strategies (Dzinamarira et al. 2021). These communication strategies should be informed by an understanding of the production and consumption of mis- and disinformation. This is crucial to improve community preparedness when high levels of messaging or critical thinking are required to absorb information, and especially when there is limited access to information. 5. THE POLICY ENVIRONMENT The policy environment around information disorder can be said to have developed from the 1990s, a period which has been described as a time of media liberalization across most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of governments in the region made use of an amalgamation of colonial-era and newer laws, regulations, and policies to control the operations of broadcast, print, and online media (where applicable). The norm at the time was that restrictions on speech were viewed as protecting society against harm to the rights or reputations of individuals and organizations or information that might undermine public order. In this sense, besides legislation that penalized defamation, there was not much of an effort to legislate in the area of false information per se. This amalgamation of laws on occasion included falsehood among the grounds on which information could be prohibited, but the legislation was often framed in a very broad and vague way, not referring to any particular types of falsehood. There are conflicting views on the issue of vague language used in legislation dealing with falsehoods, as discussed earlier. With the advent of the digital age, the ability of state authorities to police the flow of information on various digital platforms has lessened over the years (Ndlela and Mano 2020). While these developments were With the advent of the initially welcomed by the generdigital age, the ability of al public, a study carried out by state authorities to police Cunliffe-Jones et al. (2021) in elevthe flow of information on en sub-Saharan African countries showed that between 2016 and various digital platforms has 2020, ten of the eleven countries lessened over the years. had either introduced new laws or amended existing laws and regulations that dealt with “false information” through traditional or social media. This raised from seventeen to thirty-one the number of laws authorities said were aimed at reducing the harm caused by false information in the countries studied (Cunliffe-Jones I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH et al. 2021). Such a surge in legislation was met with concern around the intentions behind these actions. For example, in Nigeria, the Protection from Internet Falsehood and Manipulation and Other Related Matters Bill, which has since been abandoned, gave authorities the power to arbitrarily shut down the internet, limit access to social media, or sentence a person to up to three years in prison for criticizing the government. From a policy point of view, not only did this give the authorities too much power; it was also difficult to justify the legality of such legislation when weighed up against the guaranteed human rights of Nigerian citizens. Besides the human rights concerns outlined above, general criticisms of the current legislative approach include the following: • When seen against the scale of the problem, the direct effects of legal action are minimal. • The regulations are mainly used against media and opposition politicians. • Restrictions such as internet shutdowns have potentially harmful effects. 6. GAPS IN THE RESEARCH Several gaps have been identified in the literature on mis- and disinformation in sub-Saharan Africa: • While efforts to carry out and publish research on information disorder are commendable, limited research has been done on contexts other than the Covid-19 pandemic. This means that the majority of the literature on information disorder in sub-Saharan Africa is biased in that regard. • Studies on information disorder in the context of Covid-19 are also lacking in that they do not address the origins or causes of these myths and misconceptions, nor the way they are conveyed and maintained. The focus is often on the media (traditional, digital, and social) as vehicles for the development of mis- and disinformation. Sociocultural or socio-anthropological factors have rarely been explored. It would thus be important, especially in the sub-Saharan African context, to better understand the factors or cultural specificities that lead to information disorder. • While several studies present a global perspective on information disorder, especially from a digital point of view, not enough attention is given to the efforts of grassroots actors who are actively combating information disorder offline. This is especially true in the African context, Sub -Saharan Africa – 1 7 1