Back in April 2021, the Democratic Alliance announced it’s taking on Facebook to curb the potential for disinformation on its platform in South Africa come local election time. What followed was a whirlwind of events that ended in the MP heading the project, Phumzile Van Damme, resigning from her post and Facebook pulling out of the deal.
Now, Van Damme has announced a new project aimed at combatting fake news in the upcoming local elections. Called the 2021 Local Government Election Anti-Disinformation Project, it’s not linked to a political party, but rather a host of local entities dedicated to human rights and lawful political discourse.
According to a press release sent out this afternoon, the project is a “… first-of-its-kind common-purpose ‘country duty’ collaborative project against disinformation and misinformation.”
Van Damme has partnered with Right2Know, Code For Africa, Superlinear, Dr David Rosenstein and an organisation called WITNESS to establish the endeavour.
The disinformation project has three components:
- Monitoring misinformation, specifically when it comes to online political discourse and all messaging (online and otherwise) from political parties and government.
- Advocacy focusing on Big Tech companies and PR firms to aim to expose human rights abuses and disinformation.
- Research to understand the believability of fake news in South Africa
The project aims to launch a variety of initiatives to inform South Africans of fake news and how it affects their rights. This is especially useful during a time of local elections.
“It is an honour to do ‘country duty’ for South Africa against a problem that not only exists online but has real-life consequences that often escalates during election season,” the press release reads.
“This year COVID-19 has made the social media terrain even more fertile for disinformation. COVID-19 has created what the World Health Organisation calls an ‘infodemic’. This happens when there is an overload of information, disinformation and misinformation in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak.”