Aviv Ovadya’s work focuses on ensuring information ecosystems, and the platforms that provide them, have the proper safeguards in place to inhibit false information and prevent bad faith actors from influencing discourse.

The democratization of information sharing through ICT has had significant positive impacts, Aviv points out. By circumventing the channels of authoritarianism, access to information and its content is more democratic than ever before. The cost of rumours and disinformation, of course, is the downside of these same tools developing and becoming wildly available. Because of the way information spreads in 2018, ethnic tensions are inevitably going to be vulnerable to such tools, Aviv points out. 

One of the strange ironies of the newfound mis-and-disinformation problems being experienced in the US is that the existence of this phenomenon in the developing world is garnering attention, now that the problem is a US one as well. As academic researchers, as well as practitioners on the ground seek the best paths forward to fight disinformation in the West, rumours and falsities being used to stoke tensions in conflict-fragile states can also start receiving the pushback they need.

Ben Nimmo’s research at the Digital Forensics lab at the Atlantic council explores how disinformation is spread, what form it takes and what its motivations are. At the recent Contentious Narratives conference at GW’s Elliot School of International Affairs, Ben outlined the best examples he has encountered which combat disinformation.

The majority of disinformation is often poorly constructed and executed, Ben outlines – which in turn means some of the best tools available to combat it are also simple. Amnesty International in Iraq have produced an online tool that allows users to determine the date of a video, so as to avoid footage misleading communities about when an atrocity took place.

The simplicity of methods such as these on ICT platforms enable all individuals, not just journalists and mediators, to identify disinformation being spread. Ben also points out how these ICT methods serve as the Launchpad for educating populations about the existence of disinformation and how they can prevent it from influencing events in the future.

Whenever a new communications platform is developed, disinformation inevitably appears, Ben outlines. This disinformation moment is no different, expect in one regard – that new tools are appearing far more rapidly. These upstart platforms will need to just as rapidly find ways to police themselves.

Camber Warren’s research explores how concepts of nationhood and group identity have evolved as the modern tools of mass communication have expanded into developing nations that are conflict-fragile.

Camber highlights Nigeria as the ‘textbook example’ of a nation where a disjuncture has arisen due to the appearance of smart phones and social media. The rich and vibrant mass media environment in the more developed south is now buttressing up against a rapidly developing social media infrastructure in the previously isolated north, which he contends is spurring on the existing religious and cultural divides – and perhaps even violence itself.

The Nigeria example contrasts with the high levels of national integration we find in Europe, which have among the oldest mass media infrastructures in the world. The new horizontal structures arising due to ICT appear to be threatening this in developing nations without this existing nationhood framework.

What are the best examples we can find in countries like Nigeria where mass media is being used to build bridges and encourage national solidarity, rather than disrupt it? Radio Dandal Kura, operating in northern Nigeria, broadcasts in the same languages used by Boko Haram and creates a new public sphere across the region that is dampening the effectiveness of extremists in recruiting and radicalizing.

Cell phones, in the aggregate, do appear to have enabled violence to be more easily organized, Camber claims. Establishing a stable, united nation will depend on these same tools encouraging a solidarity and a shared conversation that can overcome the divisions that, in some cases, have been exacerbated by ICT.