STATE OF PRESS FREEDOM IN SOUTHERN AFRICA REPORT 2021 64 to share it. In the past, the company has also taken more severe steps, resulting in the company shutting down over 260 fake news accounts, which meddled in African elections in some African countries, including Angola, even though these accounts spent over U$800 000 on advertising since 2012. (7) This is a positive indication that social media platforms are considering the role their platforms serve in influencing major decisions in countries. However, are they doing enough and can they keep up with the various tactics to influence and persuade for power or profit, on their platforms? Can social media platforms bridge the media and information literacy gap that exists in southern Africa? Massive information is spread on the world’s most popular instant messenger application WhatsApp, and on this platform, it is not easy to identify the source (origin) of a message. WhatsApp is a popular application and the userfriendly platform serves the illiterate and marginalised community very well. On this platform, the Meta company limited the number of times a message can be forwarded to curb the spread of hateful and false content, which can lead to unrest and riots. This challenge can also be addressed with MIL education to enable users to verify and analyse information, before sharing it. When analysing the information users can determine who benefits and what the purpose of the message is. It would be beneficial to Southern African nations to equip their citizens with the necessary knowledge, skills, and motivation to be critical and apply MIL on platforms that spread information like wildfire. THE SOUTHERN AFRICA EXPERIENCES, DUE TO A LACK OF MIL It should be noted that research on the state of media and information literacy in the region is limited. MIL education is one solution to the challenges and empowerment of citizens to identify and benefit from opportunities by engaging with media and information from a variety of sources. Research on the current MIL competencies of citizens with regards to traditional and social media, daily Internet use, online content activities, social media behaviours and online privacy and well-being is required to inform policy makers and educators to develop interventions addressing the lack of media and information literacy. A myriad of challenges currently plagues information and news eco-systems, with information disorder taking centre stage. The term “Information disorder” was first used in 2017 by Dr Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan as an umbrella term for three different forms of information that cause harm — Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017). The purpose of information disorder in a society is to cause chaos by supplying unstructured and chaotic information, and in most instances intends to cause harm. Below a few cases are highlighted of how information disorder manifests in southern Africa. It was widely reported in the media that the July 2021 riots and looting in South Africa where lives were lost, were instigated, and propelled by users on social media. (8) A similar scenario played off in Eswatini where the prodemocracy protesters used social media to encourage protests, to which the government responded by shutting down the Internet. (9) This shows how crucial information is in today’s digital world, where everyone is a content creator. Misinformation is usually experienced when traditional media houses make an error in their reporting. The dissemination of misinformation is often driven by the increased pressure on media houses to break a story on social media. Most media houses are selfregulated, and, therefore, they just publish or broadcast a matter-of-fact statement and apology once the error is noticed. When the complainant feels that the apology was not given enough prominence, or that the code of conduct and ethical standards were breached a case is brought to the media ombudsman to investigate. In one such recent case in Namibia involving the Office of the Judiciary and a prominent daily newspaper, the complainant felt that the article intentionally and wilfully misstated or misrepresented facts, and that the headline, graphics, and images used were misleading. (10) The complaint was also argued that several clauses of the code of conduct and ethical