by former South African health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang during the early 2000s that garlic, beetroot, and the African potato would cure HIV/AIDS (Davis 2014), and of vaccine hesitancy among rural South Africans during the 1918 flu pandemic as a result of distrust of the motives of Western health workers (Steinberg 2007). Understanding information disorder in the Global South therefore requires a sociotechnical and technopolitical approach (Gagliardone 2016; Marwick 2018) which incorporates the study of media ecologies as interlinked with longer histories and social dynamics. This report aims to provide insight into how regional media ecologies, political forces, and social dynamics inform the ways in which organizations work to combat information disorder across the region. A study of efforts to counter information disorder in the Global South is important not merely because it contributes to greater geographical diversity in the field (much as this is needed), but also because the South can hold lessons for the North. Because of its long history of information disorder, the South could have provided early warnings for later manifestations of similar problems in the North. Berger (2022) reminds us, for instance, that the Ukraine was a target of geopolitical interference before this became a concern in the 2016 US elections, and that disinformation was weaponized in the Philippines to target journalists like the recent Nobel laureate Maria Ressa before accusations of “fake news” led to hostility towards journalists in the USA. Similarly, recent revelations by Facebook A study of efforts to counter whistleblowers have shown information disorder in the Global that the platform was complicit in hate speech by South is important not merely the Myanmar military against because it contributes to greater the Rohingya before similar geographical diversity in the field tactics were used in domestic (much as this is needed), but US politics (Mozur 2018). also because the South can hold There is, however, a lessons for the North. danger that focusing on the prevalence of information disorder in the Global South can deepen stereotypes of the region as “underdeveloped,” “chaotic,” “undemocratic,” and “passive.” For this reason, it is important to emphasize the resilient and creative ways in which many journalists, activists, and organizations across the Global South have demonstrated agency in combating the problem. This study tracks these varied responses to information disorder. I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH While there has been a steep rise in the number of journalistic fact-checking endeavors across the region, such initiatives can only respond to a fraction of publicly circulating mistruths, and verified corrections reach only a tiny proportion of the audience that would have seen the disinformation in the first place. Moreover, there is a realization that because information disorder is a multi-levelled, complex phenomenon, responses to the problem also have to be varied, intersectional, and holistic. 2. BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY The general objective of this scoping study was to synthesize existing knowledge about the range of efforts underway in the Global South to counter information disorder and to identify gaps in existing knowledge which future research could address. Ultimately, the study sought to contribute to fieldbuilding in the area of information disorder studies by providing detailed data and analysis from the under-researched contexts of the Global South. The project had three specific interconnected objectives: 1. To map the actors currently working in the counter-information disorder and to identify frameworks upon which interventions are based 2. To learn from current approaches, tools, and methods used to counter information disorder 3. To gain an overview of the research landscape and to identify key issues and questions for further research. This was an exploratory and descriptive study that followed a collaborative, participatory approach, drawing on the expertise of leading researchers in four sub-regions of the Global South, namely Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA). The teams used a range of methods, including desk research, regional workshops with key organizations, and stakeholder interviews to gather data from the respective regions. The findings from each of these regions were presented to the whole group, discussed, and reworked before being synthesized into this report. Through this collaborative process, which included monthly team meetings, the research process in itself had the aim of making connections between various actors, creating spaces for dialogue, and identifying points of comparison which can contribute to field-building. By Introduction – 1 3