Fi Sehetak ("To health" in Arabic)

Arabic is one of the most widely used languages in the world, yet globally few resources have been devoted to countering the spread of health-related misinformation in the Arabic language. The “infodemic” that has consumed the social media public sphere during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in mass confusion and even death, demonstrates the critical importance of bridging this gap and ensuring that Arabic speakers, particularly those from vulnerable social groups, are no longer left behind. 

Our project will build a data intelligence platform to shed light on the sources, scale and propagation of health-related misinformation in the Arabic language, in view of curbing - or even stopping - its spread. 

This will contribute to health security by shielding millions of people from harmful health-related misinformation. It will not only greatly benefit the Arabic-speaking community globally, but also be scalable to other contexts and benefit the fact-checking industry more generally. 

The problem that our project will address is the sheer magnitude of health-related misinformation in the Arabic language on social media platforms which, combined with the high reliance by Arabic speakers on such platforms to obtain news, has led to mass confusions and widespread detrimental and even deadly effects. 

Health-related misinformation, which includes hoaxes, dangerous rumours that spread harmful behaviours, imposter content, and fabricated or manipulated content, is prevalent in the Arab world due to the lack of independent media, deliberate attempts to skew or distort the truth to serve political agendas, generally poor education and the lack of a critical thinking culture. Moreover, the general lack of media innovation in Arab countries means that the few existing fact-checking initiatives often lack high-end data analysis tools that could help facilitate their work more effectively. 

These factors, combined with algorithms that allow posts to go viral quickly, have resulted in misinformation in the Arabic language spreading like wildfire on social media platforms. Especially among Arab youth and vulnerable communities, these platforms have become the primary source of news, and hence they easily become exposed to misinformation.

There are around 400 million Arabic speakers worldwide, many of whom are social media users. 

Our solution consists of two components:

First, we will build the first data intelligence platform using state-of-the-art data analytics to shed light on the sources, types, apparent motives, intensity and propagation of health-related misinformation published in the Arabic language on social media platforms. The platform will adapt text mining to extract insightful data patterns from a large and representative data set containing thousands of pieces of misinformation gathered and rated false or misleading by fact-checkers, and enable data-driven public awareness of issues and content.

Second, we will provide Arabic-speaking social media users with the possibility of sending us suspicious content through WhatsApp Business and Facebook Messenger tiplines. This will considerably expand our sources of data for the platform, particularly data that is underrepresented in international fact-checks. In addition, we will use two-way communication through automated messaging services and bots on these apps to provide fact-checks on the claims we are sent. This will be particularly impactful for vulnerable communities, enabling them to communicate with us 24/7 to verify misleading claims to which they have been exposed.  People who “opt-in” will also receive factsheets and educational videos and voice messages on how they can implement basic fact-checking practices themselves.

The Arabic-speaking social media user community consists of: Arab citizens residing in the 22 Arab countries, Arab citizens or people of Arab origin residing in other countries around the world, and non-Arab Arabic speakers worldwide. From this community, the main users of social media are the youth demographic. Users come from all walks of life, including the public, political circles, etc.

According to the University of Oregon’s 2018 report on the State of Social Media in the Arab Region, approximately 164 million people in the Arab world were Facebook users as of 2018, and almost half of users from the youth category chose Facebook as their daily news source. According to a report compiled by Crowd Analyzer, Hootsuite and APCO, Arabic is the fastest-growing language on Twitter, among 25 other languages on the platform. So whereas Facebook remains the main platform used by Arabic-speaking users, Twitter is second.

The Arabic-speaking online community constitutes millions of people who so far have not had the right opportunities to elevate their access to trusted, reliable information to a level that would ensure a safe information environment, a condition necessary for protection from harm, development of critical thinking, and fulfilment of the right to accurate information.

People who are especially vulnerable to health-related misinformation, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, include people living in refugee camps and other densely-populated areas that are particularly prone to disease outbreaks and infectious diseases, people living in countries with fragile health systems and where COVID-19 and other vaccines are not currently available, and people living in poor sanitary and economic conditions. These communities are disproportionately affected by disease outbreaks, and would thus greatly benefit from access to reliable information. Our project will give particular attention to them.

We have been interacting with followers of one of the top fact-checking initiatives in the Arab region ("Don't Believe It" / "Matsda2sh"), encouraging them to inform us of their needs in terms of having better access to trusted information.

We have also conducted thorough research into the availability of data on the misinformation phenomenon in the Arabic language, and have found that there is a dire lack of invesment in fact-checking technologies that encompass the Arabic language.

