An Exploratory Study of “Fake News” and Media Trust in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa

Fake news and COVID-19: modelling the predictors of fake news sharing among social media users

“…Therefore, we reason that as Nigerians are utilising social networks to maintain social connections, sharing tips, cures, and preventive measures for COVID-19, this leads to the circulation of unconfirmed and fake news content. It has been proven that information that comes from friends and family are more trusted by social media users ( Wasserman & Madrid-Morales, 2019 ).…”

“…The authors reason that their outcome could be because using social media for socialising is viewed as a way to converse. As such, recent research found that individuals tend to believe the information disseminated by friends and family members more than strangers ( Wasserman & Madrid-Morales, 2019 ). Chang et al (2017) found that persons with higher socialising nature tend to share more on social media.…”

“…This suggests that even some government officials and individuals engage in the proliferation of misinformation to a large audience to suit their agenda ( Rampersad et al, 2019 ). Thus, fake news has touched virtually every aspect of our life ( Wasserman & Madrid-Morales, 2019 ), and the most worrisome in recent months is the circulation of false content in this period of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak ( Hou et al, 2020 ). In December 2019, a novel virus called COVID-19 was reported in China, and in recent months the virus has spread to other parts of the world, killing many people.…”

“…Therefore, researchers have been encouraged to investigate another context ( Duffy et al, 2019 ). To respond to this call, we selected Nigeria, a developing country which is less well studied ( Apuke and Omar, 2020 , Wasserman and Madrid-Morales, 2019 ) to provide another view of understanding the global problem of fake news proliferation. Another reason for selecting Nigeria stems from the fact that fake news in Nigeria is discouraging medical advice, offering false medications, stirring panic and being used for political point-scoring ( Olapegba et al, 2020 ).…”

Modelling the antecedent factors that affect online fake news sharing on COVID-19: the moderating role of fake news knowledge

“…We believe that the increase of fake news knowledge and awareness among the populace would help in curbing the spread of false information related to the pandemic. We focused on Nigeria which is less well-studied [ 7 , 8 ], to provide an alternative view of understanding this global problem of fake news. Moreover, scholars have recommended to look beyond researching fake news from the US and UK contexts [ 9 ].…”