News media is a load-bearing wall in a healthy democracy. It informs the public discourse, shapes citizens’ active participation in day-to-day governance, and holds elected officials to account. The rise of social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter in the past decade shows what happens when this new media ecosystem replaces traditional news as a primary source of information — and misinformation. What does this mean for the stability of African democracies, and the continent’s ability to tackle the climate crisis? Leonie Joubert has the story.  Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election turned the political establishment upside down. Shortly after this, the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke: it came to light that the political consultancy firm had manipulated voters by using private data harvested on the social media platform Facebook to create divisive and targeted misinformation campaigns. It was also exposed for having done the same with the UK’s Brexit vote. But well before that, Cambridge Analytica was piloting its political interference in Kenya, in the 2013 and 2017 electoral processes. Kenyan … Continue reading Social media: an existential threat to Africa in a climate-altered future?