The South African media provided good coverage of the May 29 elections overall, but campaigns to discredit some of the key institutions like the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) emerged as a strong false narrative during the period, and solutions are needed to combat these campaigns.
This is according to the esteemed media and digital experts speaking at Africa Check’s post election discussion on the role of false information in South Africa’s 2024 elections.
Africa Check researcher Keegan Leech said questions around IEC credibility emerged during the recent elections.
“A very clear narrative emerged that the IEC was untrustworthy.”
He said that it was a sign that there was a coordinated effort to spread the narrative and that it appeared to be opportunistic.
The observation came on the back of the uMkhonto we Sizwe party’s unverified claims that the elections were rigged; which was amplified after the IEC dashboard glitched and malfunctioned for a short period.
Kavisha Pillay from the Campaign from Digital Ethics and Daily Maverick journalist, Ferial Haffajee concurred that there was a “planned and deliberate attack on the IEC” and added that it is a journalists’ responsibility to protect institutions.
They said the decline in the trust in the IEC was also driven by the political context of the time and algorithms on social media, especially TikTok.
Pillay said that over the election period, a lot of people were getting their information from TikTok influencers rather than from trained and expert journalists who took the time to read manifestos and fact-check them.
“We are believing influencers and podcasters over experts,” she said.
Before the elections, TikTok and the South African Editors Forum launched an Election Centre in-app for South Africa to ensure people can easily separate fact from fiction. The in-App was supposed to assist the public in separating fact from fiction, with TikTok working with the Independent Electoral Commission and civil society organisations in the attempt to reduce misinformation.
Before the 2024 elections, TikTok said it had “worked with Africa Check to create media literacy campaigns to counter misinformation. We have produced videos in English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, sign language and all videos come with English subtitles.
But the experts found TikTok was one of the main sources of misinformation.
In addition they said social media platform X should be characterised as a dangerous platform for election coverage, while flags were raised on the ad spend on Facebook in particular While WhatsApp was used to spread audios and out of context videos.
Haffajee said that think tanks and media alike need to find technical ways to deal with X and WhatsApp.
Leech said they were concerned with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a means to spread misinformation, but it wasn’t as popular as they expected it to be.
“It’s still not necessarily worth the effort compared with real videos and audios which were miscaptured and shared out of context,” he said.
He added that there is no need to create panic around AI where it is not warranted.
Izak Minnaar from the South African National Editors’ Forum and the SA Press Council said that in general, the media did a good job in covering this year’s elections.
Speakers said the media should take the lessons from these elections forward, and use them as we enter the crucial period that defines our politics and work on deepening our democracy.
Content Writer