Botswana will be going to the polls later this year. Political parties, voters as well as other stakeholders are gearing up for this special day. A lot is already happening on the ground as D-Day slowly beckons. As it is characteristic of any election year, campaigning for the elections is already underway, taking different forms both online and offline.
While we must be happy that in this era of digital technology information becomes easily available, on the other hand we must be wary that the integrity of such information and communications systems is largely compromised by the proliferation of fake news. Notwithstanding that in some instances fake news may be unwittingly shared without any intention to cause harm (misinformation), the increasing spread of information which is shared to inflict harm on individuals and institutions (disinformation) threatens processes such as elections and democracy. Many would remember one of the biggest disinformation campaigns of the 2020 alleging that the US presidential elections had been rigged. A video claiming to show “ballot stuffing” was used to support the claims. However, because the said video was from Russia, this was pure disinformation using false context in that experts linked similar posts to the January 6, 2021 attempted insurrection at the US Capitol.
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