THE IMPACT OF FAKE NEWS ON THE SOCIETY
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELEVANT LITERATURE
Conceptual Framework
The problem of fake news has become so pronounced that the inventor of the World Wide Web, WWW, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, declared on the 28th anniversary of his invention that the impact of fake news is increasingly concerning, adding that social media sites and search engines must be encouraged to continue efforts to tackle the menace. In an open letter published on March 12, 2017 to mark the www’s 28th birthday, Berners-Lee noted that “It’s too easy for misinformation to spread on the web”. He added that people “choose what to show us based on algorithms which learn from our personal data that they are constantly harvesting. The net result is that these sites show us content they think we’ll click on – meaning that misinformation, or ‘fake news’, which is surprising, shocking, or designed to appeal to our biases can spread like wildfire”.
To an extent, the biggest casualty of this misinformation that spreads on the web is the online newspaper. Fake news is a global phenomenon. In July 2016, the now-defunct website wtoe5news.com, which described itself “a fantasy news website” and that most of its articles are “satire or pure fantasy” reported that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. The story was shared more than a million times on Facebook. There was also the fabricated story from the now-defunct website denverguardian.com captioned: “FBI agent suspected in Hillary email leaks found dead in apparent murder- suicide”.
Referring to fake news, Allcot & Gentzkow (2017, p.6) wrote:
One historical example is the ‘Great Moon Hoax’ of 1835, in which the New York Sun published a series of articles about the discovery of life on the moon. A more recent example is the 2006 ‘Flemish Secession Hoax,’ in which a Belgian public television station reported that the Flemish parliament had declared independence from Belgium, a report that a large number of viewers misunderstood as true. Supermarket tabloids such as the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News have long trafficked in a mix of partially true and outright false stories.
In Nigeria, there have been instances of fake news, some of which had been identified in the background of study. There are however other examples of false stories gaining attention in the Nigerian public space. According to Kolawole (2017), “Heard the latest? The Central Bank of Nigeria has been selling the elusive dollar to some end users at 61 kobo/US$1, while the rest of us are busy buying the stuff at over N500/$1 in the parallel market... Now, I don’t need to do any research to know that what you just read is an excellent piece of fake news.”
On the third anniversary of the establishment of The Cable, founder of the online medium, Simon Kolawole admitted that the biggest mistake made by the online newspaper was a false report in May 2015 that the Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka made hate remarks against the Igbo in the United States. Kolawole said, “We discovered that it was the interpretation of the reporter at the event and not the actual words of Professor Soyinka. The embarrassment was universal for us, and sadly there were those who stopped trusting our stories after the episode.”
(The Cable 2017, April 29)
This indicates that there is a relationship between the publishing of fake news by an online newspaper and readers’ attitude towards that medium afterwards. Meanwhile, it is believed that fake news in Nigeria also comes from government quarters as Kperogi (2017) revealed,
The Buhari government is an absolute propagandocracy, that is, a government conducted by intentionally false and manipulative information... the president also has a clandestine hate and propaganda factory called the Buhari Media Center (BMC), which has nearly 40 paid propagandists whose mandate is to smear, demonize, and troll government critics with thousands of fake, foul social media handles. They also flood the comment sections of news websites with false handles and calculatedly duplicitous information, in addition to producing propagandistic social media memes (often with southern Nigerian-sounding names) that appear to come from everyday Buhari fans. The 40 odd propagandists-in-residence at the BMC are paid N250,000 per month.
With the products of these propagandists and other creators of fake news making it to the open space, one can only imagine the impact this would have on theperception which the reading public has towards popular online newspapers.
