Imagine trying to find a trustworthy piece of news in a world where every scroll, share, and search can be met with a flood of fabricated stories, manipulated images, and state-backed propaganda. That is the reality for millions of people today, especially in regions where the lines between information and disinformation have become dangerously blurred. It is precisely this landscape that the BBC World Service is trying to navigate with its new research initiative, Global Signals. This is not just another media study; it is a deep, data-driven attempt to understand how false narratives spread, how the BBC can respond…

On a warm Friday morning in late October, in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, a quiet but consequential conversation was taking place. The setting was the Timbuktu Institute, a respected African research center that had just entered its tenth year of existence. To mark the occasion, the Institute had joined hands with the Embassy of Poland to host a seminar on a theme that, in recent years, has become impossible to ignore: the spread of disinformation. For those in the room, the message was stark and urgent. Disinformation is no longer a marginal problem or a matter of harmless rumors…