Disinformation & Information Integrity

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Digital Disinformation in Africa: Hashtag Politics, Power and Propaganda

Tony Roberts, George Hamandishe Karekwaivanane (ed.)

London: Zed Books (2024), xiv, 242 pp.

"In an era when hashtag campaigns like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter capture global attention for victims of injustice, politicians and corporations are now spending billions employing Cambridge Analytica-type consultancies to manufacture disinformation - employing trolls, cyborgs and bots to disrupt ... more

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Mapping a Surge of Disinformation in Africa

Africa Center for Strategic Studies (corporate author)

Online: Africa Center for Strategic Studies (2024), 8 pp.

"This publication maps documented disinformation campaigns across Africa, grouping them by region and sponsor and describing their political and security consequences. It highlights foreign state-sponsored operations, domestic political actors, militant groups and military actors, with examples invo ... more

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Disinformation and Peacebuilding in Sub-Saharan Africa: Security Implications of AI-Altered Information Environments

Eduardo Albrecht, Eleonore Fournier-Tombs, Rebecca Brubaker

New York, Geneva: United Nations University (UNU) (2024), 39 pp.

"[...] this report aims to further explore the way in which AI technologies as they currently stand impact peace and conflict, and what methods might be used to mitigate their adverse effects - through the development of better tools and the inclusion of peace and conflict considerations in AI gover ... nance frameworks. The report presents the following findings: 1. AI is a driver of disinformation which adversely impacts peacebuilding efforts. 2. There are several ways to mitigate AI-powered disinformation. 3. AI can also be used to promote peacebuilding, although these mechanisms are still in their early stages. In relation to these findings, the report proposes the following recommendations: 1. More funding and support should be provided to civil society organizations’ efforts to expand media literacy and fact-checking initiatives using AI tools to enhance capabilities. 2. Governments need to work with civil society to develop and implement comprehensive, transparent legal frameworks combating disinformation. These legislative measures need to support digital and media literacy campaigns and fact-checking organizations. 3. Social media companies need to expand investment and research into understanding local information environments, so they can better identify and respond to instances of disinformation in all contexts in which they operate and enhance transparency. 4. Peacebuilding organizations need to carefully consider local media ecosystems and information environments when conducting conflict analyses, and factor these dynamics into their projects’ frameworks. Currently, disinformation exacerbates existing grievances and polarization, can act as a trigger for violence, leads individuals to make decisions based on false information, and creates or intensifies mistrust of institutions and international peacebuilding efforts. The efforts of journalists and civil society organizations to combat these effects, primarily through media literacy initiatives and factchecking, cannot keep up with the scope and scale of ‘fake news.’ Generative AI will increase the rate at which false content is produced and disseminated, and the quality or ‘believability’ of such content. Governments, civil society, and social media companies must work in tandem to combat the spread of disinformation and the impact it can have on peacebuilding efforts and security in sub-Saharan Africa." (Executive summary) more

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Artificial Intelligence in Newsrooms: Ethical Challenges Facing Journalists

Omar Al-Zoubi, Normahfuzah Ahmad, Norsiah Abdul Hamid

Studies in Media and Communication, volume 12, issue 1 (2024), pp. 401–409

"Artificial intelligence has started to expand in journalism, especially in advanced news organisations. It is evident that journalists are beginning to realise the importance of AI and that it will be a partner to human journalists in their work inside newsrooms. Despite the numerous benefits that ... more

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Is ChatGPT a Friend or Foe in the War on Misinformation? A South African Perspective

Burgert Senekal, Susan Brokensha

Communicare: Journal for Communication Studies in Africa, volume 42, issue 2 (2023), pp. 3-16

"The release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022 met with fears and optimism. One particularly important avenue of research that is emerging revolves around ChatGPT's ability to provide accurate and unbiased information on a variety of topics. Given the interest that Google and Microsoft have shown in sim ... more

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Fear and Lying in the EU: Fighting Disinformation on Migration with Alternative Narratives

Paul Butcher, Alberto-Horst Neidhardt

Brussels: European Policy Centre (2020), 51 pp.

"This Issue Paper examines nearly 1,500 news articles from four EU member states (Germany, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic) published between May 2019 and July 2020. It shows that disinformation narratives about migration seek to exploit readers’ fears to polarise public opinion, manufacture d ... more