Digital Rights |SAM Organization issued an in-depth report on the reality of media disinformation in Yemen, including the opinions of 100 respondents who participated in an electronic questionnaire prepared by the research team in this regard, in an attempt to provide an overview of the disinformation scene in the country.
The report - entitled "Media Disinformation Across Yemeni Digital Space... Implications and Possible Solutions" - indicated that political polarization and military conflict cast a shadow over the country's media scene and contributed to the emergence of language consistent with the course of the war, pointing out that rumors have become one of the most important weapons. The war is most employed between the local and regional actors in the Yemeni scene.
The report warned of the danger of relying on social media platforms, as a reliable source of news, and interacting with and sharing what is published through them without checking and verifying it, pointing out that the participation of media workers and journalists (associated with the parties to the conflict) in the chaos of disinformation, doubled its danger and repercussions.
The report stated that nearly 70% of those surveyed depend permanently on social media platforms to provide news, while the percentage of news followers through news sites reached 23%. In the content published on “news websites” that are dominated by political attraction and sharp polarization, in a way that appears as if they are huge machines pumping out misleading propaganda, in addition to being positioned in the category of yellow journalism, which lacks professionalism and objectivity, as the respondents reported that the percentage of their trust in the media Local media do not exceed 37%.
Regarding the public's interaction with what is published on social media, 45% said that they check the news on a regular basis, 34% check it usually, and 10% sometimes, while 11% do not check it / or check it rarely, and the report added that political topics It is the most likely to be misled, according to 84% of the respondents.
The report issued by SAM indicated that the forms of misleading information vary according to the medium and context in which it is disseminated, indicating that the most misleading information encountered by respondents on the digital space comes in the form of unprofessional yellow journalism (81%), followed by fabricated and fabricated information. Basically (79%), in addition to that form of misinformation that is based on selecting certain facts about an issue and neglecting important facts about the same issue at the same time (61%), in addition to that propaganda is one of the most common forms of misinformation encountered by 61% of the respondents. 43% of the respondents believe that the misleading information comes in the form of a "wrong context", in addition to the "negative association between two different topics", according to the opinion of 41% of the respondents.