An Overview of Fake News Issues in Nigeria
Nigeria is a country in tension characterised by security threats in different parts of the country. These threats are manifested in forms of multiple conflicts, systemic and widespread corruption, debilitating poverty, weak institutions, threats of secession as well as perceived marginalisation, anger, hatred and economic challenges in a time when preference for untrue information is rising – i.e., post-truth era (Harsin, 2018; Pate, 2018 September 7). These issues are offensively, progressively and relentlessly destroying relationships, heightening animosities across communities and threatening democratic survival in the country (Pate, 2018 September 7). Arguably, all of that are facilitated by the revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT) that have democratised and simplified access and dissemination of information across space and time (Ibrahim & Adamu, 2016; Pate & Idris, 2017). Cited in Premium Times Nigeria, Professor Umaru Pate, the Dean, School of Postgraduate Studies, Bayero University, Kano (BUK) explained that like many other countries, Nigeria, too, is battling with the rise in populism politics, youth radicalisation, extremism, terrorism, drug and human trafficking, ethnic nationalism, hate and dangerous speech, fake news and the rewriting of the country‟s history, among others. Indeed, these are critical times for the media and the country. The political climate in the country has changed rapidly in recent years, signaling innovative developments and strange challenges in the country‟s democratic system. By and large, the current political culture in the country is inextricably linked to the growing development of information and communication technologies (ICT) (Audu, 2018 September 9; Pate, 2018 September 7). Cited in Vanguard, Professor Danjuma Gambo, the Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Maiduguri who is also the Director, Public Relations of the university agrees with Professor Pate that fake news can mislead the public and cause tension in an already tense political climate with communal and reprisal attacks here and there in addition to the Boko Haram conflict. He stressed that if the media would cultivate the culture of verifying information and fact checking (if necessary) before going to press, the spread of fake news can be contained (Marama, 2017 August 10). This has severally affected the delivery and form of political communication and the communication of political ideas in our democratic system, as well as shifted and undermined the accountability for those messages. For instance, what was labelled „yellow journalism‟ and „character assassination/slander‟ have metamorphosed into what is today known as „fake news‟ and „fraudulent news‟; these are terms that sound „big‟ and portend devastating effects in the society. These terms are fuelled and spread by the power of modern technology (Wasserman & Madrid-Morales, 2018; Agbese, 2017 December 31). In the words of Egan (2018, December 11, online), “online, lies and truth look the same. This has been a boon for professional liars, (who) use these platforms to market falsehood; as vehicles for personal fame, or, as a way to spread propaganda”. These have raised concerns that Nigerians are constantly and increasingly accessing inaccurate and/or misleading content without verification (gatekeeping) or verifiable attribution (Agbese, 2017; Hankey, Marrison, & Naik, 2018).Fundamentally, the breed of „yellow journalism‟, „fabricated or manipulated stories‟ „fraudulent content‟ and „character assassination‟ and „fake news‟ are largely new technology-dependent (e.g., social media platforms and the internet) rather than traditional technologies such as radio, TV, newspaper or magazine (Okoro, Abara, Umagba, Ajonye, & Isa, 2018; Wasserman & Madrid-Morales, 2018 November 21). Thus, while we grapple with what modern technology has enabled us to do, “we also face a new wave of change, which we have only started to understand the ramifications of” (Hankey et al., 2018, p. 6). For example, the concerns around recent, or newer technologies such as „artificial intelligence‟ and „machine learning‟ show that any regulatory response to stem fake news peddled via new technologies, whether by state actors or technology developers, need to be as “dynamic as the technological mischief it seeks to contain” (Hankey et al., 2018, p. 6). The critical question is: how can politics aid regulations to spur the development and sustainability of our democratic system while preserving its legitimacy to embrace internet-based and social media platforms in the context of promoting the integrity and values of the democratic process in a multicultural Nigeria? This paper focuses on the trend of fake news and the emerging post-truth political era and their potential impacts on the Nigerian polity. Recommendations for mitigating the negative effects of fake news and post-truth political circumstances in the society are offered at the concluding sections.
Understanding Fake News
The term “fake news‟ is “false, often sensational information disseminated under the guise of news reporting” (Collins Dictionary, 2017, online). The term is gaining global attention over the years that it was named the Collins Dictionary Word of the Year in 2017 due to its increased usage by 365% in the Collins Corpus (Towers-Clark, 2018, October 4). According to the Ethical Journalism Network (EJN), fake news is information deliberately fabricated and published with the intention to deceive and mislead others into believing falsehood or doubtful messages (EJN, 2017). The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) defines fake news as “completely false information, photos or videos purposefully created and spread to confuse or disinform; information, photos or videos manipulated to deceive, or old photographs shared as new; satire or parody which means no harm but can fool people” (BBC News, 2019 June 29, online). Globally, the issue of fake news has assumed increased concern because of its impact in the 2016 US Presidential elections campaigns and the Brexit referendum.Furthermore, one of Nigeria‟s independent verification and fact-checking platforms, Dubawa, which is supported by the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) defines fake news or false information as fraudulent, inaccurate or false verbal or visual messages disseminated