‘Abba Kyari did not die of coronavirus’: Social media and fake news during a global pandemic in Nigeria

Abstract

This study examined the influence of fake news online on how social media users viewed and reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. Analyses of an online survey ( N = 254) and contents from Twitter users in Nigeria from the hashtags: ‘#coronavirusNigeria’ and ‘#covid19Nigeria’ ( N = 10,408), reveal that social media users in Nigeria used Twitter to inform and educate Twitter users as well as debunking fake news stories about the virus to prevent purveyors of fake news from misleading Twitter users in Nigeria. Findings further indicate that those who use social media platforms and national television as main sources of news and are less educated, are statistically more likely to believe fake news about the virus than those who are educated and used newspapers as main sources of news. Consequently, the study recommends that Nigerian political leaders enact policies that they can observe as their inability to adhere to their own lockdowns powered fake news about COVID-19 in Nigeria.

Fake News as Disruptive Media: A Digital Age Challenge in Nigeria

“…Hence, such deliberate disinformation of the populace via social media needs to be checked. Evidentially, many Nigerians and indeed Africans have tested positive for COVID-19 (Uwalaka, 2022), with many in self-isolation or practising social distancing to avoid spreading the highly contagious disease. It is not a gimmick by those in government to siphon money as 'usual.'…”

“…This study will adopt this definition of fake news as it encapsulates fake news in Nigeria. The inclusion of unintentional sharing of fake news is crucial as many reshare false social media content to help while it ultimately misinforms the recipients (Apuke & Omar, 2021;Wang, McKee, Torbica, & Stuckler, 2019, Uwalaka, 2022. While this study acknowledges that the term, 'fake news' is contested, the study prefers to use 'fake news' as an umbrella word to cover both dis/misinformation.…”

“…Other studies define fake news in line with misinformation. For instance, Apuke and Omar (2021) and Uwalaka, (2022) considered fake news as untrue information, including myths, rumours, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, as well as deceptive or erroneous content intentionally or unintentionally disseminated on social media platforms. This study will adopt this definition of fake news as it encapsulates fake news in Nigeria.…”

“…Previous studies have looked at the proliferation of fake news in general (Apuke & Omar, 2020Mutsvairo & Bebawi, 2019;Tandoc et al, 2020;Wasserman & Madrid-Morales, 2019), Fake news during the 2016 US presidential election (Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017;Carlson, 2020), and fake news during COVID-19 (Lampos et al, 2020;Uwalaka, Nwala, & Chinedu, 2021, Uwalaka, 2021, 2022. Many of these studies utilised student samples (Lee and Ma, 2012) and have not adequately examined fake news concept broadly in the Nigerian context particularly, how widespread fake news is in all spheres of life in Nigeria.…”

Blowing on the Fire: An Analysis of Low Quality and Hyper Partisan News Sources Circulated by Coordinated Link Sharing Networks in Nigeria

“…Although Nielsen et al (2020) argue that the concept of infodemics still needs to be explored scientifically, many studies (Valeriani et al 2021;Pennycook et al 2020) in recent years agree that in such situations there is a tendency to spread misinformation in order to undermine public responses to the pandemic and increase polarization. Uwalaka (2022) showed that this was also the case in Nigeria, where the dissemination of problematic information had the consequence of diminishing public trust and adherence to the government's proposed mitigation policies. Coordinated behavior also plays a role as pointed out by a study conducted in Italy that pinpointed a cluster of pages and groups on social media entirely dedicated to skepticism about COVID (Giglietto et al 2022).…”