Disinformation in Libya is no less complicated than in the case of Syria, as the ongoing Syrian civil war has opened a new battle ground on social and digital media, to the extent that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Syria described the situation as “chaos of information” (Posetti and Matthews 2018, 6). Each party tries to polarize and manipulate public opinion, which leads to news coverage that is biased and partisan. The news tends to support one group and attack others (Al Feel 2019). This phenomenon is not limited to internal groups; in fact, international groups are deeply involved in the Syrian war, as is highlighted in many academic studies. One such study (Al Feel 2019) investigated news reports published by leading Arab and international newspapers, websites, and news agencies—such as Al Arabiya, Jordan Times, Al Ahram, Asharq Alawsat, SANA, Al Alam, Al Manar, Sputnik, TASS, Reuters, Etilaf.org, Al Araby, TRT World, Daily Sabah, and the Lebanese National News Agency— and used an AI model to compare these reports to news documented by the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), an NGO. This study found that sectarian language and bias are amongst the most prominent features of the news published by those media outlets (Al Feel 2019). A well-known example of biased news about the Syrian war occurred when an Egyptian anchor showed visuals from a video game and claimed that it depicted the Russian army fighting against terrorism in Syria (Posetti and Matthews 2018, 7). The spread of fake news led to the launch of an initiative to build up a dataset to identify Syrian fake news based on modern technologies dealing with big data, such as Hbase (Abu Salem et al. 2019). In addition, Taakkad, an observatory platform, was established to provide audiences with accurate information about the Syrian war and to improve media performance. It has corrected about 800 news articles. Most of these came from social media, but state-owned media, media affiliated to opposition groups, Arab media, and foreign media were also shown to be involved in spreading fake news about the war (Ben Messaoud 2021, 34). I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH FAKE NEWS USED AGAINST THE STATE The fourth dimension of the propaganda phenomenon is fake news that is used by unknown forces against the state on social media. Most of the studies about Egypt tackle rumors and fake news from this perspective. Egypt has been ranked 14th among countries where the number of social media users is growing rapidly (Ben Messaoud 2021, 34), and these media have become a source of information (Abdel Hamid 2019, 67), which paves the way for the spreading of rumors. The Egyptian Cabinet issued a report on the spreading of rumors based on the monitoring of 187 rumors that were circulated on social media platforms between August and December 2018 (Abdel Hamid 2019, 71). State entities were most often targeted by rumors, with 20.9 percent of all rumors targeting these organs. Abdel Hamid notes that after the June 30 Revolution of 2013, Egyptian entities were targeted by the Muslim Brotherhood and states which support it. The second most targeted were the public service ministries, at 19.8 percent of the total rumors, since the originators of the rumors wanted to turn citizens against the government and eliminate the trust between them (Abdel Hamid 2019, 76–77). Another area of research focuses mainly on the correlation between fake news on social media, on the one hand, and Egyptian security entities and public opinion, on the other. An example of this is the study by Eid (2019). Since 2013 the security entities in Egypt have been encountering terrorism attacks, especially in the Sinai Peninsula, and fake news impacts negatively on audiences’ view of the security forces (Eid 2019, 702). The study measured the impact of fake news on public opinion and found that 83 percent of the sample surveyed (400 persons) believed that security institutions were targeted on social media, while 52 percent trust news posted about security institutions on social media. It postulates that the increase of fake news reduces trust in Egyptian security institutions (Eid 2019, 735). Most of the above-mentioned studies were carried out between 2016 and 2019. In this time period, the MENA region was riddled with conflicts, political divides, civil wars, diplomatic crises, protests, and the consequences of revolutions. That is why the studies revolve around politics. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic shifted the focus of researchers in the region to the impact of fake news related to the new virus. Middle East and North Africa – 65