Misinformation is more common than ever in Indonesia today as its spread has become increasingly diversified and difficult to suppress. In April alone, when the country held its general election, Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology identified 486 pieces of misinformation shared across several online platforms — 209 of them politically-related. The ministry noted that this number surged leading up to the April 17 election, and has only continued to increase after.
Late last year, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative helped debunk a fake story about the outbreak of the human papilloma (HPV) virus in the western Kenya county of Kisii. According to the claim, the disease was spread through kissing and killed faster than the AIDS virus. The hoax originated on Whatsapp, spread on Facebook and then was picked up by a local radio station, Ghetto Radio.
Astudestra Ajengrastri, a Jakarta-based TruthBuzz Fellow with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), has the difficult task of countering the plague of disinformation on social media in Indonesia. In the runup to the country’s presidential elections in April, she faced a particularly big challenge: a convincing audio message went viral on WhatsApp claiming that millions of fake ballots were about to be cast in favor of the incumbent president.
As Venezuela’s citizens suffer from rampant food shortages, the government is spending billions to bolster political allies in Latin America, a team of pioneering reporters recently revealed in an unprecedented expose.
CONNECTAS, a cross-border investigative journalism organization in Latin America, directed the project, called Petrofraude. Adding heft to CONNECTAS, ICFJ Knight Fellow Fabiola Torres López coached the reporters on their data efforts, helping them clean up and analyze thousands of government records.
Defective medical devices — and the lack of laws or enforcement against them — have killed thousands of patients around the world and put millions more at risk. Deficient implants may be poorly constructed or use untested or fake medical materials. Shoddy implants may fail, causing pain, loss of mobility and even death. Yet, in my country and many others, few people were aware of the hazards. The multi-million-dollar medical implant and medical device companies are shrouded in a myriad of scandals related to conflicts of interest, corruption and abusive practices toward patients.
In South Africa’s Eastern Cape, where circumcision of teen boys is a rite of passage to adulthood, unlicensed surgeons too often cause injury and even death. To help reduce the number of botched circumcisions, a pioneering web app developed in partnership with ICFJ Knight Fellow Chris Roper is connecting young men with trained surgeons.
When Zimbabwe held its long-awaited presidential election earlier this year, a group of fact-checkers were ready to track fake news and misinformation spread on social media and elsewhere during the tense voting to replace Robert Mugabe.
Zimbabweans go to the polls at the end of July for a historic vote - the first since Robert Mugabe was ousted after 37 years in power. As they do, getting accurate and timely information will undoubtedly be a challenge. Elections in any country are often accompanied by serious outbreaks of misinformation.
As Colombia works to secure a lasting peace after decades of conflict, a team of pioneering journalists are rigorously tracking the country’s progress using a powerful tool: data journalism.
Led by ICFJ Knight Fellow Fabiola Torres Lopez, the team behind “La Paz en el Terreno” (“Peace in the Field”) has built two databases focused on key indicators of peace.
A few years ago, at the end of a long day of teaching a digital journalism seminar in Ecuador, I had an epiphany.
I had agreed to a late-night meeting with a group of journalists who were working to develop their own digital media projects. We ordered pizza and talked over their questions until late into the night.
