How civil society coalition-building affects information integrity during elections: evidence from four African countries

This article examines how civil society actors promote information integrity during elections through coalition-building, drawing on evidence from four African countries (the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa) that held elections between 2022 and 2024. In these countries, disinformation, extreme speech, and other forms of information manipulation often target electoral processes, threatening to undermine public trust, and amplifying societal divisions. Based on an analysis of 36 semi-structured interviews with members of civil society organisations, fact-checkers, regulators, and media professionals, we describe how these actors creatively built coalitions to enhance information integrity, platform accountability, and democratic processes, and discuss how they responded to the presence/absence of policy and regulatory frameworks. Despite resource constraints, their efforts highlight the potential of broad-based coalitions to safeguard information integrity during elections, for example by linking fact-checkers with community media and grassroots organisations, while emphasising the importance of sustained interventions beyond election cycles. We also show how civil society coalitions engage platforms, regulators, and media actors to safeguard information integrity, offering lessons for global debates on information governance beyond platform-centric approaches.