This policy brief covers information disorders in Africa. Information disorders are best understood as emerging from social and cultural conditions that make certain kinds of information attractive to audiences. Like elsewhere, the information ecosystem in Africa is characterised by actors pushing to control narratives.
Those that have resources and the control of infrastructure have more clout than others. Meanwhile, information disorders propagate in information vacuums, like when governments fail to proactively share information with the public. They also propagate in tense political conjunctures where the perceived stakes are very high.
These perceived stakes of elections incentive political parties to invest in subtle platform-based misinformation campaigns with the hope that these practices help sway the electorate. States use digital technologies to stabilise their legitimacy while also viewing platforms as threats to their control of information flows.
