14 February 2021, Daily Maverick, Thandi Smith and William Bird
Media Monitoring Africa has been tracking disinformation trends on digital platforms since the end of March 2020. Using the Real411 platform, we have analysed disinformation trends that have largely focused on Covid-19. To date, a little more than 1,200 complaints have been submitted to the platform, with relevant action being taken where necessary. The image below gives some insight into some of the key themes and topics of the complaints we have seen.
Although the Real411 platform encourages complaints to be submitted on content that could potentially be hate speech, incitement to violence, harassment of journalists online or disinformation, most of the complaints related to Covid-19 disinformation.