in the coming weeks, as well as the release of reports, analyses and investigations of mis/disinformation and detected influence operations.
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of civic technology and data journalism labs, with teams in 21 countries. CfA builds digital democracy solutions that give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions, and that strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability. This includes building infrastructure like the continent’s largest open data portals at openAFRICA and sourceAFRICA. CfA incubates initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative, the sensors.AFRICA air quality sensor network and the research and analysis programme CivicSignal.
CfA also manages the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), which gives the continent’s best muckraking newsrooms the latest possible forensic data tools, digital security and whistleblower encryption to help improve their ability to tackle crooked politicians, organised crime and predatory big business. CfA also runs one of Africa’s largest skills development initiatives for digital journalists, and seed funds cross-border collaboration.