for public attention through the conventional or social media, hugely to mislead, disinform or misdirect. It is a fluid subject that is differently perceived, interpreted and understood by individuals depending on many factors. Fake news is often embellished, sensationalised and made alarmingly attractive. Sometimes, it can be difficult to detect fraudulent news especially when such stories contain authoritative lies except through critical examination of the words mostly designed to capture and retain the attention of receivers in uncommon ways. Fake news is subtly and sophisticatedly presented to hide its falsity with unverifiable sources or claims. Fake news violates contextual and multicultural realities through mischief and ignorance presented as valid information (Dubawa, 2019, Ting & Song, 2017). Furthermore, Steinmetz (2018 September 6, online) notes that fake news debases the truth and causes “confusion of fantasy and reality” in the minds of the audience. As noted by Siapera (2018), there are three significant factors that characterise the current brand of fake news. First, the ease by which people can create contents; second, the distribution patterns across new and social media, and third, the political economy of the online domain which enables and incentivises the creation of these forms of news. She further noted that anyone with internet access can effectively produce and distribute contents of any kind of quality and that “people can avail of the various functionalities of computer software such as photoshop and create highly believable contents…. Fake news can travel very far on the internet” (Siapera, 2018, p.57). The „profile‟ of fake news was facilitated by the advent of the internet; the rise of populism politics in different parts of the world like the 2016 US presidential election (Davies, 2017; Persily, 2017); the rise of tyrannical leaders, and; the Brexit referendum (McGonagle, 2017). Fake news is a complex phenomenon that can be defined based on three parameters as suggested by Wardle (2017): the type of content created and shared; the intentions of those behind this, and; the forms of dissemination. Wardle (2017) further identified seven different categories of fake news in the following order: satire/parody, misleading content, impostor content, fabricated content, false connection, false context and manipulated content. In another way, one can collapse the seven categories into two broad forms of fake news, namely (i) high-profile fake news (see McGonagle, 2017; Tower-Clark, 2018) and (ii) low-profile fake news (see McGonagle, 2017; Mendel, 2015). High-profile fake news refers to misleading information and other contents that emanate from prominent sources while low-profile fake news is simply the opposite of high-profile fake news, that is, disinformation that emerges from subtle, inconspicuous, or ordinary sources. In addition, four specific sources of fake news have been variously identified: (i) state/government fake news (ii) organisational/institutional fake news (iii) group-based fake news and (iv) individual fake news (BBC News, 2018 November 12; Simon, 2017; Mendel, 2015). Fake news is a real challenge in Nigeria especially given the country‟s fragile social setting, loose democratic culture, poverty, illiteracy, depressing human conditions, inflation, weak economy, intolerance and high tendencies for disunity among the peoples of the country (Ogola, 2017 February 27). As Nigeria rises to curb the negative impact of fake news on its democratic process, Pate (2018 September 7) offers some recommended to help individuals and newsrooms to instantly identify and avoid being victims of fake news: 1) Check sources: individuals are encouraged to fall back on most trusted news brands they could rely on for their news.2) Fact-check from multiple sources 3) Use verification tools 4) Check metadata 5) Think before broadcasting/publishing 6) Media literacy: increase the standard of education and media literacy particularly for young people to be highly critical on what to trust on conventional and social media platforms 7) Use fact checking sites 8) Individuals and newsrooms should institute the culture of fact-checking for stories and claimsA good introduction answers these questions in just a few pages and, by summarising the relevant arguments and the past evidence, gives the reader a firm sense of What was done and why (Beck & Sales, 2001).
Why Fake News Spreads Fast?
Fake news is not new. It is as old as one can remember. However, its intensification is more in recent times because of the wide usage of the internet and cheap access to social media platforms, competitive politics and deepening poverty and ethno-religious fight for supremacy. Many more reasons can be adduced for the fast spread of fake news in the country. Some of the reasons have been outlined by Pate (2018 September 7) as follows:
1) General distrust of elites, leaders and politicians by majority of Nigerians. Nigerian elites and politicians enjoy low credibility rating among the population because of their record of failures, lies and unworthy conduct in several respects. Because of that, many Nigerians tend to believe whatever negative information dished out by opponents.
2) Absence or most often late arrival of official information on issues. This creates vacuum conveniently filled in by rumors and disinformation
3) Availability of cheap data services is facilitating explosive use of social media platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube) to spread of rumors, propaganda and fake information
4) Sensationalised fake news is disseminated for economic reasons, especially on social media, where efforts are often made to attract people to pages and timelines of bloggers and senders for clicks
5) Desperate politicians, ethnic and religious jingoists, foreign interests and mischief makers generate fake news for influence or to persuade the audience
6) Low capacity of the media to be able to gather, process and verify immediate and distant information in real time exacerbates fake news through the internet or social media platforms where majority lack gatekeeping processes
7) Government tight control as well as excessive commercialisation in the broadcast media exclude alternative ideas and the opposition thereby forcing them to response even if mischievously by spreading fake news on the social media that lack gatekeepers.
