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Category: essentials
Learn to Discern (L2D) – Media Literacy Training
Learn to Discern is a program that aims to share their approach with individuals in order to help them create healthy habits for engaging with online information. The idea is to build resilience to mis and disinformation at a community level. This is done by empowering individuals and helping them to recognize and reject divisive...
The rise of fake Facebook accounts, the why and the how.
Fake accounts are mostly used to amplify the popularity or dislike of a person or movement, thus manipulating users’ views of true public sentiment. Read more here
How liars create the “illusion of truth”
How do politicians and people in powerful positions get away with spreading false information and fake news? And why do ordinary people buy into these fake stories? Well as the saying goes “repeat the lie often enough and people will start to believe it’s the truth”. Here are the tactics liars use to manipulate us...
SA to receive a million doses of Covid-19 vaccine in January and 500,000 doses in February from the Serum Institute of India (SII).
Here are seven reactions to the above announcement EFF’s Mbuyiseni Ndlozi has questioned the vaccine rollout; DA spokesperson Siviwe Gwarube welcomed the announcement saying “We cannot be complacent or sluggish”; and others have raised other valid concerns. Read the full story here:
Are you in a social media bubble?
Here’s how to break out of your social media echo chamber Social Media echo chambers can be dangerous because the algorithm only serves you what it thinks you’ll like and what you usually believe (based on past searches), so you’ll never see a different perspective. Read here to learn how to restore balance to your feed:
16 Days of activism against GBV 25 Nov – 10 Dec
2020’s theme is all around protecting women in the informal workplace. Here is everything you need to know to stand up against the violence and report abuse of women and children, read it here:
Social media movement uses the topic of Human Trafficking to push false information about foreigners
The Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change has been tracking conversations on social media around missing persons and #HumanTrafficking This article highlights what the CABC has discovered, and how a potential xenophobia network continues to peddle disinformation to sow divisive sentiment against African immigrants. Read it here.
What can we learn from the pandemics of the past?
From small pox in 1893 to the 1904 “Durban Plague” to the 1918 Spanish Flu to Covid-19 in 2020, South Africa has faced many scary viruses. Professor Philip Harrison, the South African research chair in spatial analysis and city planning at Wits’ Gauteng Regional City Observatory has done extensive research on past pandemics and believes...
The NPA’s Asset Forfeiture Unit seizes more property of Edwin Sodi
Further assets worth more than R100m belonging to fraud and corruption accused businessman Edwin Sodi have been seized. Read the latest on this story by The Sowetan’s Kgothatso Madisa.