India's farmers protest online & Ghana combats election misinformation
Welcome to the first issue of The Checklist in the New Year. We hope 2021 is healthier and happier for all of you in every way!
We're back after a hiatus with weekly misinformation news, trends and updates from around the world. A warm welcome to our new subscribers and a big thank you to everyone for your support to The Checklist.
This week we take a look at an online campaign to combat trolls and misinformation. The campaign has been launched by farmers protesting in India against agriculture laws that they fear could eventually eliminate government-guaranteed minimum prices for their crops. We share insights from GhanaFact about countering election-related misinformation. In our health column, our inhouse expert, Dr. Seema Yasmin shares the most recent information and resources on COVID-19. This week we are thrilled to announce the launch of our zine Viral Politics:Tales from the Pandemia. Artists from emerging economies have illustrated ways in which the pandemic has affected digital surveillance, freedom of speech and gender-based violence in their home countries.
Please share your feedback and suggestions with us. Stay safe and happy reading.
Your COVID-19 questions
Journalist and medical doctor, Dr. Seema Yasmin shares weekly highlights from Meedan's public health journalism tool, learnaboutcovid19.org.
Are there any COVID-19 vaccines that use pig fat or pork products?
Dr. Seema says: "Pork products are not used in the Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, but it’s not known if some other vaccines, particularly those made by CanSino Biologics and Sinopharm, use pig products because the ingredient lists for those vaccines have not been shared. Typically, gelatin appears in some vaccines as a stabilizer that protects the vaccines from extreme temperatures during transportation. Gelatin is a protein made by boiling animal connective tissue and skin and almost all gelatin that appears in human vaccines comes from pigs. The inclusion of pig ingredients in vaccines is an important point for faith-based groups, such as Muslims, who are forbidden from consuming pig products. However, Islam does make exceptions when it comes to medicines and many Islamic scholars have issued rulings that even if a COVID-19 vaccine contained pig gelatin, it would still be permissible for Muslims to receive the vaccine in the interest of personal and public health."
Do people with previous COVID-19 infections or COVID-19 antibodies need to receive the vaccine?
Dr. Seema says: "Reinfection with the coronavirus is rare but possible, meaning people who have been infected once should still receive COVID-19 vaccines. Because reinfection is even more unlikely in the 90 days after the first infection, the CDC says people who have been previously infected can, if they choose, wait up to 90 days before receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. But waiting 90 days isn’t necessary, and testing of antibody levels before vaccination is not required or recommended. Receiving the vaccine withing 90 days of infection is not known to be harmful."
Today's top stories
Dozens of Al Jazeera journalists targeted in apparent iOS spyware attack (The Verge)
A new report from Citizen Lab has shed light on a spyware campaign orchestrated by Israeli firm NSO Group targeting 36 journalists working at Al Jazeera and Al Araby Al Jadeed. Citizen Lab has alleged that both the Emirati and Saudi governments were behind these attacks. The attacks are worrying not just because they appear to show politically-motivated targeting of journalists, but also because they’re part of a trend of using increasingly advanced methods that are harder to detect. According to Citizen Lab, the attacks seem to have used a zero-click exploit to compromise iPhones via iMessage, meaning the attacks happened without the victims needing to do anything, and leave much less of a trace once a device is infected.
Citizen Lab’s report says “almost all iPhone devices” which haven’t been updated to iOS 14 appear to be vulnerable to the hack, meaning the infections it found are likely to be a “miniscule fraction” of the total number.
Singapore says police will be given access to Covid-19 contact tracing data (The Guardian)
Singapore has announced its police will be able to use data obtained by its coronavirus contact-tracing technology for criminal investigations, a decision likely to increase privacy concerns around the system.
The technology, deployed as both a phone app and a physical device, is being used by nearly 80% of the 5.7 million population, authorities said, after announcing its use would become compulsory in places such as shopping malls.
The TraceTogether scheme, one of the most widely used in any country, has raised privacy fears but authorities have said the data is encrypted, stored locally and tapped by authorities only if individuals test positive for Covid-19.
"The Singapore police force is empowered ... to obtain any data, including TraceTogether data, for criminal investigations." — Minister of state for home affairs, Desmond Tan, in response to a question in parliament.
Fact-checking Ghana’s social media elections (GhanaFact)
In the middle of a global pandemic, Ghana organized presidential and parliamentary elections. This was uncharted territory, and the dynamics were markedly different. For the first time in the country’s history, a sitting president, Nana Akufo-Addo, and a former president, John Mahama were going head-to-head in an election that was playing out as much on social media as on rally grounds across the country.
A fact-checking group, GhanaFact prepared towards the polls by firming up collaborations to ensure effective information gathering and dissemination, resulting in the creation of the largest fact-checking collaboration in Ghana’s history. The team built a network of fact-checkers across Ghana, which involved more than 100 journalists across 35 traditional media organizations in the 16 regions of the country to flag misinformation and help republish fact-checks to increase reach. GhanaFact partnered with technology and internet companies including Meedan and Facebook, using Meedan’s Check platform that allows for annotation of fact-checks and visualization of the text for easy read and publication.
"Our experiences have shown that fact-checking/journalism when done with a focus on audience participation promotes ownership and earns the public’s trust. The rebounding of trust in news media due to the coronavirus infodemic can be consolidated by the media paying attention to the basics of the profession’s ethics of verifying and getting it right than first. " — GhanaFact
Tractors to Twitter: India's protesting farmers battle on highway, online (Reuters)
In India as demonstrators from the ongoing farmers' protest oppose recent agriculture laws, they also face a targeted misinformation campaign online. While farmers have been protesting with tractors and tents, some of them have taken the battle online. Several accounts have been set up by volunteers on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Snapchat to run pro-farmer campaigns. One such initiative is the Twitter account, @Tractor2twitr, which has gained over 23,000 followers and has been pushing one hashtag a day since late November.
"We will intensify our campaign because we are getting organised and getting more support now.... Our war of perception, the war of messaging is going in the right direction." — Bhavjit Singh
Launching the Check Global Zine - Viral Politics: Tales from the Pandemia
We are so excited to launch our zine Viral Politics: Tales from the Pandemia. Artists from throughout the Global South have illustrated the ways the pandemic has affected digital surveillance, freedom of speech and gender-based violence in their home countries, and how they resist. Check it out!