.Al-Dakali monitors the confrontation of Moroccan sports achievements against the battle of digital misinformation. | Dimalions
Al-Dakali monitors the confrontation of Moroccan sports achievements against the battle of digital misinformation.
9 days ago
Sport
Al-Dakali monitors the confrontation of Moroccan sports achievements against the battle of digital misinformation.
Hesspress Sports·
Mohamed Bentalha Al-Dakali, a professor of political science at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech and director of the National Center for Studies and Research on the Sahara, believes that competition in major sports championships has transcended the green rectangle, extending into the digital space. He explained in an article received by Hespress that the competition does not end with the final whistle; rather, a new phase begins where narratives, comments, and digital content race against each other.
Al-Dakali added that Morocco's participation in the 2026 World Cup was accompanied by a flood of varying interpretations and misleading content that sometimes sought to downplay its value or take certain facts out of context. In this context, he called for building a strong informational environment based on professional media, institutional communication, media education, and digital culture, which enhances society's ability to confront misinformation and preserve the value of sports achievements.
Major sports championships have become events that go beyond competition on the field, with their effects extending into the digital space, where athletic performance intertwines with image-making, shaping public opinion, and influencing collective perception. With the final whistle, a parallel competition begins, racing with news, comments, images, and video clips. The narratives and interpretations multiply as much as the teams competed within the green rectangle. The discussion has shifted from analyzing performance and reading results to reinterpreting the event, reshaping its meaning, and influencing how the audience perceives it.
Morocco's participation in the 2026 World Cup clearly embodies this transformation. From a sporting perspective, it confirmed its international brilliance by reaching the Round of 16 for the second consecutive time, reflecting years of continuous work and investment in training, infrastructure development, sports governance, and improving technical coaching quality. The phase following the participation showed the shift of competition into the digital space, where the sports achievement became a subject of varying interpretations, conflicting readings, and biased content that sometimes sought to downplay its value or reinterpret certain facts out of context or feed narratives not based on objective data.
This reflects a deeper transformation in the public sphere in the digital age, as sports have become one of the soft power tools for countries, and the success of national teams has become part of their international image. Traditional media now works alongside content creators, influencers, digital platforms, and the audience itself, which has become a partner in producing, disseminating, and reinterpreting information. This transformation has expanded the circle of participation but has often allowed the speed of dissemination to take precedence over accuracy and verification standards.
In this context, influencers on digital platforms, alongside popular sports analysts outside traditional media institutions, are gaining an increasingly significant role in shaping sports perception. Many of them have large audiences, giving them substantial power to steer public discourse. This influence can be positive when it helps simplify information, spread sports culture, and provide balanced analyses that enrich public debate; however, it can also turn into a source of misinformation when excitement and the pursuit of interaction overshadow accuracy and objectivity, or when judgments are based on cherry-picked facts taken out of context or on conclusions not supported by sufficient technical data.
Thus, the most widely circulated content is often the most controversial or emotionally charged, not necessarily the most accurate or reliable. This is not only related to user behavior but also to the way algorithms operate on digital platforms, which tend to highlight content capable of attracting attention and prolonging interaction, regardless of its accuracy or informational value. A fragmented image, a short clip, or a comment taken out of context can become material upon which unsupported conclusions are built. Consequently, discussions sometimes leave the realm of sports analysis to enter the domain of interpretation and skepticism, where reframing facts becomes a means of influencing public perception rather than seeking an objective understanding of what occurred.
Building a strong informational environment has become the real challenge in confronting misinformation, as merely responding to every misleading piece of information after its spread remains limited in effectiveness in an environment where information flows at unprecedented speed. This environment relies on enhancing the presence of reliable knowledge in the public sphere and enabling accurate information to compete with narratives not based on evidence.
This requires a comprehensive national strategy, where various institutions and actors share responsibility; professional media is called upon to provide accurate news and analyses that place facts in their correct contexts and link events to their backgrounds, away from sensationalism or oversimplification. Institutional communication also gains increasing importance, as providing documented information quickly and transparently reduces the informational vacuum through which rumors and interpretations seep. Researchers, experts, and independent verification platforms play a complementary role in producing knowledge, analyzing circulating content, and enriching public debate based on evidence and expertise.
Investing in people remains the foundation for building a strong informational environment, as citizens have become partners in producing, disseminating, and influencing the circulation of information, no longer limited to receiving it. Therefore, media and information literacy has become one of the most important internationally adopted approaches to empower individuals to access information, understand how it is produced, analyze it, evaluate its credibility, distinguish between news and opinion, between facts and interpretations, and discover bias and methods of influence and misinformation.
This complements the enhancement of digital literacy, which enables individuals to understand the nature of digital platforms and their operational mechanisms, including how recommendation algorithms work that affect content ranking and dissemination, and their impact on shaping what reaches users. Critical thinking also forms a fundamental pillar in this system, as it develops the ability to analyze arguments, scrutinize evidence, review conclusions, and avoid succumbing to quick impressions or interpretations lacking objective support. Alongside this, the concept of digital citizenship reinforces individual and collective responsibility within the digital space, promoting a culture of verification before publication, respecting truth, and contributing to responsible public discourse that recognizes that every share, comment, or repost can contribute to enhancing knowledge or expanding the circle of misinformation.
These components form an integrated system aimed at elevating the quality of the informational environment, enhancing the integration of roles of professional media, institutional communication, civil society, and citizens in building a public space based on knowledge, trust, and responsibility. The higher the quality of this space, the greater society's ability to resist misinformation and to read sports events in their true contexts, away from interpretations and immediate emotions.
In this context, protecting sports achievements requires enabling society to read accomplishments in their correct context and allowing public opinion to distinguish between sound sports analysis and readings that exaggerate conclusions, reinterpret facts, promote conspiracy theories, or stray from the realities of the situation.
Today, sports have become one of the manifestations of soft power for countries, and maintaining the value of sports achievements is also contingent upon the integrity of the digital environment in which they circulate. When sports success is coupled with societal awareness based on verification and responsibility, it transforms into a national asset that enhances trust, solidifies Morocco's image, and supports its presence and influence at both regional and international levels.
