Guest : Prof Camaren Peter | Associate Professor, Allan Gray Centre for Values-Based

                                                Leadership

The Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change, at UCT has launched a six-month

project that will use social media analytics and advocacy to combat the spread of

misinformation about the coronavirus in South Africa and beyond.

The project aims to combat the spread of fake news about the COVID-19.

Over the next six months, the team of 26 – among them psychologists, criminologists

and sustainability experts – plan to use social media analytics to track and counter the

spread of fake news and polarising rhetoric about COVID-19 in South Africa and other

parts of Africa, as well as monitor related incidences of social unrest and collective

violence.

These findings will be publicly available as well as shared with government in the form

of daily, weekly and thematic reports.