Browse the pages of social media in Arabic and you will walk away thinking that COVID-19 is an American hoax, it is not fatal and can be temporarily cured with a garlic clove.
Arab pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are full of news about the new coronavirus, from benign inaccuracies to full-throat conspiracy theories.
As government paintings to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, activists across the Middle East are mobilizing to fight Arab “infodemia” that is as harmful as the infection itself.
“We are solving the news and saving lives,” baher Jassem, an Iraqi activist from the Tech four Peace collective, who has gone from his four-year crusade against fake political and economic news to COVID-19, said.
Every few hours, the collective’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages post screenshots of made-up stories about the virus, accusations of new cures for the death of celebrities from illness, or a tranquilizing wave of healing.
The images are marked with a red stamp indicating “false publication” with a correction and links to more accurate information. Your accounts are successful in more than one million subscribers.
“We don’t just need to spread lies. We need to spread the word about the coronavirus, the right way to protect itself, the remedies that are circulating,” Jassem told the AFP.
The correction crusade may not have arrived before: the region turns out to be experiencing a highly feared COVID-19 spike.
The increase in the case rate in Iraq soared to more than 2,000 as of the end of June, reaching nearly 3,000 per day this month.
Lebanon, Oman and Algeria experienced spikes in new cases in mid-July, while Saudi Arabia and Jordan experienced peaks last June, but appear to be stabilizing.
Iraqi doctors blame online misinformation: their patients have insisted that coronavirus is a U.S. conspiracy, or that others die from a sarin fuel attack, or that Iraq’s meteoric heat would prevent the spread of the virus.
Doctors say this false data can make other people less likely to wear a mask in public, respect social estrangement, or wash their hands regularly.
– ‘This is personal’ –
Disinformation about COVID-19 has spread in other languages since the start of the pandemic, but proliferation in Arabic is detrimental due to lack of quality reports, activists told AFP.
Reporters Without Borders pointed to the tightening of the authorities on media in the Middle East in 2020, i.e. on COVID-19 data.
As a result, activists said, news consumers distrust the data they find in the classical media and are more likely to lean toward conspiracy theories.
“Media education does not exist. Iraqis can spend on Facebook and Twitter, but they are not provided to see 50 other resources and differentiate what is done and what is fiction,” said Faisal al-Mutar, an Iraqi activist founded in the United States. and founder of Ideas. Beyond borders.
IBB has partnered with Wikipedia to translate more than 250 pages detailing the origins of COVID-19 and spreading them in Arabic.
This is not an easy task given the diversity of Arabic dialects, said volunteer translator Issam Fawwaz in Tripoli, northern Lebanon.
“Scientific terms are standardized. A term used in Syria, Lebanon or Jordan is completely different from Egypt or Morocco,” while some English terms have no Arabic equivalent, Fawwaz, 33, told the AFP.
But the conviction of the influence of his paintings made him continue.
“It’s not public to me. I’m one of the other people who believed in fake news, but I was lucky enough to have other people who led me to use my brain,” he said.
“A user persuaded through fake news can cause a calamity in their community.”
– Combat fireplace with fireplace –
Fatabayyano, a Jordan-based platform founded in 2014 and whose call as “Verify”, fights chimney with fireplace.
“Fake news is spreading faster than genuine news, and the amount of incorrect information on WhatsApp is certainly huge,” said Motaz al-Thaher, Fatabayyano’s media director.
WhatsApp has a 75% penetration rate among Internet users in the Middle East, according to 2019 through Northwestern University in Qatar.
People use it to stay in touch with friends and family, but also for percentage links, images, and unverified news audio messages.
There are few regulations to combat incorrect information on WhatsApp, Thaher said, because the messages are encrypted and the platform reports suspicious messages like Facebook and Twitter.
Fatabayyano has created its own channel, sending factual reports on coronavirus to thousands of WhatsApp users.
The messages come with links to long articles in Arabic about science on the Fatabayyano website, virus-related graphics on its Instagram page and difficult one-minute videos for its nearly 800,000 followers on Facebook.
“Rumors are viruses too!” read the new legend of the crusade logo.