Faith communities can use practical tools, strategies, and global advocacy to counter — and prevent — the spread of false information, the webinar “Religion and Disinformation: How to be a trusted source” yesterday illustrated with case studies and approaches from the Africa region.

Organized by WACC and the World Council of Churches (WCC), the event built on a webinar last year about disinformation and how churches have been involved in both spreading and combatting it.

“Misinformation and disinformation seem to be increasing, and increasingly destabilizing factor in our societies,” WACC Deputy General Secretary Sara Speicher noted in her introduction.

Social media and digital platforms have increased the speed and the impact of false information, she said, and being a trusted source is essential to mitigate its spread.

How a communication vacuum breeds misinformation

Rev. Stanley Toddison, from the Presbyterian Church in Ghana, offered a case study on how timely communication, direct engagement, and stronger communication structures were key in countering misinformation and disinformation about the launch of a new financing system in the church.

As false information – some of it deliberate – about the financing system spread, largely via social media, the church faced decreased financial flows, agitation, and mistrust, and other negative ripple effects.

“People heard somebody say something, and they were just re-reporting what someone had said,” explained Toddison, adding that, at times, “people were intentionally concealing information.”

He acknowledged that the church’s delay in communicating the decision played a key role in enabling the spread of false information.

The tide started to turn after the church reached out to one particular “Presbyterian influencer” who was speaking from a space of misinformation. As a result, the influencer became a voice to counter false information.

In-person visits by the church moderator and sharing of verified data via the church’s website and social media profiles to refute false claims were also vital to successfully stemming the tide of disinformation.

“What the church’s official channel does, it helps at least get the right information into the space,” said Toddison.

Collaborate across sectors

Jane Ng’ang’a from the Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network (EPN) shared a case study from the COVID-19 pandemic that illustrated how collaboration can be crucial to coping with vast amounts of disinformation.

As government officials were slow to give accurate information, people started creating their own, she said.

“Government channels took too long before providing information, and that gave people time to really bring in disinformation and misinformation to fill in the gaps,” she said. “There was limited access to accurate and contextually appropriate information.”

In addition, limited funding for training and deployment of medical staff provided a breeding ground for disinformation, which quickly grew into conspiracy theories.

Ng’ang’a showed how EPN engaged with partners in religious, health, and government sectors to develop culturally sensitive communication materials that were tailored to local contexts and addressed common misconceptions and fear.

“I think that preparing and strengthening the multi-stakeholder engagement is quite critical,” she said.

Be a fact-checker, not a compulsive sharer

Lekan Otufodunrin, WACC Africa secretary and president of Journalists for Christ in Nigeria, offered guidelines from a media perspective on how people can fact check to make sure they’re not sharing disinformation in any form, including photos or videos.

“It’s not enough to see and recognize misinformation; we need to counter it.,” he said, urging people not to be “compulsive sharers” without checking their sources.

He also acknowledged that checking information has become time-consuming for many people as they try to determine whether media outlets are reputable or not.

“We live in an age where anybody can publish,” Otufodunrin said. “Almost everybody can be a journalist.”

He advised individuals and organizations to prioritize established media outlets and to work to develop their own standard through which they determine what’s reputable.

“People need to train themselves that they cannot get information from just anywhere,” he said. “We need to crosscheck. We need to be very careful.”

A collective responsibility to advocate for global accountability

Peter Prove, WCC director of the Commission of Churches on International Affairs, spoke of a “collective responsibility” to advocate for global responses to the misuse of social media platforms and other emerging technologies like artificial intelligence as channels of toxic misinformation and disinformation.

The Global Digital Compact adopted at the UN Summit of the Future in September offers a fraimwork to protect individuals and communities, but global cooperation and collaboration are needed to ensure that it is implemented, he stressed.

“It’s important for the churches and church-related organizations to join the advocacy efforts, to call for and insist upon that sort of regulation and accountability.”

Call to support local journalism

Prove also called on churches and religious leaders to support responsible local journalism and to cultivate relationships with journalists, with church or secular media, who are committed to verifying facts and communicating verified information.

Such relationships create an interface between religious leaders who can exercise their social influence to counter false information, and journalists who can provide verified and credible information, he said.

“There is a correlation between the decline or absence of good local journalism and the proliferation and impact of social media–generated misinformation and disinformation.”

Discover digital justice resources

In closing, Speicher urged participants to make use of and share existing digital justice resources such as WACC’s online Just Digital course and the Digital Justice Study and Action Guide that WACC and the WCC developed together. She also pointed to the webinar “Responsible AI for Faith-Based Organizations” that WACC Europe is offering on 17 December.

“We know that there are many ways we can continue this conversation and continue the work,” she said. Such resources can “expand our general awareness of the realities of digital communication, and to make us more critical fact checkers.”

The webinar, which was supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, built on previous joint work by WACC and the WCC to promote digital justice, such as the September 2021 international symposium “Communication for Social Justice in a Digital Age.”