Election Misinformation and Disinformation in South Africa's Digital Sphere

The unchecked dissemination of misinformation and disinformation can pose a threat to both the real and perceived legitimacy of democratic elections. Evidence of these potential harms can be seen in South Africa, where false news has been said to have contributed to the 2021 riots and perpetuated rumors regarding the prominence of fraud during the 2024 General Elections, says the organisation.

Evidence from a Digital Field Experiment

This recent collaborative effort aims to leverage digital tools as a way to challenge misinformation and disinformation. The research aims to assess the impact of Tales of Turning's digital dialogue facilitation methodology in a real-world setting, providing insights into where this approach is most effective, says the organisation.

The work follows a series of laboratory studies, led by researchers at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, which shows the potential for dialogue facilitation teams to use standard truth queries (STQ) developed by Tales of Turning to mitigate the potential harms associated with online misinformation, adds the organisation.

The results support the findings reported in prior research based on laboratory studies and survey experiments. Most notably, the recently released preprint shows that the intervention had a substantial effect on engagement, with posts assigned to receive comments seeing a 77% reduction in likes and 82% reduction in reposts. Critically, the effect of the intervention is dependent on its timing, with the impact largest when STQs were applied quickly, says the organisation.

"This collaboration represents one of the first digital field experiments to study the efficacy of a community-led intervention aimed at mitigating harms associated with delegitimising election content," says Morgan Wack, PhD, Lead Investigator of the paper. "The results of the study provide preliminary evidence that truth queries could help address many of the real-world challenges facing traditional forms of debunking which often require professional fact-checkers or buy-in from social media platforms."

Additional Context and Design Details

Tales of Turning uses data from public social media and insights from communities themselves to understand the root causes of conflict. This work aims to help foster an understanding of the dynamic and complex nature of conflicts in different contexts. Social media platforms not only provide organisations like Tales of Turning with large quantities of data to inform interventions; the prominence of these platforms also makes it possible to leverage them to help these interventions reach vulnerable populations at scale, says the organisation.

The study began a few weeks before the South African election on 29 May 2024 and continued after the elections. The research saw Tales of Turning's digital dialogue facilitators tasked with identifying and responding to explicitly false and misleading information about the election's processes, institutions and outcomes, adds the organisation.

This testing focuses on the narrower truth queries, such as "Yiza nazo?" ("Tell me more?"), "Wena o tsebella kae?" ("How do you know this?"), "Hoekom se jy so?" ("Why do you say that?") and "Is this true?". The replies are chosen for this testing as they can be applied to a broad range of misinformation quickly and easily, making them well-suited to address large quantities of newly emerging misinformation, says the organisation.

Researchers then investigate how these replies impact key outcomes of posts containing misinformation — such as sharing, engagement and user replies, comparing the outcomes to equivalent posts identified that did not receive replies from the dialogue facilitators, adds the organisation.

Join the Webinar

Representatives from Tales of Turning and the University of Zurich are hosting a webinar on Thursday, 13 November at 17:00 (SAST) to share more about the digital dialogue facilitation methodology and the initial research results, concludes the organisation.

For more information, visit www.talesofturning.app. You can also follow Tales of Turning on LinkedIn, or on Instagram.

*Image courtesy of contributor