By Doh Bertrand Nua
Journalists, bloggers and social media influencers have been trained on how to contribute towards a hate free Cameroon by fighting to mitigate the spread of hate speech and fake news. The trainees drawn from the South West, North West, Littoral and Centre regions made up cohort 3 of the African Fact-checking Fellowship –#AFFCameroon.
#AFFCameroon Cohort 3 participants at training
The fellowship is an initiative of #defyhatenow – an urgent community peace-building, training and conflict reconciliation project aimed to strengthen the voices and support the actions of primarily youth-oriented civil society organisations to counter social media-based hate speech, conflict rhetoric and incitement to violence both online and offline.
The three months program to run from November 2020 through January 2021 was launched in Douala with a two-day “discovery session” November 20-21, 2020. It was partnership with Data Cameroon, a branch of ADISI-Cameroon. Experts at the training included Paul-Joel Kamtchang of ADISI-Cameroon/Data Cameroon, Tabe Tarhyang, The Advocate Newspaper Publisher and other former AFFCameroon Fellows now serving as trainers.
#defyhatenow Country Project Manager, Ngala Desmond Ngala, addressing participants
Addressing participants at the training, Defyhatenow Country Project Manager, Ngala Desmond Ngala, told trainees that the fellowship aims to create a mass of fact-checkers and hate speech mitigation professionals that would work towards verification of news and rumours online.
Ngala said aside building critical mass of fact-checkers in the country in particular and Central Africa in general, the training will permit fellows have access to rich and wide network of experts and professionals from around the world.
He challenged participants to implement the knowledge acquired by assisting in monitoring and mapping viral trends on social media related to major thematic issues and help build Cameroon’s nascent but rapidly growing fact-checking ecosystem.
Cross-section of participants pose for group pic in strict respect of anti-COVID-19 bareier measures
Ngala also encourage the Fellows to federate forces and work towards countering misinformation, disinformation, mal-information and hate speech centred around the ongoing four-year long armed conflict rocking Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions.
Participants were equipped with skills and tools to meet current challenges of online and offline circulation of fake news, familiarized with standard, primary and secondary fact-checking techniques through the use of digital tools, data visualisation techniques, introduced to community change activities that can be adopted through blogging and taught fact-checking and data journalism writing techniques among others.
Fellows at the end of the discovery session, lauded organisers for the opportunity given them through the training which they described as enriching.
They promised to actively play their role as fake news fighters and hate speech mitigation professionals towards achieving a hate free Cameroon and checking the incessantly circulation of fake news through their reports and in their community.
About #defyhatenow
Defyhatenow is an initiative of Rog Agency for Open Culture and Critical Transformation which started in 2012 in South Sudan in response to the used of social media in fanning the flames of the conflict.
The initiative realised that the diaspora was playing a bigger role in the conflict and from 2012-2018, it has successfully tamed the diaspora influence on home conflicts through social media.
They were invited to Cameroon in 2019 by the UNESCO multi sectorial office for central Africa in response to the Anglophone crisis where the diaspora is also playing a key role on social media to incite violence back home.
Earlier trainings done by #defyhatenow
DefyHateNow has had series of trainings with journalists in different regions and equipped them with skills to map and professionally report conflicts sensitive stories without fanning the flames.
Its November 2020-January 2021 AFFCameroon Fellowship follows a pilot phase organised February-April 2020 under the name FactsMatter237 which produced top-notch professionals in the fight against fake news and hate speech.
An upgraded version of the AFFCameroon held July 2020 during which bogging, journalism and cyber-influence professionals from the South West, North West, Littoral, centre and West Regions of Cameroon were trained to become online fact-checking and hate speech detection professionals.
Check the last paragraph. It reads bogging instead of blogging. Keep up the good evening job.
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