By Mary Burns

My recent post discussed contextual, macro-level policy changes in ICT4Education in secondary schools of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This post examines some of the practices I saw last year visiting a number of secondary schools in sub-Saharan Africa as part of MasterCard Foundation research on educational technology in sub-Saharan African secondary schools (and from additional work I have been doing in SSA independent of the MasterCard study).

As readers know, secondary schools are few and far between in many sub-Saharan African countries, particularly in rural areas across the region. Most don’t have technology. But where technology is being used in the three of the four countries I visited (South Africa, Botswana and Cabo Verde), from what I could see, a number of patterns prevail.

Read about the 5 trends here.

Internews explains that disaster-affected communities are often in a disadvantaged position to access information. Infrastructure damage and a tendency of media to report on disaster survivors rather than for them further hinders communication. All this means that traditional media channels often don’t reach the people most in need of information or give them the necessary information. Hence, affected communities often get their information from hearsay – from stories that circulate amongst their groups with limited means to fact-checking. Rumours are problematic because, in a crisis, a misunderstood or intentionally misleading message can cause panic, be harmful if advocating a certain type of action, or inflame an existing conflict. Per Internews: “Accessing trustworthy information is the key to taking control of your own survival and being able to recover.”

Internews first developed our rumour tracking methodology in 2014 in Liberia, in order to address the deadly Ebola outbreak. Since then, we’ve implemented rumour tracking as a way to address misinformation during humanitarian crises in numerous countries and contexts, reaching hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries.

This guide was authored by Viviane Lucia Fluck, PhD, and produced with financial support from the United States Agency for International Development.

The rumor tracking methodology, which is part of Internews’ Learning Collection, includes three parts: Context, Case Studies, and a How To Guide. The How To Guide is usually packaged separately for ease of use.

Click here to read more.

Eline Jeanné, Media Diversity Institute

Hi guys, I’m going to teach you guys how to get long lashes”, Feroza Aziz says to the camera whilst holding up an eyelash curler. This is not a regular makeup tutorial though, as Ms. Aziz continues: “Use your phone that you’re using right now to search up what’s happening in China, how they’re getting concentration camps, throwing innocent Muslims in there, separating their families from each other, kidnapping them, murdering them, raping them, forcing them to eat pork, forcing them to drink.” The video, which has over 890.000 likes, was posted on popular video-sharing platform TikTok and was removed from Ms. Aziz’s account. According to TikTok, this removal was a mistake and due to a past video on Ms. Aziz’s; however, many people have speculated that the video was removed due to the subject matter: Xinjiang and the detention of Muslim Uyghurs in the Chinese region.

Read more at: http://www.media-diversity.org/en/