About Us



The Misinformation, Disinformation & False News in Africa Research Project is led by Dani Madrid-Morales (The University of Sheffield) 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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Working on a New Book on False News in the Global South

April 3, 2020
The lead researchers of the Misinformation, Disinformation & False News Research Project, Herman Wasserman and Dani Madridd-Morales, are working on an edited volume titled Rumors, false news and disinformation in the Global South. It will be published by Wiley, and it is expected to come out in early 2021....

[News Story] A collection of COVID-19-related misinformation in Africa

April 2, 2020
The BBC’s Reality Check has published a list of health-related misinformation circulating on African social media accounts. Some of the false claims include “that inhaling steam is an effective treatment against coronavirus”, or that people are “retaliating against the Chinese community in Africa” after instances of racism against Africans...

New Research Grant to Study Misinformation on COVID-19 and China in South Africa

March 20, 2020
One of the lead researchers of the Misinformation, Disinformation & False News Research Project, Herman Wasserman (University of Cape Town), has been awarded a Research Grant by South Africa’s National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Funds from this twelve-month project, that will start in April 2020, will...

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....