Table Of ContentDisinformation in the Global South
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Disinformation in the Global South
Edited by
Herman Wasserman
University of Cape Town
Cape Town, South Africa
Dani Madrid-Morales
University of Houston
Houston, Texas, USA
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This edition first published 2022
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wasserman, Herman, 1969- editor. | Madrid-Morales, Dani, 1980-editor.
Title: Disinformation in the Global South / edited by Herman Wasserman,
Dani Madrid-Morales.
Description: Hoboken : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2022. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021033028 (print) | LCCN 2021033029 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781119714446 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119714477 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119715597 (epub) |
ISBN 9781119714491 (obook)
Subjects: LCSH: Mass media--Political aspects--Developing countries. |
Disinformation--Developing countries. | Fake news--Developing countries. |
Press and politics--Developing countries. | LCGFT: Essays.
Classification: LCC P92.2 .D57 2021 (print) | LCC P92.2 (ebook) | DDC 302.2309724--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033028
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033029
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Cover design by Wiley
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This work is based on research supported by the South African National Institute for the
Humanities and Social Sciences.
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vii
Contents
Biographical Notes ix
Foreword xv
Guy Berger, UNESCO Director for Strategies and Policies in the Field of
Information and Communication
Section 1 – Histories, Theories, and Methods 1
1 Contextualizing Fake News: Can Online Falsehoods Spread Fast
When Internet Is Slow? 3
Edson C. Tandoc Jr.
2 Disinformation in Arab Media: Cultural Histories and
Political Dynamics 15
Saba Bebawi
3 Manipulated Facts and Spreadable Fantasies: Battles Over History
in the Indian Digital Sphere 26
Sangeet Kumar
4 Research Methods in Comparative Disinformation Studies 41
Dani Madrid-Morales and Herman Wasserman
Section 2 – Cultures of Disinformation 59
5 Noise in Kinshasa: Ethnographic Notes on the Meanings of
Mis- and Disinformation in a Post-Colonial African City 61
Katrien Pype and Sébastien Maluta Makaya
6 Aliens, Spies, and Staged Vandalism: Disinformation in
the 2019 Protests in Chile 74
Ingrid Bachmann, Daniela Grassau, and Claudia Labarca
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viii Contents
7 Encountering and Correcting Misinformation on WhatsApp:
The Roles of User Motivations and Trust in Messaging
Group Members 88
Ozan Kuru, Scott W. Campbell, Joseph B. Bayer, Lemi Baruh,
and Richard Ling
8 “Rumor Debunking” as a Propaganda and Censorship
Strategy in China: The Case of the COVID-19 Outbreak 108
Kecheng Fang
9 Media System Incentives for Disinformation: Exploring
the Relationships Between Institutional Design and
Disinformation Vulnerability 123
Jose Mari Hall Lanuza and Cleve V. Arguelles
10 Lies, Damned Lies, and Development: Why Statistics and
Data Can No Longer Confront Disinformation in the Global South 140
Jairo Lugo-Ocando and Alessandro Martinisi
Section 3 – Responses: Southern Perspectives 159
11 Online Misinformation: Policy Lessons from the Global South 161
Anya Schiffrin and Peter Cunliffe-Jones
12 Responses to Misinformation: Examining the Kenyan Context 179
Melissa Tully
13 H ow Three Mission-Driven News Organizations in the Global
South Combat Disinformation Through Investigation,
Innovation, Advocacy, and Education 193
Nabeelah Shabbir, Julie Posetti, and Felix M. Simon
Conclusion 210
Herman Wasserman and Dani Madrid-Morales
Index 221
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ix
Biographical Notes
Cleve V. Arguelles is a political scientist and PhD candidate in the Department of
Political & Social Change at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs of the
Australian National University. His research on comparative and Southeast Asian
politics including on populism has been published in the journals Asian Politics &
Policy, Democratic Theory, and Review of Women’s Studies. He has a BA and MA
Political Science from the University of the Philippines and Central European
University, respectively. He is also Assistant Professorial Lecturer in the Department
of Political Science at De La Salle University.
Ingrid Bachmann is an Associate Professor in the School of Communications at
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. A former reporter, her research focuses on
the role of news media in the definition of identities and meanings within the public
sphere, and she specializes in the intersections between news narratives, gender, and
political communication. Her research appears in Feminist Media Studies, Journalism &
Mass Communication Quarterly, and Journalism Practice, among other journals.
Lemi Baruh (PhD, University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication,
2007) is an Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Visual Arts at Koç
University in Turkey. His research interests include new media technologies, particu-
larly focusing on social media, identity, surveillance, and privacy.
Joseph B. Bayer is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and
Translational Data Analytics Institute at the Ohio State University. He studies how
people think about their social networks and communication technologies, along with
the implications for individual wellbeing and societal change. In turn, his research
aims to clarify how social cognition is changing in combination with mobile and social
media. His work has been published in cross-disciplinary journals such as
Communication Theory, Annual Review of Psychology, and Nature Human Behavior.
