A resource by Jayne Cravens
  via coyotecommunications.com & coyoteboard.com (same web site)

Updated February 16, 2020

The previous sections provide a great deal of information about how to prevent and address misinformation from interfering with aid, relief and development efforts, including public health initiatives. This section of the guide provides examples of what applying these suggestions really looks like on-the-ground. 

In India, in the southern state of Telangana, videos were circulated among villagers that had been staged or edited in a particular way and claimed to show children being abducted by a criminal gang were circulated in more than 400 villages in the southern Indian state of Telangana via WhatsApp and an Indian messaging service called ShareChat. These videos claimed that the children were being abducted in order to harvest their organs. The claims in these videos were completely false. But because so many people believed what they saw in these videos, people stopped going out of night, several completely innocent people were attacked by mobs who accused them of being organ thieves, and at least 25 people were murdered - lynched - falsely accused of being a part of the gang.

In the southern Indian state of Telangana, barely half of the people can read or write. But every home has at least one smartphone, usually a second-hand Chinese one. Cheap data means that people with little access to education have the fullest access to technology. Media literacy is low. Villagers are glued to material circulating on WhatsApp and ShareChat for news, viral videos and social conversations. Every village has more than two dozen WhatsApp groups, carved along community, caste, kinship and social interest lines. They are among 200 million Indians who send more than 13 billion messages every day, making India the biggest market for WhatsApp.

A local chief of police, Ms. Rema Rajeshwari, took action. A constable was assigned to each village, going door-to-door showing people the fake videos and messages, explaining that they were fake and asking people not to share them nor believe them. Night patrolling was intensified. The phone numbers of the village constable and the police chief were distributed to villagers, and inscribed on walls. Village policemen worked continuously with elders and council leaders to raise awareness. The constables joined village Whatsapp groups to keep watch. The village drummer - a modern-day town crier who performs at weddings, funerals and makes public pronouncements - was mobilised to go around and counter misinformation. Policemen formed cultural groups and travelled to villages, singing songs and performing skits that they had composed about the dangers of fake news. Here's the BBC story that tells more (note the links at the bottom to more stories).

In Harris County, Texas, as of February 2020, there were NO cases of the coronavirus -- officially Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV),[28][29] and unofficially as Wuhan coronavirus -- yet local Asian businesses there experienced severe drops in customers, and public health officials there are so worried about potential harm to people they created a web site specifically to address local fears and myths. Dr. Rose Marie Leslie, a resident at the University of Minnesota, has also taken to TikTok, where she has more than 473,000 followers, to debunk myths. The World Health Organization (WHO) also has responded with a myth-busting page.

Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) in the USA has launched an ongoing initiative, Can You Believe It?, to regularly look at the channels in which disinformation reaches consumers, particularly through social media and particularly regarding elections, and offer methods to combat its spread. They are also encouraging listeners and their web site readers to tell them what they are seeing and hearing regarding news stories and campaign information running up to the 2020 election.

In March 2020, a report said that that 50% of what Ghanaians know about the coronavirus is misinformation. Amid the COVID-19 outbreak and the proliferation of misinformation, a network of online volunteers emerged in Ghana to translate health messages into local languages so residents can access accurate information. Elisabeth Efua lead efforts, collaborating with Farmerline, a company based in Ghana that uses technology to support farmers and was also looking to translate health messages. Elisabeth, an artist and performer, used information from the World Health Organization (WHO) to write scripts about hand washing, COVID-19 symptoms, and common terms associated with the virus such as social distancing and flattening the curve. She put out a call on social media and dozens of people responded, wanting to help translate. Within 48 hours, she’d received translations in 15 languages including Twi, Ga, Ewe, and Hausa. The health messages are recorded as voice notes on WhatsApp, which volunteers have been disseminating and asking recipients to forward to others who speak the language, akin to chain mail.

Here's another example, an Oregon case study:

In June 2017, an image was posted to a very popular Facebook group that targeted an Oregon small town in particular. The image claimed to be by a woman who had been to a local grocery store in the town and who, while in the parking lot, was accosted by strangers who wanted to buy her baby. But in this case, the online community immediately rallied to debunk the rumor. I posted this case study because I was a part of the online community where this attempt at a misinformation campaign was started, and because I believe it offers a good example of the kind of trust-building before such a situation occurs, and the kind of quick response, that's needed to handle these social media rumors.

And, as noted earlier, great example of many of these principles being put into practice is in Nigeria, where religious leaders are using the teachings of Islam and local community volunteers are being leveraged in Nigeria to educate communities regarding the value of educating girls, breastfeeding, routine immunization (vaccines) and other public health and development issues - this is chronicled in Innovation in Action: Fighting Polio in Nigeria from the UN Foundation. Here's a similar story about this model from UNICEF in Nigeria, in this BBC story.

Back to the first page of this resource on preventing misinformation from interfering with development and aid initiatives.

Back to my development resources main page.