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Anti-Disinformation Project rolls out first public education campaign

What is the difference between misinformation and disinformation? What exactly is a deepfake?

These questions and others are set to be answered by the recently launched Anti-Disinformation Project which hopes to hold politicians and those spreading disinformation to account ahead of the local government elections in November.

As part of the project an education campaign is being rolled out to help South Africans spot disinformation campaigns, highlight the importance of fact-checking and the techniques used by miscreants spreading unreliable information online.

“Disinformation experts use many psychological tactics to convince and persuade citizens that what they are saying is true,” says clinical psychologist and behavioural scientists involved in the project, Dr David Rosenstein. “Therefore, our media literacy campaign will also equip citizens with information and knowledge that has emerged from the behavioural sciences, to help citizens understand the psychology behind disinformation, and to combat disinformation”.

The campaign will be rolled out on social media, as well as national, provincial and community media outlets.

You can see some examples of the campaign in the gallery below.

The goal of this campaign is to equip citizens with the knowledge they need to decipher what is real and what is not.

Of course, the project will continue to monitor communications from political parties for disinformation which violates the Independent Electoral Commission’s Code of Conduct.

“Unfortunately, we can no longer believe everything we see online. But at the same time, we cannot afford to disbelieve everything because we cannot perpetually live in a state of distrust,” says African program manager for WITNESS, Adebayo Okeowo.

Recently Hypertext spoke with co-CEO at Code for Africa, one of the Anti-Disinformation Project’s partners, Chris Roper. We recommend giving that a listen here for information on how to report disinformation and how you can avoid falling victim to untrustworthy information.

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