(Business in Cameroon) - Today October 8, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications kicked off, in partnership with the Cameroonian branch of Union Internationale de la presse francophone (UPF), a training seminar for journalists on the rational use of social networks in Yaoundé. The two-day seminar focuses on “Journalism and social networks: issues, challenges and constraints of a profession in the era of digital democracy”.

Alongside an inaugural presentation on “Journalism and social networks manipulation: Actors and challenges”, the invited experts will also educate the participants on manipulation and propaganda on social networks; fake news, their origins, typologies and manifestations; fact-checking as an essential means of journalistic survival; Cameroonian law in the face of the Internet's abuses; rational communication on social networks; or experiences from elsewhere, etc.

The opening of this training session coincides with the provisional detention, the day before, of a journalist from a local television channel, accused by the military justice system of spreading false news and undermining state security, we learnt.

In concrete terms, according to his lawyers, Mimi Mefo is being prosecuted for posting on her Facebook account, a few days ago, information relayed by an online television channel, accusing the army of having murdered an American clergy in the North-West region, plagued by violence from Anglophone separatists, for a little over a year.

BRM