Spot fake news before sharing 2026 election claims

With South Africans getting ready to head to the polls next month, disinformation spreads fast.

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) states that before you believe or share an election-related claim, you need to pause and check the facts.

The IEC advises voters to go to the official source and verify information before sharing, noting that fact-checking in cases of doubt prevents the spread of misinformation.

Understanding election disinformation

Disinformation is information that’s false or misleading, shared by someone who knows it isn’t true – or has no reasonable basis for believing it is – with the intention of misleading voters or disrupting the election. It’s different from misinformation, which is false information shared without that intent, often just because someone didn’t check before hitting send.

Either way, the damage is the same: Bad information travels fast, and it can affect how – or whether – people vote.

Common forms of false information

• False claims about voting dates, times, venues, or who’s allowed to vote
• Fake statements or announcements wrongly attributed to the IEC or its staff
• Scams that pose as the IEC – fake job adverts are a common one
• Manipulated or artificial intelligence-generated (‘synthetic’) images, audio or video used to mislead
• Fake accounts or bot networks designed to make a view look more popular than it is
• Someone’s private information shared online without consent to cause harm, known as doxxing
• Political ads or AI-generated content that isn’t labelled as such

Spotting misleading content

Before you share anything election-related, run through this:

• Where did it come from? Check the source. Is it a credible media outlet or the account it claims to be? Look for verified pages and official channels – the IEC’s own updates are posted on elections.org.za and the IEC’s verified social accounts.
• How does it make you feel? Content designed to mislead is often built to make you angry, scared or anxious, because that’s what makes people share without thinking. If something gives you that reaction, that’s your cue to slow down.
• Can you find it anywhere else? A real story about voting dates, venues or IEC decisions will be reported by more than one credible source. If you can’t find it anywhere except the one post you saw, be cautious.
• Does the image or video look right? Watch for mismatched lighting, unnatural movement, odd hands or blurred edges – common signs of AI-generated or manipulated media.
• Is it labelled? Political advertising and AI-generated content must be clearly marked as such under the Disinformation Code. If it isn’t, and it should be, that’s worth reporting.

Self-checking tools and techniques

• Go straight to the source. For anything about voting – dates, venues, registration, results – check this website, the IEC WhatsApp Channel, or any of its other social media pages with the handle @IECSouthAfrica.
• Search for the claim in a few words and see whether reputable news outlets are covering it too.
• Reverse-image-search suspicious photos to see where they first appeared and whether they’ve been used out of context.
• Check the account posting it – new accounts, no history, or a name that’s almost-but-not-quite an official one are red flags.
• Still unsure? Report it to Real411 and let people trained to check it, check it.
• What is a reverse image search? It means searching the internet using an image instead of words, to find out where else it’s appeared online, when it was first published, and in what context. This helps you spot photos that have been recycled, cropped, or relabelled to mislead people – for example, an old photo from a different country or event being passed off as current.

How to perform reverse searches

• Google Images – Go to images.google.com, click the camera icon, and upload the photo or paste its URL. Google shows you other places the image appears online.
• TinEye – tineye.com – Built specifically for this. Upload the image, and it shows the earliest known appearance and all matches, sorted by date.
• On a cellphone: long-press the image (or screenshot it) and use the ‘Search image’ option in Google or Chrome.

If the earliest match is from years ago or a different location than claimed, that’s a strong sign the photo is being used out of context.

Official reporting channels

Residents can report disinformation here.

Visit the IEC website for more information.