Hacks/Hackers Africa & Mozilla team up to combat “Fake News”
Can we fix trust in the news? MisinfoCon micro-grants seek to do just that.
In 2017, Mozilla announced a micro-grant program intended to support teams that would like to work on a project or idea based around their MisinfoCon program. Hacks/Hackers Africa chapters have been awarded the grant and held a couple of events centred on combating misinformation on the continent.
Hacks/Hackers Johannesburg: What tools do we need to combat misinformation in South Africa?
Hacks/Hackers Johannesburg is looking to co-ordinate local efforts to fight “fake news” in South Africa. They’ve partnered with the University of the Witswatersrand’s JAMLAB incubator for a two stage project. The first stage involved identifying what the actual issues are in the country — South Africa’s problems are very different from those in the US or UK, for example, but we have a recent (and well known) history of propaganda used by the Gupta-aligned faction within government and international PR firm Bell Pottinger.
The first #HHJHB meet-up, at the end of November, brought together Africa Check, Media Monitoring Africa, a team of researchers from Wits and an independent Gupta-bot spotter to discuss the issues among a small group of people. The findings from these discussions will lead to three more events in January and February focussing on fact checking, social media attack bots, and commercial fake news. The aim is to push development of solutions during these events.
Hacks/Hackers Abuja & Lagos: Fact Checking Social Media in Nigeria
In Nigeria, there’s already concern that “fake news” and online misinformation will be used as tools to sway the upcoming elections in 2019. By that time, it’s estimated that around half of the population will have access to the internet.
In a bid to help journalists in the country prepare and understand the implications of fake news, the Hacks/Hackers programme which runs in both Abuja (#HHABJ) and Lagos States (#HHLOS) of Nigeria respectively took place in December. During the meet-ups, journalists were exposed to how prominent and viral Fake News can be as well as its damage on the economy and people. David Ajikobi, an editor with Africa Check, took the participants through steps to fact check news and reports before rebroadcasting as sharing a news means endorsement.
Hacks/Hackers Nairobi: Combating Misinformation using Satellite Imagery
Imagine you’re tasked with covering a breaking story taking place in a remote location that’s not only physically inaccessible, but is also at the centre of an active conflict. How would you go about checking what the facts are and making sure that whatever’s being said either by official or unofficial sources is actually true?
This was the focus of January’s Hacks/Hackers Nairobi Meetup, which focused on the work that African Defence Review, an innovateAFRICAgrantee, is looking to solve the problem of misinformation and inaccurate reporting around conflicts using satellite images, remote sensing and data analysis.
The worlds of hackers and journalists are coming together, as reporting goes digital and Internet companies become media empires.
Journalists call themselves “hacks,” someone who can churn out words in any situation. Hackers use the digital equivalent of duct tape to whip out code.
Hacker-journalists try and bridge the two worlds. Hacks/Hackers Africa aims to bring all these people together — those who are working to help people make sense of our world. It’s for hackers exploring technologies to filter and visualize information, and for journalists who use technology to find and tell stories. In the age of information overload and collapse of traditional business models for legacy media, their work has become even more crucial.
Code for Africa, is the continent’s largest #OpenData and civic technology initiative, recognises this and is spearheading the establishment of a network of HacksHackers chapters across Africa to help bring together pioneers for collaborative projects and new ventures.
