By Christine Magoma Oumar, 2024 Hurford Youth Fellow 

In the digital age, the rapid dissemination of information through online platforms has brought both unprecedented opportunities and significant challenges. Some of the most pressing challenges globally are information manipulation and online hate speech, which can fuel real-life conflicts and undermine democratic processes.  

Despite various media literacy initiatives aimed at combating these issues, the sustainability of current efforts and continuous engagement with target audiences remain challenging. Short-term interventions, such as workshops and training sessions, often fail to inspire long-term behavioral change in participants. This highlights the need for a transformative shift toward sustained engagement strategies that foster lasting change and motivate action. During my Hurford Youth Fellowship in 2024, I explored why existing interventions have not achieved long-term success and identified approaches to effectively tackle these challenges. My findings emphasize that university student leaders and local influencers can play a critical role in promoting information integrity and countering the spread of online hate in their communities.  

University Student Leaders as Micro-Influencers 

I conducted research through focus group discussions with 30 university student leaders throughout Kenya, my home country. University student leaders are uniquely positioned to influence their peers and communities, playing a significant role in shaping political discourse and mobilizing other students to take action. Student leaders are often categorized as micro-influencers due to their relatively smaller following, intimate reach, and trust within their communities. These characteristics make them essential allies in combating information manipulation and hate speech.  

According to findings from my focus group discussions, these student leaders are pivotal in spreading information, particularly during politically charged periods. Their influence is most evident during election seasons and protests, where they are often mobilized by political actors to spread information or narratives aligned with specific political or ethnic agendas. Political parties, organizations, and even malicious actors can strategically leverage micro-influencers, such as student leaders, by offering financial incentives, political favor, or other forms of motivation to encourage them to push specific narratives. This was observed in Kenya, where political parties used influencers and micro-influencers to promote certain hashtags and spread false narratives during election periods.  

Because micro-influencers have intimate relationships with their audiences, their messages are often trusted without scrutiny, making them effective conduits for misleading information and online hate. This group of influencers is frequently targeted due to their reach within closed social communities, like WhatsApp groups, where falsehoods spread quickly and are less likely to be challenged.

The impact of micro-influencers promoting this information can be significant, leading to heightened polarization, incitement of violence, and erosion of trust in democratic processes. It can even lead to unrest within the very university campuses and surrounding communities where these micro-influencers live and work. By manipulating micro-influencers, external actors contribute to the disruption of peace and civic stability, particularly in regions that are already politically or ethnically volatile.  

My focus group discussions revealed that student leaders are aware of the consequences of online hate and information manipulation. However, this awareness has not prevented them from being leveraged by political actors to spread harmful content, driven as they are by incentives such as financial rewards or political affiliations. 

Educating Student Leaders 

To counter student leaders spreading harmful content, continuous, informal education and engagement with them is crucial. Integrating media literacy into young people’s everyday university activities, such as debates and orientation sessions, can help foster a culture of critical thinking when it comes to online information. University education programs should also integrate modules on media literacy and digital citizenship. These should emphasize recognizing credible media sources, understanding the impact of online hate speech and information manipulation, and how to share information with others responsibly.  

We need to focus on educating students using innovative and immersive approaches that resonate with young people. These could include curating workshops as debates or gamifying learning experiences. One example of this is asking students to engage in role-playing exercises where they act as fact-checkers, victims of harmful online content, or information manipulators. This education should be personal for students. Hosting events where students share personal stories about their encounters with misleading content and how they dealt with it humanizes the issue and creates a more relatable context for learning about and promoting information integrity. 

We should leverage these student leaders’ capacity to shape public opinion and behavior, and educate them on how to create a healthy information ecosystem. As leading actors in their communities, they can play a critical role in countering harmful information and promoting peace. 

Micro-Influencers can Benefit from Journalistic Standards 

Influencers, particularly micro-influencers such as student leaders, can benefit from adopting journalistic standards such as fact-checking, transparency, and accountability in their online activities. By integrating ethical practices, like verifying sources before sharing information or clearly distinguishing between opinion and fact, they can help mitigate the spread of online hate and promote information integrity. Influencers who adopt these standards can transform from “conduits of harmful content” to “advocates for peace,” thus fostering more informed and engaged communities. The adoption of ethical standards would also elevate the credibility and trustworthiness of influencers. This, in turn, can lead to a healthier information ecosystem where audiences are more likely to critically engage with content, rather than passively accept or spread misleading information. Over time, this could reduce the prevalence of online hate, lower the manipulation of the information space, and promote more peaceful and informed interactions both online and offline. 

If we want to curb the spread of hate and information manipulation, we have to encourage influencers in online spaces to think critically and adopt ethical practices. By supporting student-leaders-as-micro-influencers by meeting them where they are on university campuses and providing critical education, we can create safer digital environments and empower young people to become proactive agents of change.  

*While my research focused on Kenya, my findings can be applied to numerous other countries also facing the problems of online disinformation and hate speech.