was circulated related to border disputes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, information operations by China targeted the 2020 elections in Taiwan, and Russian disinformation campaigns have extended their influence in many parts of Central Asia. In Latin America, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela have used the Covid-19 pandemic to fuel anti-Chinese sentiments. Similar sentiments have spilled over into other parts of Asia, like the Philippines, where workers of Chinese descent became targets of disinformation. Amidst these geopolitical tensions, fact-checking organizations that receive support from Western donors often have to contend with perceptions of a lack of independence. It is within these varied contexts that organizations across the Global South have worked to counter information disorder. 4. FINDINGS: RESPONSES ACROSS THE REGIONS 4.1. TYPES OF RESPONSES The ways in which information disorder can be combated has been one of the central strands of research in the area (Damstra et al. 2021, 1948), and has already led to typologies such as the one provided by Bontcheva and Posetti (2020), as discussed above. The urgency of responding to the infodemic accompanying the Covid-19 pandemic underlined the necessity of such responses, and has spurred further research into ways in which information disorder around the virus and vaccines could be countered. Yet often these responses have too glibly drawn on the notion of a uniform “inoculation” strategy against information disorder which ignores contextual specificity—not only between the Global North and South, but also within the South itself, as Gagliardone et al. (2021) have shown regarding the different ways in which African users display agency in engaging with false messages. Research into appropriate responses to information disorder therefore has to be informed by context if these responses are to be successful. IDENTIFICATION RESPONSES: MONITORING, FACT CHECKING, AND INVESTIGATION The central aim of this study has been to provide an overview of the various organizations and actors working to combat information disorder in I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH the Global South, and the types of responses they provide. Among these, identification responses have been especially notable in recent years. Identification responses include monitoring and fact-checking responses as well as investigative responses (Bontcheva and Posetti 2020). These strategies are aimed at identifying instances of disinformation, verifying and fact checking claims, and, in some cases, extending this monitoring to the broader context of information disorder—the networks, systems, and mechanisms facilitating information disorder. This type of response was found to be one of the most dominant, if not the most dominant, forms of combating information disorder across the regions of the Global South represented in this study. In sub-Saharan Africa, it appears that fact-checking methodologies are maturing into deeper investigative efforts which aim to unearth the sources, drivers, and impacts of information disorder. A wide range of fact-checking organizations are active in these regions, many of them having been established fairly recently. Even in the MENA region, where some fact-checking organizations have been active since the democratic revolutions around 2011, the majority were only established in the last few years. The rise of information disorder around the Covid-19 pandemic has provided an additional impetus for fact-checking organizations. Although the number of organizations continues to grow across these regions, not all of them are equally active or robust. Some fact-checking organizations are aligned to media houses, and have been successful in conducting specialized in-depth investigations in addition to verification activities. In some cases, fact checking has become integrated into mainstream journalism. An example of this is the Joongang Tongyang Broadcasting Company (JTBC), one of the largest broadcasting houses in South Korea, which allocates five minutes of its prime-time news bulletin for fact checks of popular news items. An encouraging sign of public trust in fact-checking processes is the contributions made by audiences. In Kyrgyzstan, the organization Factcheck.kz receives fact-checking suggestions from readers via their social media accounts, and in India, independent fact checkers follow up on leads provided by members of the public. Other fact-checking organizations operate independently. These outfits tend to rely heavily on international donor organizations, governments, or big tech companies to fund their operations. The US-based National Endowment for Democracy Introduction – 1 6