(Closed event) Building an agenda for accessing data for research on disinformation in African elections 2024

The spread of disinformation on social media is as significant a challenge to the democratic processes in Africa as it is globally. Tackling the challenge of disinformation will require evidence-based knowledge to reveal whether and how social media and AI can damage electoral integrity and credibility and how they can serve to help trigger mitigations (eg. by social media platforms, news media and electoral management bodies) that can avoid escalations. This can be achieved through analysing data at scale that can inform short and medium-term policy responses by all stakeholders, including social media and messaging platforms.

This workshop will be a hands-on and creative sharing of insights and ideas to produce concrete outlines of research proposals which can be later elaborated on.

This workshop is a follow-up to research that we are conducting to gauge the demand by African researchers for data held by tech intermediaries. This work will initiate the establishment of a wider African “community of practice” that will look into the nuances of information disorders in these elections. This community of practice, including African academics, journalists and researchers from civil society organisations, aims to create a mechanism that will enable researchers to access data held by platform companies and to analyse and understand the challenge of disinformation during elections in the continent.