About Us



The Misinformation, Disinformation & False News in Africa Research Project is led by Dani Madrid-Morales (University of Houston) and Herman Wasserman (University of Cape Town). It compares the spread and reception of "fake news" across the continent, and investigates how it affects journalism.
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Our Projects



We have a series of cross-national comparative projects that use different research methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups, experiments). In addition to academic publications, we also share our findings with the wider public through interviews with the media, and by publishing accessible pieces online.
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Useful Resources



With research on "fake news", disinformation and misinformmation on the rise, there's a lot of excellent resources, studies and databases being made available regularly by scholars, NGOs and media houses worldwide. We keep a list of some these resources, particularly those related to African countries.
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Research Presented at Comparative Misinformation Workshop, Harvard University

October 10, 2019
This week we presented preliminary findings of our comparative study on motivations for sharing misinformation and disinformation in several Sub-Saharan African countries at the Comparative Approaches to Disinformation Workshop, held at Harvard University. This ongoing project uses focus groups to compare sharing practices across five (soon to be six)...

New Publication in African Journalism Studies

September 3, 2019
Africa’s leading academic journal in Media and Communication, African Journalism Studies, has published the paper “An Exploratory Study of “Fake News” and Media Trust in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa” by Herman Wasserman and Dani Madrid-Morales, lead researchers of the Misinformation, Disinformation & False News in Africa Research Project....