Social media data show ‘tensions ran high’ in May election

South African researchers witnessed “significant surge” in neutral and negative sentiments, misinformation webinar hears

Researchers monitoring misinformation and fake news during South Africa’s May elections say social media data show how “tensions ran high” in the run-up and aftermath of the polls, a webinar heard this week.

Avi Moodley, a researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which co-hosted the 20 August webinar, explained how he and his team had employed advanced analytics to process and visualise millions of election-related tweets.