Fake news may lead to genocide in South Sudan
The rise of fake news and online hate speech may lead South Sudan towards genocide amid a three-year civil war, warns the United Nations. Falsehoods that are spread via social media are causing massacres in the nation and although most of South Sudan has no internet access, social media incitement has had a major impact mainly because it comes from the South Sudanese diaspora, who are held in extremely high esteem. “[It] has the potential to create a Rwanda situation massively accelerated through the use of social media," warns Stephen Kovats of #DefyHateNow.
JUBA, South Sudan — While Americans grapple with the impact of fake news on the election of Donald Trump, in South Sudan, fake news and online hate speech have helped push the country toward genocide amid a three-year civil war, according to independent researchers and the United Nations.

South Sudan's war has divided the country along ethnic lines, pitting followers of President Salva Kiir, who are mostly from the Dinka ethnic group, against fighters under command of former Vice President Riek Machar, who are mostly from the Nuer tribe. In the last year, militia from various other tribes in the country's southern Equatoria region have also taken up arms against Kiir's government.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed, often in bloody ethnic massacres, while more than a million refugees have fled the country and pockets of the country are teetering on the edge of famine.

Although the vast majority of South Sudan’s population has no internet access — the adult literacy rate in the country is around 30% — social media incitement has had an outsized impact largely because it mainly comes from the South Sudanese diaspora, who are held in extremely high esteem back home.

In November, the UN warned that ethnic cleansing is underway and that the fighting could spill into genocide. Government and rebel leaders stand accused of orchestrating Facebook and Twitter campaigns inciting the violence.

"Social media has been used by partisans on all sides, including some senior government officials, to exaggerate incidents, spread falsehoods and veiled threats or post outright messages of incitement," a separate report by a UN panel of experts released in November reads.

It's a situation that has drawn comparisons to Rwanda's 1994 genocide, particularly that crisis’s use of Radio Mille Collines, a local radio station, to fan the flames. And South Sudan’s divide is only getting worse.

"[It] has the potential to create a Rwanda situation massively accelerated through the use of social media," Stephen Kovats, a Berlin-based researcher who helps run #DefyHateNow, an organization tracking and combating online hate speech in South Sudan, said. "Linkages between social media, and word of mouth, and ending up with a gun in the hand or a machete, those are fairly clear."