A fact-checking engineer in Indonesia & Disinformation targeting Kenya's civil society
We hope you're doing well and staying safe. This week in The Checklist, we highlight the work of Ismail Fahmi, an Indonesian engineer and coder who has become a household name in the country by combating misinformation with data generated from Drone Emprit, a social media monitoring and network analysis tool that he originally built to track keywords related to a protest in Jakarta in 2016.
We also look into a coordinated disinformation campaign in Kenya that sought to undermine the credibility of the country's judiciary, and also follow up on a story we previously highlighted from Brazil, where the president's move to make fact-checking on social media platforms illegal was rejected by the Supreme Federal Court and the Congress.
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The latest top stories
How one coder became Indonesia’s misinformation guru (Rest of World)
Engineer Ismail Fahmi is a household name in Indonesian local media; bespectacled and fast-spoken, he has built a profile combating misinformation with the data generated by his social media-mapping tools. He has become the voice of reason in an increasingly distorted information landscape. Influence operations — bot-driven, automated, paid-for messaging — are ingrained in Indonesian social media, used liberally by the government, the opposition, and corporate marketing alike. As these campaigns become more sophisticated and targeted, demand for his services has increased.
"I always tell everyone that I’m not part of any camp. I’m a scientist. My goal is to educate people with data, that’s it" — Ismail Fahmi
Inside the Shadowy World of Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya (Mozilla Foundation)
New research by Mozilla Fellows Odanga Madung and Brian Obilo reveals that Kenyan journalists, judges, and other members of civil society are facing coordinated disinformation campaigns on Twitter. The research was done over two months using online data mining and interviews with influencers who participated in the disinformation campaigns, and uncovered at least 11 different disinformation campaigns consisting of more than 23,000 tweets and 3,700 participating accounts.
"This research provides a window into the booming and shadowy industry of Twitter influencers for political hire in Kenya. This industry’s main goal is to sway public opinion during elections and protests, especially with regard to Kenya’s ongoing constitutional review process, the Building Bridges Initiative" — Odanga Madung, Mozilla Fellow
Brazil's Supreme Court and Congress reject Bolsonaro's maneuver to facilitate disinformation (El País)
Brazil's Supreme Federal Court has suspended the processing of a provisional measure introduced by President Jair Bolsonaro to modify the law governing internet use in Brazil that would make it difficult to eliminate content that spread disinformation on social networks. Judge Rosa Weber suspended the provisional measure in response to a request of the Attorney General. Additionally, the president of the National Congress, Senator Rodrigo Pacheco, formalized the return of the proposed changes to the Executive, meaning that the amendments introduced by the president cease to exist.
"Returning an interim measure to the president is not a trivial political act. On the contrary, it is something strong and exceptional. It occurs when legislators notice that there is no urgency or relevance to debate an issue proposed by the Executive, but especially when the president goes through a moment of fragility" —Afonso Benites, El País reporter
What’s new at Meedan
Vicarious trauma: mitigating graphic content in newsrooms
Journalists and fact-checkers are required to work extensively with unfiltered feeds from social media and messaging apps and traumatic imagery, potentially causing vicarious trauma and impacting their mental health and wellbeing.
We speak to Ekta editors to understand how they deal with the psychological effects of regular exposure to imagery to find out how they deal with traumatic content.