Disinformation in Africa: Overview and Responses
摘要
Disinformation in Africa is often studied anecdotally because the continent has 55 countries each with varying research environments, capacity, and competing scholarly challenges, all of which make it difficult to paint a full picture of the information pollution on the continent. This chapter explains the nuances of such research, reviews the existing research, and encourages disinformation researchers to soldier on with methodological innovations, even with the risk of an “epistemic injustice”—perhaps in the hope of surfacing more disinformation research from countries where such is non-existent, inaccessible, or irrelevant to the lived realities of the respective population. The chapter explains the context of disinformation in Africa, specifically, the mapping of the players, their tactics, techniques and tools, and the ingredients that make it easy for disinformation to spread and take root. It looks at Africa’s geopolitical and technological disadvantages in terms of building information resilience. It highlights new forms of disinformation with goals that do not fit neatly into the often-studied categories and cautions that the renewed criticism and apathy of information resilience interventions is akin to “kicking away the ladder” for a continent where only 38% of the population use the internet, and which communicates using foreign-owned platforms with ties to imperial and former colonial powers. It then concludes with a summary of solutions, which, if implemented, can help restore information integrity, inculcate digital hygiene, and rebuild information resilience in a continent that desperately needs it.