Saba Bebawi is a Professor of journalism who holds a PhD in international news and
has published on media power and the role of media in democracy-building, in addi-
tion to investigative journalism in conflict and post-conflict regions. She is the author
of Media Power and Global Television News: The Role of Al Jazeera English (I.B. Tauris,
2016) and Investigative Journalism in the Arab World: Issues and Challenges (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016), and co-author with Mark Evans on The Future Foreign Correspondent
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x Biographical Notes
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), in addition to being co-editor of Social Media and the
Politics of Reportage: The “Arab Spring” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Data
Journalism in the Global South (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Bebawi was an Australian
Research Council (ARC) DECRA Fellow (2018–2020) for a project on Developing an
Arab Culture of Investigative Journalism.
Guy Berger is the Director for Strategies and Policies in the Field of Communication
and Information at UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization). He has overseen much of UNESCO’s work on disinformation, includ-
ing the major study Balancing Act: Countering Digital Disinformation while Respecting
Freedom of Expression (UNESCO, 2020). He also leads UNESCO’s work in several pro-
jects. These include the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and
the Issue of Impunity, UNESCO’s Internet Universality Indicators, and the monitor-
ing of UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16.10 indicators, which focus on the safety
of journalists, and guarantees of access to information. Berger has a PhD from Rhodes
University, South Africa, and has a long history of scholarship about press freedom in
Africa.
Scott W. Campbell is the Pohs Professor of Telecommunications and Professor of
Communication Studies at the University of Michigan. His scholarship uses mixed
methods to explain the uses and consequences of mobile media and communication
for everyday life. Before joining Michigan, Campbell spent three years on faculty at
Hawaii Pacific University. Prior to his academic life, he worked at Sprint PCS when
they launched the first national digital mobile network in the US.
Peter Cunliffe-Jones has been a visiting researcher and Co-Director of a course on
media freedom at the University of Westminster since 2019, focusing on misinforma-
tion. In 2012, after a long career in journalism, he founded the first fact-checking
organization in Africa. After stepping down in 2019, he was named senior advisor to
the International Fact-Checking Network.
Kecheng Fang is an Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication,
the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include journalism, polit-
ical communication, and digital media. He received his PhD from the Annenberg
School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has appeared
in New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, and International
Journal of Press/Politics, among others.
Daniela Grassau is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communications at
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She served for eight years (2012–2020) as
managing editor of Cuadernos.info, the highest-ranked mass communication jour-
nal in Latin America. She is currently a PhD candidate in Sociology, and her main
research areas are crisis journalism, traditional media (mainly TV) effects, and
changes in journalism. Her research has been published in journals such as
Communication and Society, International Journal of Communication, and Palabra
Clave.
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Biographical Notes xi
Sangeet Kumar is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and the
Director of International Studies at Denison University. His research examines the
global dimensions of digital and popular culture. He is the author of The Digital
Frontier: Infrastructures of Control on the Global Web (Indiana University Press, 2021)
and numerous articles in journals including Internet Policy Review, Information,
Communication and Society, International Journal of Communication, Popular
Communication, and Global Media and Communication. Prior to his academic career
he was a journalist for a daily newspaper based out of New Delhi, India.
Ozan Kuru is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the Department of
Communications and New Media and a Principle Investigator at the Centre for Trusted
Internet and Community at the National University of Singapore. He received his PhD
in Communication at the University of Michigan and worked as the Howard Deshong
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School
for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He is broadly interested in indi-
viduals’ engagement with digital technology and information about politics, health,
and science in a cross-national context, with a particular focus on public opinion and
survey methods.
Claudia Labarca is an Associate Professor in the School of Communications at Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Chile. She is the author of several papers and book chapters
dedicated to the role of non-state actors in international relations and the role of trust
and communications in international country image formation. She is also the author of
the book Ni Hao Mr. Pérez, Buenos Días Mr. Li (Ediciones UC, 2015). Her research inter-
ests include trust building, strategic communication, and public diplomacy.
Jose Mari Hall Lanuza is Assistant Professor of Political Science from the University of
the Philippines, Manila, where he handles courses on political analysis, qualitative
research methods, and Philippine politics. He has written on information poverty,
media and diplomacy, and mediated political discourses. His most recent work tackles
the interplay of disinformation and gendered political discourses in the Philippines,
and the relationship between media systems and disinformation in Southeast Asia.
His research focuses on disinformation, elections, and political communications in the
Philippines, and the politics of media.
Richard Ling (PhD, University of Colorado, Sociology) is the Shaw Foundation
Professor of Media Technology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. For
the past two decades, he has studied the social consequences of mobile communica-
tion. Ling has written The Mobile Connection (Morgan Kaufmann, 2004), New Tech,
New Ties (MIT, 2008), and Taken for Grantedness (MIT, 2012). He is Editor-in-Chief of
the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication and a founding co-editor of Mobile
Media and Communication (Sage). In addition, along with Gerard Goggin and
Leopoldina Fortunati, he is a founding co-editor of the Oxford University Press Series
Studies in Mobile Communication. He has been elected as a member of Academia
Europaea and Det Norske Vitenskaps Akademi (the Norwegian Academy of Arts and
Letters), and he is a fellow of the International Communication Association.
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