By Fawah Agather in Douala
Cameroonian
bloggers have been drilled on fact checking of content on social media
platforms. #FactsMatter237 a program under the #DefyHateNow project organised by
the
Association of Cameroonian Bloggers ACB and partners such as Mboalab and
UNESCO drilled the bloggers from across Cameroon on skills to detect fake news,
verify images and videos posted online so as to combat hate speech and fake
news. |
| #FactsMatter237 |
James Wamathai, facilitator and part of
#DefyHateNow from kenya talked about misinformation and disinformation being
birds of a feather. With 7 types of misinformation and disinformation: satire
or parody, misleading content, imposter content, fabricated content, false
connection, false context and manipulated content.
On fact checking and authenticity of
websites, Nelson Kwaje, content Creator and ICT expert from South Sudan said
hate speech and or fake news can be checked if the domain name of the website
is known plus the owner by which it can either confirm the credibility of the
news item or not.
 |
| Nelson Kwaje and James Wamathai speaking at workshop |
Also it was made known to the bloggers that
during fact checking, it should be remembered that the news item at least have
some truth which can be checked.
This
workshop comes at a time when the country is going through crisis which get fueled
by social media content.
The
two day workshop held at Pullman hotel from 12 to 13th of December ended with
the award of testimonials to participants