Nigerian government has adopted a multi-pronged approach to the threat of misinformation and disinformation in recent times: Launching public campaigns against fake information, tightening its noose against mainstream media by ways of sanction and heavy fine, and also threatening stiffer social media regulation. In its public campaign approach, it has partnered with the National Orientation Agency (NOA). This study seeks to assess the level of efforts put up by the agency on its social media platform to educate its online public; evaluate how far the agency’s message on misinformation resonates with its online community; assess the level of engagement and partnership with other stakeholders in fighting information disorder in Nigeria.
Adopting content analysis and interview as research methods, study shows that while the agency created a considerable number of valuable contents on its platform, little evidence shows sufficient readiness to up-take campaigns on information disorder on social media. Two, there is evidence of cooperation and deliberate partnership with other public and civil society stakeholders in the campaign against misinformation online as the agency retweeted valuable contents from its online partners, yet it relies more on them for its content creation on anti-fake campaigns. Lastly, the agency’s online public found the contents authored by it less valuable and less resonating than contents shared from its partners. As a result, its online public engaged more with posts retweeted from other partners.
The study concludes that while the federal government is bent on regulating social media and sanctioning abuse of the media, it abrogates its duty by depending more on civil society and foreign agencies to educate and enlighten citizens on the danger of misinformation on democracy and national unity.
By recommendation, more study is imperative to investigate what motivates online communities of users to engage with messages created and shared on anti- fake campaigns.
Introduction:
In July 2018 and April 2020, the Nigerian government launched a “public campaign against fake news” (Premium Times, 2018) and also launched “campaigns to media houses and cooperation with Facebook and Google” (AllAfrica, 2020). The overall objective was to create media literacy among Nigerians, particularly young people who are highly active online and social media. According to the minister of information, Mr. Lai Mohammed, the campaign against fake news “was linked to the possible effects of rumours towards the escalation of related crisis across the country” and that the campaign would include active collaboration with digital as well as traditional media and the National Orientation Agency to educate Nigerians on the effect of fake news on Nigeria’s democracy and its corporate existence as a nation.
The foregoing was sequel to concerns being raised over the capacity of social media and technology companies to control the kind of contents being trafficked on their platforms (Ray Walsh, 2o20). This is in the face of several partnerships at the instance of technology companies, particularly Facebook and Twitter, with fact-checking organisations to help verify viral claims making the round in the public space and flag down anyone suspected to be deliberate purveyors of misleading information.
Stakeholders have concluded that disinformation and misinformation are very dangerous to the society and democracy, even though UNESCO has said “disinformation is particularly dangerous because it is frequently organised, well resourced, and reinforced by automated technology” (UNESCO 2018). Recent study shows government officials, politicians, and electoral candidates are more culpable in spreading false information (Raheemat, 2020, Raji, 2020).
It is quite commendable that some countries of the World are coming up with policies and legislation to tackle the spread of false information in the public space and, in some cases, exploring these measures to gag free speech (Funke Daniel, 2018). Nigerian government, while it is also threatening policies and legislation to regulate the social media, has adopted media public education, partnering with the National Orientation Agency (NOA).
Leveraging on the latter measure, this study seeks to understand how the agency has engaged its online community to achieve the desired goal as highlighted by the government. The study thereby tracked the content created on the agency’s twitter handle within a period of seven months (May-November, 2020) to assess the efforts of the Federal agency in up-taking the campaign to educate Nigerians on the effect of fake news and create media literacy campaigns for social media and online users.
The objectives of this study are:
To assess the level of efforts by the agency on its social media platform to educate its online users;
To evaluate how far the agency’s message on misinformation resonate with its online community;
To assess the level of engagement and partnership with other stakeholders fighting information disorder in Nigeria.
This study is justified for a number of reasons. First, it leverages the proposed involvement of the National Orientation Agency by the Ministry of Information and Culture to support its anti-misinformation campaign in Nigeria.
Second, the study chooses to interrogate the extent of the partnership between Nigeria’s ministry of education and technology giants in relation to mitigating the spread of disinformation and misinformation. Third, the period covered in this study (May -November, 2020) is chosen to assess how the agency has taken the campaign to its online public after a couple of months following the minister’s statement in April 2020.
Third, the twitter handle of the agency is chosen in evaluating the National Orientation agency because its Director General stated in an interview with this researcher that it is one of the engagement platforms which it uses to reach Nigerians online.
