In Lusaka, Zambia, Joan Chirwa has spent years watching information move through society like water through a sieve—sometimes clear, sometimes muddied, and often carrying things that should never have been poured in. As the founder of the Zambia Free Press Initiative, she has become one of the country’s most thoughtful voices on the quiet crisis of misinformation and disinformation spreading across digital platforms. Her warning is simple, but it carries the weight of someone who has seen the consequences: before you believe something, before you share it, before you let it shape your emotions or your decisions, you need to stop and verify. In a time when a single forwarded message can travel from one phone to thousands in a matter of minutes, Chirwa says that ordinary Zambians are standing at the front lines of a battle for truth. She is not asking people to become professional fact-checkers or media scholars. She is asking them to slow down, to question, to think, and to recognize that the information they consume and pass along has real power. Her appeal is grounded in a deep understanding of how journalism and law operate, but it is also grounded in something more human: the simple desire to protect people from being manipulated, frightened, or misled by content designed to exploit their trust.
Chirwa is both a journalist and a lawyer, and that unusual combination has given her a clear-eyed view of why media literacy matters so much. Journalism teaches you to ask who, what, where, when, why, and how—to check sources, to seek confirmation, and to resist the urge to publish something simply because it feels true. Law teaches you that words have consequences, that evidence matters, and that people can be harmed by careless statements. Together, these disciplines have shaped her belief that the public deserves better than the flood of half-truths and outright falsehoods that now circulate online. “People must exercise a lot of caution when consuming information online,” Chirwa said. “It is important to verify and fact-check information as much as possible before believing it or sharing it with others.” That sentence may sound simple, but behind it lies a recognition that the digital world is not neutral. Algorithms amplify outrage, fake accounts impersonate real people, and fabricated stories are often designed to look more authentic than genuine reporting. For Chirwa, the solution is not to tell people what to think, but to give them the tools to think for themselves. She wants Zambians to feel empowered to ask uncomfortable questions, to compare multiple sources, and to resist the emotional pull of a headline that seems designed to provoke fear or anger. In her view, media literacy is not a luxury for academics or journalists—it is a survival skill for anyone living in a connected society.
Over the past two and a half years, Chirwa and her team at the Zambia Free Press Initiative have been working to put that belief into action. They have built a network of trained community trainers who carry media and information literacy lessons into neighborhoods, schools, churches, markets, and villages across the country. These are not distant experts lecturing from a capital city; they are local people who understand the rhythms of their communities, who speak the same languages, and who know how to talk to their neighbors about the importance of checking facts. The initiative has been supported by Interlink Academy and funded by the German government, but its success depends on something far more personal than institutional backing. It depends on trust. When a community trainer sits down with a group of women at a market, or speaks to young people at a youth center, they are not just teaching abstract concepts. They are helping people navigate a world where misinformation can affect their health, their finances, their relationships, and even their votes. They talk about how to spot suspicious claims, how to trace information back to its original source, how to use reverse image searches, and how to recognize the warning signs of fake accounts and manipulated media. But they also talk about something deeper: the responsibility each person carries when they press the forward button or tap the share icon. The programme is practical, but it is also philosophical, asking participants to consider what kind of digital citizens they want to be.
Chirwa says the progress has been encouraging, and she is careful to acknowledge the small victories as well as the larger trends. “We are encouraged by the progress made so far,” she said. “We are seeing communities increasingly appreciate why media literacy matters and the need to be more critical about the information they consume and share.” That appreciation is not always loud or dramatic. It can be seen in the market vendor who used to forward every alarming message she received, but now pauses to ask whether the claim makes sense. It can be seen in the young man who once believed a viral video showed something it did not, but now knows how to check whether the footage has been taken out of context. It can be seen in the church group that invites a trainer to speak, or the school that asks for materials, or the community radio station that broadcasts a discussion about fact-checking. These are the quiet signs that a culture is beginning to change. Of course, the fight is far from over. Misinformation is constantly evolving, and the people who spread it are often well-funded, well-organized, and skilled at exploiting new technologies. But Chirwa believes that ordinary citizens are not powerless in the face of these forces. She sees them as active agents, capable of protecting themselves and each other, and she is determined to give them the confidence to do so. The fact that communities are starting to ask questions, to doubt suspicious content, and to demand evidence is, in her eyes, a sign that the seed of critical thinking is taking root.
The broader challenge, Chirwa explains, is that misinformation and disinformation thrive in moments of uncertainty and division. When people are anxious about their health, their livelihoods, or the future of their country, they become more vulnerable to stories that offer simple answers or confirm their fears. False information can be used to sow distrust in public institutions, to inflame ethnic tensions, to manipulate voters, or to convince people to abandon proven medical treatments in favor of dangerous remedies. Disinformation, which is false information spread deliberately to deceive, is especially harmful because it is often designed to look like legitimate journalism or to come from trusted sources. Chirwa stresses that everyone has a role to play in curbing the spread of false information by checking the accuracy and credibility of content before sharing it. That responsibility falls on influencers with large audiences, on parents who pass messages along to their children, on teachers who shape the habits of the next generation, and on ordinary friends chatting in a WhatsApp group. It is easy to think of sharing as a harmless act, a simple click, a way of staying connected with others. But every share is also an endorsement, a signal that the content is worth paying attention to. When people share misinformation, they are not just spreading a false claim; they are lending it their credibility and inviting others to trust it. Chirwa wants Zambians to understand that the moment before sharing is a moment of choice, and that choosing to verify is an act of respect for the people on the receiving end.
In the end, Chirwa’s message is not one of despair or cynicism. It is a message of hope, responsibility, and shared humanity. She believes that people are capable of learning, that communities can grow stronger through honest conversation, and that the truth is worth fighting for in a world full of noise. The Zambia Free Press Initiative is not trying to save the world overnight; it is trying to build a more thoughtful, more questioning, more resilient public one conversation at a time. That work is slow, but it is also deeply meaningful. It is about helping people see that they do not have to be passive consumers of information, that they have the right to ask for evidence, and that they have the power to choose what to believe and what to pass along. Chirwa’s appeal is a call to pause, to breathe, and to think before acting on the latest viral post. It is a reminder that behind every piece of information there is a source, a motive, and a consequence. And it is an invitation to imagine a Zambia where truth is not the first casualty of the digital age, but something that ordinary people protect every day. Her words, spoken from Lusaka, carry a universal meaning: in the age of misinformation, the most human thing we can do is care enough to check.