There are lots of obstacles that can stand in the way of human, community and institutional development, aid and relief efforts, or government health initiatives, or even elections. But there is one obstacle that, until recently, rarely got discussed: widespread misunderstanding and myth-spreading.

Folklore, rumors (or rumours) and urban myths / urban legends, as well as organized misinformation campaigns and “fake news”, often interfere with relief and development activities, and government initiatives, including public health initiatives — even bringing such to a grinding halt. They also create ongoing misunderstandings among communities and cultures, prevent people from seeking help, encourage people to engage in unhealthy and even dangerous practices, cultivate mistrust of people and institutions, have even lead to mobs of people attacking someone or others for no reason other than something they heard from a friend of a friend of a friend, motivated legislators to introduce laws to address something that doesn’t exist, and influenced elections. And with the advent of social media like Twitter and Facebook, as well as just text messaging among cell phones, spreading misinformation is easier than ever.

Since 2004, I have been gathering and sharing both examples of this phenomenon, and compiling recommendations on preventing folklore, rumors and urban myths from interfering with development and aid/relief efforts and government initiatives. I do this research and entirely on my own, as a volunteer, with no funding from anyone. I update the information as my free time allows – and time has allowed such.

Once upon a time, I had wanted it to be the topic of my Master’s Degree thesis, but back in 2004, I couldn’t get an agency to go on record to tell their story. The few representatives of organizations that I talked to didn’t want to give any attention to the misinformation campaigns that were targeting them. With the advent of social media and the proliferation of misinformation, government agencies and nonprofits are scrambling to address rumors before they get out of hand – and before people are killed as a result. For instance, in 2017, 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. Here’s more about the consequences of such misinformation campaigns and how the situation in India was addressed.

Also see:

Scammers target those that care about soldiers, world affairs

Aid workers need to help local staff avoid scams 

You have an obligation to be truthful online

My voluntourism-related & ethics-related blogs (and how I define scam)