26 August, 2024 – Today,Africa Check & the Arab Fact-Checkers Network (AFCN) led byARIJ, announced a new coalition to fact-check news and information about the 2024 Tunisian and Algerian elections between August and November 2024. TheGoogle News Initiative will be providing Africa Check with funding to establish the coalition as part of Google’s wider commitment to tackle misinformation and disinformation.
The latest collaboration builds on the experience of a successful Africa Check and Google News Initiative (GNI)coalition to provide tools and resources to fact-check information about South Africa’s 2024 elections.
Presidential elections are due to be held in Algeria on 7 September 2024 and in Tunisia on 6 October 2024.
Four fact-checking organisations, three covering Tunisia (TuniFact,BN Check andTafnied), and one covering Algeria (Algeria Check) will take part of the coalition that will focus on:
- Spreading awareness on the importance of fact-checking during elections, to support the general public in distinguishing between accurate and misleading information spreading on social media.
- Fact-checking at least 60 fact-checks pieces related to the elections.
- Organising 4 fact-checking trainings (three in-person and one online) targeting media organisations and freelance journalists covering the elections in both countries.
The four organisations will also be working collaboratively to share resources, fact-checks and work cross-publication of useful public materials, under the supervision of ARIJ’s AFCN.The organisations will also leverage “Full Fact AI” tools in Arabic that will support them in monitoring the elections and do in live fact-checking process, andAFCN chatbot that will help in producing more fact-checking content with the support of 14 fact-checkers from all over the Arab world, and AI.
As a kick-off for the coalition, AFCN and the four fact-checking organisations met on July 24, with the Africa Check francophone team, who gave advice on fact-checking an election based on their experience with the Senegal 2024 presidential election.
Cayle Clifford from Africa Check and Kate Wilkinson from Full Fact, led on August 1st, a session to the AFCN community on effective use of Full Fact AI tools during fact-checking an election.
https://x.com/ArabFCNetwork/status/1820025452905267266
Africa Check’s francophone chief editor Valdez Onanina said that “setting up this coalition is a good news in terms of contributing to fact-based public debate, especially at such a crucial time as the elections, but also in a global context where mis/disinformation is likely to undermine voters confidence in the electoral processes and could lead to violence, particularly at such a sensitive time as an electoral contest”. Onanina added that “the synergy between fact-checkers has already proved its worth in the fight against misinformation in the electoral context”.
AFCN manager Saja Mortada stated that the coalition “will be instrumental in supporting Arab fact-checking organisations in successfully overseeing two key elections in North Africa in 2024”. She emphasised that AFCN’s ongoing collaboration with Africa Facts will further enhance the impact of Arab-African fact-checkers’ work.”
For any queries related to the coalition, you can reach out to AFCN atAFCN@arij.net and to Africa Check atsenegal@africacheck.org.
