Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) has unveiled an AI tool that can identify and track violence-inciting elements online and on social media.
It aims to check and temper the spread of such danger quickly and in line with human rights such as free speech. If a threat of violence is reported, it can be removed within hours rather than waiting weeks or months for the judicial system to act, says MMA director William Bird.
In its introduction, the MMA model says online incitement can lead to real-world violence, to which “our tool offers essential insights to prevent such instances”. Incitement is evaluated on a red-amber-green scale, with red a high risk.
The tool comes three years after the July 2021 insurrection in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng when 350 people died, almost 2-million lost their jobs and the economy suffered an estimated blow of R50bn.
The South African Human Rights Commission said the riots, or insurrection as it was also dubbed, were caused “through the creation and dissemination of inflammatory content”. It said grievances on social media “stoked fear and anger, and mobilised individuals towards disruptive actions”.
At the time images were spread of looters burning buildings, raiding factories and shops, and assaulting people — frequently these images were from other countries and even from other historical periods. It created what Bird calls a “mix of mis- and disinformation, and incitement to violence, which often goes hand in hand with hate speech”.
The MMA regards disinformation as “false, inaccurate or misleading information designed, presented and promoted online to intentionally cause public harm. Harm in this regard includes, but is not limited to, generating hate speech, creating hostility or fear to incite violence.”
Investigator Jean le Roux says the tools and methods used for good interactions on social media can also cause harm. Le Roux analyses disinformation campaigns, geopolitical trends and risks within information environments for Graphika, a US company that tracks online disinformation.
He says influencers use social media to promote a political or economic agenda, or an ideological bent that inflames tensions by pandering to fears and prejudices. In South Africa, simmering anger and dissatisfaction because of factors such as the high crime rate, unemployment and lack of service delivery add fuel to the fire.
To promote a particular narrative, he says, propagandists tend to dumb down complex issues with easy answers. “If a hashtag or video is spreading, they will build on it. It becomes self-perpetuating.”
Media law and digital rights specialist Avani Singh, who advised the MMA, says the ease with which incitement spreads makes it important to find ways to detect and combat it.
Inciting public violence is a criminal offence in South Africa but proving a causal link between online incitement and the act itself is difficult. It took two years for 65 people implicated in the 2021 riots to appear in court. “It is an inchoate or incomplete crime, whether people act on that particular statement or conduct isn’t the legal analysis of it. But is there a reasonable likelihood that a person would respond to it in a violent manner?” says Singh.
Journalists, human rights activists, policy experts, community leaders and techies attended the discussion forum at which the tool was launched in Joburg.
MMA drew on the expertise of lawyers, linguists, scientists and engineers in the process of developing the instrument for identifying incitement to violence, with support from the New Zealand high commission. In the research process, international protocols, such as the Camden Principles on Freedom of Expression & Equality, were taken into consideration.
The principles, developed in 2008 and 2009 during meetings in London, assert the affirmative relationship between freedom of expression and equality, identifying the complementary and essential contribution these make to the securing and safeguarding of human dignity, and the indivisibility and universality of human rights. The principles identify critical elements and set out prohibited outcomes for nations.
South Africa’s Riotous Assemblies Act, which was used to stifle opposition to the apartheid government and remains law, needs to be interpreted in terms of constitutional protection of freedom of speech, says Singh. The law was used successfully to prosecute Mdumiseni Khetha Zuma, one of the instigators of the riots who was sentenced to 12 years in prison in November 2023.
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