All eight initiatives who use a technical/ algorithmic response are using or plan to use natural language processing methods to train algorithms to pick up false information. They are mostly funded or run by foreign companies in Europe and North America and operate in English only. Two of the identified initiatives (RoveR and Know News) are self-funded. Digital Africa Research Lab is the only organization that seems to use a curatorial response directly targeted at big tech companies. This initiative is pushing for accountability by ensuring that these platforms adhere to global policies and products whilst taking into consideration the needs and concerns of African users. RESPONSES AIMED AT SUPPORTING THE TARGET AUDIENCES OF DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS This category aims at supporting potential victims of disinformation campaigns. Actions include drafting guidelines, making recommendations, issuing resolutions, promoting media and data literacy, and running content credibility labelling initiatives. Among the initiatives surveyed in this study, educational responses promote critical thinking, verification of information, and safe internet use, while empowerment efforts are practical aids used to empower the public or journalists to avoid falling victim to online disinformation. There is a further component, namely ethical and normative responses. These constitute efforts on the part of governments or international organizations, and include national or international condemnations of disinformation or researched recommendations on how to ameliorate the violations. The earliest fact-checking responses to false information adopted an approach where citizens were assumed to have low levels of literacy. The educational approach, utilized by nine initiatives in this study, is a more mature response (compared to fact checking) derived from an understanding of the falsehood in question and where it might have come from. It seeks not only to expose falsehoods but also to provide audiences with the tools to assess information for themselves (for example, through media literacy programs) or to understand the topical area. Promoting critical thinking among citizens by educating them is popularly used by actors who are targeting issue-specific mis- or disinformation, such as health-related information or information related to stigmatized or vulnerable communities. Two examples are SMUG and Standing Voice, which works with people living with I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH albinism. An interesting underlying assumption of this approach is that “cultural stereotypes”/myths are assumed to be due to a lack of information, whereas “fake news” is seen as a result of too much information or of mistrust in credible news sources due to the blurring of boundaries between consumers and producers of news. This is also the approach prominently used by organizations focusing on electoral mis- or disinformation. Empowerment and credibility labelling efforts, utilized by six initiatives in this study, are mostly targeted at ameliorating online mis- or disinformation by empowering the public and media professionals or strengthening the credibility of organizations as trusted sources of information. Pollicy, based in Uganda, has developed an online interactive game which re-enacts how ordinary Ugandans can fall victim to insidious forms of mis- and disinformation. Other projects, such as YALIChecks (sponsored by the USA-run Young African Leaders Initiative, with centers in Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, and Senegal), target youth and young leaders, while Open & Disclose (an initiative of Media Monitoring Africa) and 263Chat (a media company in Zimbabwe) are working towards establishing a credible media environment through training programs and trust building. Among the ethical and normative responses profiled, two governments are actively implementing programs to combat mis- and disinformation. The Ethiopian government is running a program to condemn disinformation fueled by the ongoing state of emergency in the Tigray region. The governmental fact-checking platform on Facebook and Twitter monitors national, regional, and international news platforms for false information—as defined by the government— and debunked news is posted in the form of statements on these social media platforms. In the Ethiopian context, the implementation of fact-checking efforts was accompanied by internet shutdowns at the beginning of the Tigray conflict. For this reason, government critics argue that in addition to blatant disregard for basic human entitlements, the government appears to resort to internet shutdowns and communication restrictions as its first option and at the slightest provocation. Sub -Saharan Africa – 1 47