Moreover, we have interviewed experienced fact-checkers, who have told us that the these gaps have significantly restricted their ability to conduct fact-checking on content published in Arabic on social media platforms. They have emphasized the need for greater clarity on the intensity, spread, propagation and sources of misinformation published in Arabic.

As we develop our project and prepare ourselves for the establishment of our data intelligence platform, we will continue conducting interviews with fact-checkers to better understand how to present our data intelligence platform and technology is the most user-friendly way possible so that it may be used widely. This will ultimately help in increasing the quantity and quality of fact-checking, thus increasing access to trusted fact-checked information of Arabic-speakers social media users.

We will also conduct a survey with a representative set of Arabic-speaking social media users using our two-way communication services to find out how best to address their needs with regard to access to trusted fact-checked health-related information and feedback on factsheets and videos promoting healthier behaviour.

The problem we seek to tackle is that of health-related misinformation, which has contributed to health insecurity among Arabic-speaking social media users, many of whom reside in areas prone to infectious diseases. 

Our solution seeks to build the necessary technology to prevent the spread of such misinformation, as well as use two-way communication to share content promoting healthy behaviours and inspiring individuals to protect themselves and their communities.

The population we will serve is the Arabic-speaking social media user community worldwide, while focusing on the most vulnerable and health insecure communities, given the huge health inequities in the Arab region. 

Though our solution is in its conceptual phase, it is inspired from work that we have already done since 2018 to counter the spread of misinformation published in Arabic on social media platforms, by fact-checking widely circulated claims and media, reporting and providing a corrected version of false content, and promoting reliable information. Since March 2020, our efforts in this regard have focused on combating misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Our fact-checking initiative has gained immense popularity among Arabic-speaking social media users, and counts nearly 700'000 followers and millions of social media engagements every month.

Now that we have an extensive pool of data on health-related misinformation collected since 2018, we are ready to experiment with a new approach that will benefit and facilitate the fight against health-related misinformation in the Arab world and beyond. Our data has repeating patterns that can be mined and interpreted.

We are confident that our proposed project would succeed for the following reasons:   

• Extensive technical expertise: We are a team of Arab digital media experts, experienced fact-checkers, data engineers, video producers and journalists. Our team includes award-winning journalists as well as senior editors with more than ten years of experience writing for the Internet in local and international institutions. We have continuously sought to keep ourselves abreast of the latest technology related to fighting misinformation, including by conducting relevant fellowships. Digital tools that we regularly use include: CrowdTangle, TweetDeck, Hootsuite, Talkwalker, Salesforce SocialFlow, Social Studio, Socialbakers, Slack, Trello, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics.
• Deep and first-hand knowledge of the Arab-speaking social media culture: All members of our staff have lived and grown up in the Arab region. We are all native Arabic speakers with knowledge of diverse Arabic dialects, including those spoken by communities that are particularly vulnerable to health-related misinformation. We have a strong understanding of the Internet culture among Arab-speaking social media users. 
• High performance: Our values are independence, non-partisanship, fairness, transparency, accountability, and teamwork. As a result, we have gained widespread credibility and a reputation. 
• Partner organizations and community connections: We have an extensive network and we know the right people to partner with to bring the project to fruition, including researchers, fact-checkers, journalists, academic institutions and civil society organizations. We intend to approach other fact-checking organizations, as well as local and international organizations working directly with vulnerable communities to explore opportunities for collaboration. 

The Arab region is particularly vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks among large refugee communities in areas marked by high population density, inadequate sanitation and hygiene services, rampant poverty, hunger, instability, a high rate of underlying health conditions, vaccine hesitancy and unavailability, and fragile health systems. These conditions create a conducive environment for the rapid spread of viruses. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that health-related misinformation is widespread among these communities, and there is a lack of fact-checking efforts focused on them.

Our project aims to ensure that these communities are shielded from health-related misinformation.

Given the miserable conditions in which many refugees are forced to live, by focusing on addressing their information needs, our project will hopefully offer hope for a better, kinder, more dignified future, sending them the message that they will not be left behind. Indeed, these communities represent millions of people who so far have not had the right opportunities to elevate their access to trusted health-related information.

Any further spread of disease in refugee camps would have dire consequences, including humanitarian, political, security, economic, social and psychosocial. The negative implications for Host Countries, and the Arab region as a whole, which is experiencing dramatic instability as a result of ongoing crises, also cannot be ignored.

By enabling us to spread awareness and trusted health-related information through our project, the Andan Prize will be critical in strengthening resilience and health security among refugee communities. We are thus confident that it will have tangible impact.