Local, National and Regional Efforts in Information Manipulation and Informational Resilience: Examples for Learning and Knowledge Sharing

• In Event: Envisioning Education in a Digital Society: A Focus on Digital Repression in Conflict-Affected Settings

Proposal

This paper will discuss the efforts undertaken by local communities, regional institutions, policymakers and practitioners on efforts to obviate the effects of false and erroneous information and knowledge in sub Saharan Africa, including highlighting some innovative programs to support veracity in digital learning and information resilience in the Sahel. Specifically, the paper will discuss how communities are facilitating efforts to negate the spread of harmful knowledge and information that fractures cohesion. These include efforts to cultivate an information ecosystem more resilient to manipulation, in order to, first, supply high-quality, verifiable and timely information by supplying content creators, media moderators, journalists, and community-level influencers with additional skills and tools. And, secondly, to mitigate the digital marginalization of those who are already marginalized in the education and socio economic sphere due to disease, crises and conflicts. These instances provide the practitioner, academic and policymaker with local examples of how communities and other stakeholders that support local learning efforts understand the transformational challenges that communities encounter in digital learning ecosystems and ways to overcome these challenges, while enhancing social cohesion, community agency and learning.

Author

• Vanita Datta, former USAID