Lebanon: Rooted In Trust Humanitarian Bulletin #5 - 1 to 30 April 2022 [EN/AR]
Introduction to Rooted in Trust
Rooted in Trust (RiT) is a USAID Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs (BHA)-funded project run by Internews to support humanitarian and public health agencies combat and manage the spread of rumors and misinformation about COVID-19. The first chapter (RiT1) ran from October 2020 to February 2021 with more than 2,774 rumors collected in Lebanon. (1) The project was recently re-launched in September 2021 with its second chapter (RiT2.0) expected to run until end of 2022. In this bulletin, Internews profiles commonly occurring rumors across social media sites and offline through our partners’ activities in Lebanon between 1 and 31 April 2022. During this period, 52 rumors were collected from Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Instagram, in addition to private groups and accounts that have a relatively high user engagement. An additional 224 rumors were collected offline through aimed activities conducted by our partners, with the goal of reaching populations and groups that are less active online and who get their rumors through word of mouth. Two unique rumors were subsequently selected for this bulletin which fall under the recurring themes of “COVID-19 Vaccines” and “'long COVID'”.