When an Ebola outbreak strikes, the first danger is usually invisible, and it is not the virus. It is the rumour. In the time it takes for a single case to be confirmed, a more contagious story can already be moving through markets, mosques, churches, WhatsApp chains, and late-night phone calls. Public health officials may have vaccines, protocols, and laboratories, but they cannot outrun a lie that has already been shared a thousand times. In Nigeria, where the federal government recently confirmed a new case of Ebola disease in Abuja, the memory of 2014 makes the stakes painfully clear. During…

In the final stretch before South Africa’s local government elections on 4 November, the Electoral Commission of South Africa found itself defending something just as important as ballot boxes: public trust. With at least 700 complaints about election-related misinformation already received, the IEC was dealing with a threat that did not exist in the same form a generation ago. This was not a single fake news story that could be easily dismissed. It was a steady stream of falsehoods spreading across social media, designed to make voters question the integrity of the election. The complaints, which continued to grow in…