With the upcoming elections bound to spark more fake news and doctored documents purporting to be leaks, the University of Pretoria (UP) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) will be leveraging data science to combat disinformation surrounding the elections.
As the date for the country’s national elections draws closer, researchers at the university and the CSIR have raised concerns about the potential effects of disinformation and fake news.
Professor Vukosi Marivate of UP’s Data Science for Social Impact Research group (DSFSI) said part of the reason they were concerned about the prevalence of fake news was that spreading disinformation affected the thoughts but also the feelings of online users.
As it is, he said, the major current challenge for researchers was access to data, most of which was held within social media platforms and with changes to platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter, this has had further reduced access to data and made researching disinformation extremely hard.
“Without access to this data, we are unable to analyse and correct the information that is out there. Social media influencers and people who use knowledge inappropriately have found ways to influence public perceptions by framing specific topics to drive their agendas,” Marivate said.
In addition, Marivate said though there were systems in place for content moderation on some websites, this usually applied to English language content; but with South Africa having 12 official languages, he stressed how the systems were not able to detect whether the content was disinformation or harmful.
“With the upcoming 2024 national elections, we have a forum that helps to contextualise information, fact-check it, inform the public and escalate disinformation through different tools like Real411, a reporting platform,” he said.
Dr Zubeida Dawood, the CSIR’s research group leader in cyber security said it was important to remind voters to remain vigilant and how to discern fact from fake news, especially regarding the use of common tactics, like doctored audio messages and documents.
“We urge the public to make use of these platforms, as they will be able to use artificial intelligence and machine-learning with advanced algorithms to analyse patterns and identify fake news, and will focus on continuous learning to adapt to evolving disinformation tactics,” Dawood, said.
The Star