i i PART I GENERAL OVERVIEW 1. INTRODUCTION “Fake news” has become a well-known term in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region where many countries are experiencing endless wars, along with political, economic, and social crises. Unfortunately, the region is also witnessing the increasing suppression of freedom of opinion and expression, which places enormous pressure on journalistic work and independent media and limits the free circulation of information. This, in the larger context of the tremendous, rapid digital and technological development that is taking place worldwide, renders the Arab world an environment that is prone to the spread of false or misleading information—the perfect environment for promoting “information disorder.” Today, the term “fake news” is no longer appropriate or sufficient to explain the extent of harmful information in the world. The term “information disorder” covers misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Information disorder clearly describes how we have come to live in a world where fake and inaccurate information has become a dangerous weapon, used to wage wars, distract societies from core issues, direct public opinion, change election outcomes, and attack independent journalism. In the MENA region, information disorder, misinformation, and disinformation are still referred to by using the more general term “fake news,” which is defined as news that does not meet the criteria of credible news and which is spread without verification (Ireton and Posetti 2018, 7). I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH The negative impact of information disorder on societies and on the information environment is immeasurable. It is important to know how to confront and address the outcomes by properly understanding, interpreting, and analyzing information disorder. What are misinformation and disinformation? How does it circulate? How and why is it used? Who is behind it? In what environment does it grow and thrive? How does it affect society? These are only a few of the many important questions that must be answered in order to understand information disorder in a way that would help to counter it. The Covid-19 pandemic, which is ongoing at the time of writing, has also made these questions more pressing. Parts of the Arab world, such as Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan, were already facing huge waves of mis- and disinformation due to wars, political turmoil, and security issues (such as wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya; explosions in Lebanon and Iraq; clashes in the Maghreb/Northwest Africa, and so forth). Now, the region is witnessing a surge of mis- and disinformation about health issues, the Covid-19 pandemic, and vaccines. This has had catastrophic consequences for the region, as has been the case all over the world. Examples of misinformation that has spread in the Arab world during the pandemic are that the novel coronavirus is not of natural origin but was manufactured in a laboratory, that inhaling water vapor eliminates the virus, that wearing masks to prevent the spread of the virus causes a lack of oxygen in the body, and that vaccines against Middle East and North Africa – 2 5