There is no getting away from the fact that the digital age is here to stay, and here to evolve at a rapid rate, and the African continent is very much a part of this. Africa as a whole has experienced a major surge in internet usage over the last decade, with mobile technology and social media platforms becoming part of everyday life for many. These also happen to the areas from which most people now consume their daily news and information.
This shift in how news and information is consumed has led to the concept of Africa media monitoring becoming a crucial activity for governments, non-profits, and businesses alike. Not only does this boil down to efforts in understanding public sentiment, but also safeguarding, managing crises and generally tackling the ever-growing threat of misinformation and disinformation.
Africa media monitoring has become an integral practice due to several unique challenges that are presented by the diverse media landscape that the continent’s many countries boast. Let’s break the situation down into three of the key sectors that are affected by potentially problematic content.
Media monitoring in Africa has the power to play an essential role in both the shaping and understanding of public discourse. Governments can
- utilize various software to track sentiment and opinion on key policies
- identify potential security risks from disinformation
- monitor the overall political discourse among users/populations.
By using such tools to stay as informed as possible, policymakers can hopefully craft more effective solutions to public concerns, alongside being able to swiftly counter potential threats.
Media monitoring can be a helpful tool for businesses across Africa who are seeking to maintain a positive brand reputation and avoid/manage crises. The ability to track how a particular brand or company is perceived by a demographic means that changes can be quickly made to restore good faith and trust.
Alongside this, businesses can use monitoring software to identify and track things like market trends and consumer behavior, allowing them to put together more focused and effective marketing campaigns.
Media monitoring in Africa can also be incredibly helpful for non-profit organizations that can use it to combat misinformation within targeted communities. Africa has historically been a continent in which information can tend to be scarce or manipulated, with malicious but loud voices often being the only ones heard in times of strife.
Thanks to effective Africa media monitoring, non-profits can work to amplify their own voices instead, whilst trying to remove the damaging disinformation from the most commonly used platforms.
Both disinformation and misinformation are hugely pervasive issues across the breadth of African media. This prevalence can be linked to several different factors ranging from the cultural to the political to the social.
The first thing to consider is the rapid expansion of internet and social media connectivity across the continent, creating a breeding ground for fake news to quickly spread. Millions of people across the continent rely on social media as their primary source of news, which in turn makes them very vulnerable to malicious misinformation. This problem is then exacerbated by the fact that overall media literacy levels in many regions is low, meaning that consumers can find it difficult to differentiate between real news and fake news.
The second thing to consider is what drives the disinformation in the first place. Political actors across Africa will use fake news to drive their agendas, manipulate public opinion, incite unrest, and destabilize and discredit their opponents. This can be particularly damaging during election periods.
Cultural and social factors also play a huge role in the spreading of disinformation. Among communities where oral tradition is strong, it is easy for fake stories and rumors to circulate very quickly once they have been seen and shared. Ethnic and religious tensions among divided societies also do not help, as they can be exploited by people who wish to further polarize.
Ultimately, the impact of disinformation and misinformation can be deeply profound:
- For a government, it can undermine trust and destabilize leaders. For businesses, it can damage reputation and affect sales.
- For non-profits, it can hinder noble goals to help the population.
To combat the rising issue of disinformation online, advanced media monitoring solutions are vital. One of the leading names in this field is Osavul, a state-of-the-art, cutting-edge suite of tools designed to address the needs of the African continent across the digital board. Some of the key features that Osavul boasts when it comes to tackling online narratives and threats include:
Osavul enables users to track things like trends and media mentions in real-time, meaning that they are constantly informed of any developments. This kind of instant feedback is crucial when it comes to being able to respond to threats as quickly as possible.
Osavul makes clever use of artificial intelligence to analyze huge amounts of data at a time, generating relevant alerts for potential risks or suspicious changes that it uncovers in its algorithms. This AI helps users to stay ahead of the curve in terms of potential digital crises.
A key aspect of combatting disinformation in Africa is recognizing how large a role diversity across the continent plays. Osvavul software can take into account all of the cultural, social, and political nuances through various regions, building a localized approach that guarantees users will only receive information that is relevant to their regional efforts.
Ultimately, the crux of the issue is that the growing importance of media monitoring across Africa is something that simply cannot be ignored. As the continent continues to adopt and embrace the various digital tech and social media that are available, an equal need arises for effective monitoring to ensure that levels of fake news and disinformation do not get out of control.
Governments, non-profits, and businesses around the world and Global South alike need to stay as informed and in control of their own narratives as possible, and thanks to Osavul and the powerful suite of tools available within the program, this can be achieved with minimal effort and maximum efficiency.