8) Authoritative lies are very common from government sources at all levels. Such lies are reported as news with little effort to investigate their veracity by the media
Fake News and the Debates Over the Emerging Concept of ‘Post-Truth Political Era’
One key reason that makes fake news spreads fast nowadays, especially during political election times in developing countries such as Nigeria is, arguably, what Professor Pate calls “executive intimidating” while describing the relationships between journalists and politicians during a Mass Communication undergraduate class in 2004 at University of Maiduguri (Personal communication: 2004). Fake news thrives in Nigeria because nowadays objective facts are fast becoming as illusionary as a mirage to many Nigerians, especially citizens of social media. Stories and news appealing to the emotion and personal beliefs appear to be more believable and capable of shaping public opinion, a phenomenon that obviously seems to erode the credibility of gate-kept news and reports and verified content. This situation perfectly matches what is lately referred to as the „post-truth‟ time (Harsin, 2018). Unsurprisingly, though, lying is often attributed to politicians; many of them do not regard telling a lie as bad behaviour, an argument Colin Wight, a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sydney agrees with, saying, “lying is not an aberration in politics”. However, Professor Wight argues that “there is nothing new about politicians and the powerful telling lies, spinning, producing propaganda, [or] dissembling”, a behaviour that is in tandem with Machiavellianism, that “all leaders might, at some point, need to tell lie.” Historically, this can be traced back to Plato‟s coinage of the term “noble lie”, which refers to false information deliberately spread by a crème de la crème of the society, especially political elites to preserve social accord or promote an agenda (The Conversation, 2017 November 17, online). The English Oxford Dictionary (2019) defines post-truth as “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. As Professor Pate noted, looking at the strong affinity between fake news peddling and social media vis-à -vis the skyrocketing levels of social media use among Nigerians (Itedge News, 2018 September 10), in no time could the post-modernist Machiavellianism, noble lie, or untruth permeate the Nigerian polity and cause unimagined topsy turvy, a phenomenon the Nigerian Information and Culture Minister, Lai Mohammed describes as “the greatest threat to democracy and security” (Abdullahi, 2017 March 13, online). Hence, the need for urgent action to tackle the menace.
The Possible Effects of Fake News in Nigeria
The term “fake news” is not new in the country. Simply, the attachment of the negative word “fake” to the word “news” heightens the degree of the perceived effect of the term. News, simply put, is an account of what happened. Because of the value attached to it, news is envisaged to be the truth. However, in the era of post-truth and for a Nigeria that has lived in non-truth for years even “the two fundamentally contradictory terms can occupy the same textual space” (Abdullahi, 2017 March 13, online). Recently, the BBC interviewed a group of Nigerian experts on their opinion about the greatest challenges of the 21st Century. Many of them indicated that failure of credible information sources is one of the serious problems facing Nigerians, indeed, mankind. In a related development, Professor Umaru Pate has criticised the Nigerian media, particularly broadcast media for allotting greater percentages of their news, reports and programmes to political matters, phenomena he was quoted by Itedge News (2018 September 10, online) to have said, “feast on hatred and incitements…. Everything political is news but burning issues poverty and violent conflicts do not seem to worry us. This is bad.” The scholar went further to blame the rising levels of fake news in the country on the “absence of patriotism, ethnic and religious bigotries, political affiliations and foreign interests” The Zonal Director of Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) in charge of the North-Central zone of Nigeria, Dr. Igomu Onoja cited in Itedge News argued that, “it [is] part of media ethics to ensure balance reporting and give all parties equal hearing” and desist from journalism capable of spreading fake news that could undermine the Nigerian democratic process. Dr. Onoja cites an example of fake news broadcast over a media outlet in Jos, Plateau State (north central of Nigeria) saying, “we have radio stations in Jos clapping for people that say that the Plateau governor is mentally deranged” (Itedge News, 2018 September 10, online). As a matter of “post-truth” fact, truth has nowadays shifted to becoming relative; facts now have alternatives, and news is weaponised, a phenomenon Abdullahi (2017 March 13, online) quoted Nigeria‟s Information and Culture, Minister, Lai Mohammed describing it as “the greatest threat to democracy and security as it played a role in the civil war in the country and that Nigeria could not afford to fall victim to the same circumstances that led to the war”.
