UNDP
Kenya
Information pollution, where facts and figures become a source of division in a country, has a huge impact on behaviour, social cohesion and public trust. If not addressed, mis- and disinformation can undermine civic culture by promoting general mistrust and encouraging sub-optimal behaviours. In 2021, the UNDP Accelerator Lab in Kenya partnered with Busara Center and the Healthy Internet Project (HIP) incubated at TED to conduct a live experimental demonstration of the HIP plug-in tool. The tool is an open-source web browser extension that allows users to flag content online anonymously. The experiment aimed to understand potential users’ motivations, experiences, and practices in using the platform to flag misinformation. The main findings from the experiment were: 1. Significant gaps in the general public's understanding of mis/disinformation requiring further awareness creation to avoid sentiment-based reporting. 2. Anonymity was a key concern when it came to flagging mis/disinformation with respondents citing fear of potential backlash especially when reporting politically-elated content. 3. One of the strongest non-financial incentives that came up was the need to provide a stronger feedback mechanism to communicate back to the user what happened with the content they flagged. This helps to ensure that users feel that their actions are making a difference and feel motivated to keep going 4. The importance of integrating a mobile phone interface for tools like HIP since the majority of internet users use their mobile devices more than PCs to access the internet.