CARD Held a Press Conference on the Impact of Hate speech and Disinformation on the upcoming Ethiopian Election

CARD, in a press conference held on the 30th of January 2020 at the Caleb hotel, on the prevalence of hate speech, expressed the need to protect the election from disinformation. 

“CARD has been conducting social media monitoring for the past six months and learned that Ethiopia is experiencing a rise in false information dissemination and hate speech online,” said Befekadu Hailu, Executive Director of CARD. Befekadu added that “the disinformation campaign is more organized than they thought before starting the social media monitoring activity.”  

Accordingly, in the press conference read by the Program Director of CARD, Atnafu Berhane, CARD stressed that the disinformation and hate speech contents might force people to make misinformed voting as well as cause conflicts in the Ethiopian election 2020. Therefore, CARD made a call for all stakeholders to play significant roles as much as they can. 

The three recommendations given at the press conference as a solution are: 

1. Transparency of government as much as possible and accountability whenever officials fail to give access to information;

2. Fact-checking by journalists and media outlets;

3. Media literacy by civil society organizations.

Read the Amharic press statement here. 

Watch Fana TV’s coverage of the press conference below: https://www.facebook.com/569096943126979/posts/2766098926760092/?app=fbl