Empirical Review
Sanusi, Adelabu & Esiri (2015, p.16) in their study entitled: ‘Changing roles in the Nigerian media industry: A study of multimedia journalism’ concluded that “the emergence of internet and its associated applications have redefined the practice of journalism. No longer are the traditional journalists the sole purveyor of information, it now have to work with the audience as they jointly scan the environment for information of interest.” This may be the reason why fake news has crept into the media.
Credibility accorded the online newspaper is therefore threatened as Thiel (1998) wrote that “A recent study conducted by Georgetown graduate student Josephine Ferrigno found that while 80 percent of 60 random newspaper readers surveyed found The New York Times to be credible, slightly less than half found The New York Times Online (which contains the same articles as the newspaper) to be credible.”
According to Allcott & Gentzkow (2017. p.6-7)
The long history of fake news notwithstanding, there are several reasons to think that fake news is of growing importance. First, barriers to entry in the media industry have dropped precipitously, both because it is now easy to set up websites and because it is easy to monetize web content through advertising platforms. Because reputational concerns discourage mass media outlets from knowingly reporting false stories, higher entry barriers limit false reporting. Second, as we discuss below, social media are well-suited for fake news dissemination, and social media use has risen sharply: in 2016, active Facebook users per month reached 1.8 billion and Twitter’s approached 400 million. Third, as shown in figure 2A, Gallup polls reveal a continuing decline of “trust and confidence” in the mass media “when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly.
In the course of scouring through relevant literatures, it was very difficult coming across publications related to the topic of study. This research will therefore present the situation in Nigeria as regards how the reading public now perceive the online newspaper courtesy of fake news incidence which is more pronounced in the social media but is been believed to also have dominance in the online newspaper.
Theoretical Framework
In line with what has been set out to be studied, the Uses and Gratifications Theory and the Selectivity Factor Theories form the fulcrum for this work. Both theories are intertwined as Okunna (1999, p.171) that “the decision to practice selective exposure depends primarily on the uses which members of the mass media audience want to make of media messages and the benefits which they hope to derive from using the media”.
The uses and gratification theory is about that social and psychological origin of needs, which generate expectations of the mass media or other source, which leads to differential patterns of media exposure (or engagement in other activities), resulting in need gratification and other consequences, mostly unintended ones, Katz (1974) in Ojobor (2002, p.20).
Wogu (2008, p.120) stated that the uses and gratification theory “deals with what the audiences use the media to do, and what gratifications/gains/ satisfaction they derive from using the media”. Quoting Kunczik (1988, 1976), he stated that the theory believes that: an individual has some needs related to communication; he/she selects the media that appear to satisfy those needs; he/she selectively consumes the content; an effect may or may not occur.
Granted that this theory recognises that there are various media for the audience to choose from, it is then very likely that the public would opt for those mediums which are less likely to present fake news as one of their gratifications to the users. On this basis, online newspapers when lumped with the social media as purveyors of false information would lose the confidence and readership of enlightened users who expose themselves to the media not to be fed with fake news. This simply means that if the public have the perception that online newspapers carry fake news, they would rather use the broadcast media or hardcopy newspapers as their exposure to the media is not to be gratified with fake news. In that circumstance, online newspapers lose the influence of the press.
The selectivity factor theories, on the other hand, include: selective exposure, selective perception, selective attention and selective retention. People expose themselves to things that conform to their preconceived norms, biases and values. But it does not stop at exposing themselves to information as a person can still decide to pay full, partial or no attention to a medium that he or she has been selectively exposed to. In decoding the message after paying attention, previous experiences and current disposition like needs, moods and memories stand in the way. Hence these factors can affect the perception of what is paid attention to. This perception ultimately determines the readers’ retention of whatever messages gotten from a particular medium as people remember those aspects of an issue which aligns with their beliefs. Wogu (2008, p.120).
Relating the above postulations to this study, those who believe that popular online newspapers publish fake news would rather expose themselves to more credible media. Even when they visit a popular news site, they may just stop at looking at the headlines without clicking to read any of the stories. But if they reluctantly click on the story, the preconceived idea that the medium publishes false information would undermine whatever aim the writer of the story intends it to achieve in the mind of the reader. The foregoing would all team up to make the reader not to remember what he or she read minutes after leaving the story or the website.
Therefore through the selectivity theories, it become clear how readers’ suspicious of the source of fake news can make popular online newspapers irrelevant to the media audience, who of course, wouldn’t count being fed false information as one of the gratifications he or she expects from the media