“All streams of vertical inequality interact horizontally to create a culture of fear and prejudice instead of cohesion,” said senior researcher for equity at the South African Human Rights Commission, Shanelle van der Berg.
Van der Berg joined other panellists Stuart Jones (director of projects at the Centre for Analytics and Behaviour Change) and Jean le Roux (research associate at the Digital Forensics Lab) to discuss the topic of Grappling the rift of race and xenophobia, during Media Monitoring Africa’s virtual Media Freedom Festival on 28 October.
The festival takes place each year to ponder and probe key media-related issues of the moment to honour Black Wednesday. Black Wednesday is commemorated on 19 October, which marks the date in 1977 when Special Branch policemen arrested activists and journalists whom they suspected of supporting the Black Consciousness ideology.
Jones explained that real-world narratives were manipulated online to grow xenophobic and racist discourse. He gave the example of the #PutSouthAfricaFirst and #Senekal movement which grew a xenophobic discourse online.
Van der Berg explained that instead of blaming problems of economic inequality on non-nationals, social media could be reframed in a positive way to celebrate diversity and advance together.
Le Roux said disinformation campaigns played on emotive topics such as race and patriotism instead of appealing to the public in a logical manner.
“Emotive topics like #PutSAFirst have nothing to do with putting South Africa first but they are rather about putting down non-South Africans,” added Le Roux.
“Real issues like inequality, unemployment and lack of service delivery are harnessed and foreign nationals are used as a scapegoat to simplify issues. In reality, even if all non-South Africans were removed from the country, these issues would remain so it is completely untrue.”
Le Roux said these social media campaigns were used for one of three reasons, firstly to elicit financial gain (e.g. fake news websites), secondly for fun (e.g. spreading rumours that liquor stores will be closing once they have reopened) or for political campaigns (e.g. the #PutSAFirst movement was used by certain political parties to gain votes).
Le Roux added that in reality, these movements failed to attract many people to demonstrations on the ground, since most of their supporters acted as keyboard warriors.
Jones said it was necessary for the media to come up with a better story by challenging and questioning the disinformation by looking at multiple narratives.
“When the extremes become mainstream is when we are in trouble. We must guard against actors that try to extremify us. It’s about dialogue and creating conscious social media users,” added Jones.
Le Roux concluded by saying, “Wherever we find polarisation, there is fertile ground for disinformation campaigns. We need to understand when and how we are being manipulated and think twice or even thrice before we click share.”
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