Fifty-three may seem like a large number of platforms and organizations. However, in reality, this is not enough to fact check facts in a region raging with political crises, wars, revolutions, and financial crises, and where disinformation abounds, especially since many of these initiatives are working voluntarily and are composed of small teams with limited resources. The right to access information is generally not upheld in the region, while the press faces restrictions, especially in the case of independent outlets. Therefore, these platforms are up against big challenges. Moreover, as will be detailed below, a large number of these platforms and initiatives emerged through volunteer efforts by journalists and activists who recognized the great need to contribute to the fight against information disorder in their countries, even with almost non-existent human and material resources. For funding, most of these organizations rely on international organizations, donations, and individual funding. A few larger organizations and platforms for fact-checking services in Arabic have emerged, such as AFP Fact Check, Fatabyyano, Misbar, Tech 4 Peace, and a few others. 4.1 CHARACTERISTICS OF FACT-CHECKING INITIATIVES, PLATFORMS, AND ORGANIZATIONS IN THE REGION We analyzed the work of fact-checking platforms in the region and the challenges they face. We then sent a questionnaire to thirty-two platforms, initiatives, and organizations in fourteen Arab countries. We received twenty-six responses from thirteen countries: two from Algeria, three from Egypt, one from Iraq, two from Jordan, four from Lebanon, three from Libya, one from Morocco, two from Palestine, one from Saudi Arabia, one from Sudan, two from Syria, three from Tunisia, and one from Yemen. The organizations that responded to the questionnaire were mostly fairly young. The majority (sixteen out of twenty-six) were established between 2019 and 2021, while the remaining ten were established between 2012 and 2018. This suggests that the massive spread of misleading and false information in the Arab world during the Covid-19 crisis encouraged the establishment of specialized initiatives and organizations dedicated to fact checking, because of the crucial role that it can play in confronting mis- and disinformation. I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH The organizations use different organizational and funding models. Eleven of the twentysix initiatives are registered companies, while eight are volunteer-based initiatives, four are individual initiatives, and three are affiliated with media platforms. Most of these platforms and organizations obtain their funding from international organizations and individuals. Most of them work with fewer than ten employees or volunteers. The organizations aim to create awareness of their work by building a public profile. Most of these initiatives and organizations have websites and accounts on various social media sites, while three of them also use smartphone applications (see Table 1). While most of these organizations focus on fact checking in a local context, some of them have a regional and global scope. Fourteen of these initiatives and organizations focus on fact checking within a local (national) context. One is active regionally and two are active in a global framework, while a further nine focus on the national, regional, and international frameworks, particularly during important and international events that might interest Arab readers. The focus of these initiatives, organizations, and platforms is mainly on checking political news, followed by social content, and then health and economic content. These are followed by government content, government speeches, and political promises. The technological, artistic, cultural, and sports spheres occupy the lowest levels of interest. Due to the many political, social, and economic crises that Arab countries are experiencing, these are not considered to be priority areas. Many of these initiatives, organizations, and platforms are not very active, because they face financial constraints and their teams are small and Many of these initiatives, composed of volunteers. organizations, and platforms Five of them verify only are not very active, because one piece of news or conthey face financial constraints tent per day; fourteen of and their teams are small and them verify between one composed of volunteers. and five items per day; five of them verify between five and ten items per day. Only two of them verify between ten and twenty items per day. Although most of these platforms allow the public to send them news, photos, videos, and other types of content for verification purposes, audience interaction with these platforms is fairly low across the region. Middle East and North Africa – 32