Information gathered from the agency’s website shows that:
The agency boasts of over 5000 staff spanning across 36 states of the federation including the FCT and the 774 local Government Offices.
It claims to have over 15 engagement platforms tailored to reach the highest number of Nigerians using its major segmentation approaches.
It claims it has reached over 64% of Nigerian citizens.
It also claims no other organ of government has this kind of spread and capacity for public enlightenment and sensitization campaigns. (https://www.noa.gov.ng)
Lessons from Other Lands
Issues around false information have become a hard nut to crack to many stakeholders, particularly when evidence abounds that online and social media platforms have become willing tools in the hands of perpetrators of false information. Very recently, a peaceful campaign, tagged #EndSARS, against police brutality and recklessness by a section of the Nigerian youths was hijacked by hoodlums and anti-#EndSARS protesters through themercenary of false information. This, perhaps prompted the Nigerian government calling for a renewed process towards regulating the social media. TheNigerian government, through the Minister of Information, “lamented that celebrities used the social media to circulate fake news during the #EndSARS crisis” (The Punch, 2020) and has also threatened to take action against the issue. “What we have always advocated, and what we will do, is to regulate the social media. Nigeria is not alone in this regard.” (The Nation, 2020).
Truly, Nigerian is not alone in this regard. Library of Congress Law (2019) has reported some steps being taken by the UK government to tackle false information through a combination of legislation and policies. For instance, The Fusion Doctrine provides that the intelligence services are responsible for identifying social media platforms that distribute misinformation and disinformation. The Rapid Response Unit was established within the Cabinet office to help ensure debates are fact-based. The National Security Commissions Team’s purpose is to tackle communications elements of threats to national security, including (but not limited to) disinformation (Clare Feikert-Ahalt, 2019).
In April, 2018, the government of Australia launched a campaign, tagged “Stop and Consider” to encourage “voters to pay attention to the sources of their information in light of the federal elections held in May”.(Funke Daniel, et al, 2018).
Even the French Constitutional Council had worked on a law drafted by President Emmanuel Macron’s government which aims at fighting the “manipulation of information” instead of “fake news” (Alexander Damiano Ricci, 2018).
Meanwhile, as reported by the Education for Justice (E4J of the Doha Declaration and supported by the State of Qatar, 2019) that some scholars have advocated for a more-civil solution to tackling misinformation warfare, which they call “inoculation theory.” This seeks to inoculate individuals against misinformation and disinformation by providing them with the means to build resistance to messaging and propaganda, reducing their susceptibility to misinformation and disinformation, and leading them to question the veracity of the information being presented to them as well as the legitimacy of the source presenting the information.
Asides this and just as it has been in Nigeria, E4J (2019) also highlighted media literacy campaigns as part of the solutions to misinformation as it has been launched in other countries like Sweden and Denmark. Some countries have also introduced units dedicated to identifying, collecting and reviewing disinformation and fake news, and alerting the media and general public about it such as the EU East StratCom Task Force (E4J, 2019, making a reference to Morrelli and Archick, 2016).
In the light of the above, this study seeks to take a close look at how the strategies highlighted above play out in the campaign plans and strategies adopted by the National Orientation Agency in Nigeria to engage its online communities in the fight against mis/disinformation.
Social Media Engagement Theory
Leveraging on the model of Social Media Engagement Theory (SME) developed by Di Gangi et al (2016), this study subscribes to the proposition that an organisation creates a chain of value, experience and benefits when it develops a User-Generated Content (UGC) that resonates with its audience on social media. As Di Gangi et al (2016) hypothesised, the central premise of SME theory is that higher user engagement leads to greater usage of the social media platform. Usage is defined as the frequency of a user’s contribution, retrieval, and/or exploration of content within a social media site.
The more frequently users take part in a variety of activities, the more valuable the social media platform becomes to the organization and fellow users, resulting in the co-creation of value. Organizations benefit when they leverage UGC to develop new insights, to realize cost savings, to grow brand awareness, and ultimately to generate innovations. Users benefit from the ability to socially interact within the social media platform to fulfill personal needs and interests.
The National Orientation Agency of Nigeria is the body tasked with communicating government policy, staying abreast of public opinion, and promoting patriotism, national unity, and development of Nigerian society. It is, therefore, expected that one of the strategies to uptake that campaign by the agency is to develop templates that can target online and social media users who are within the online community of the agency and make its message resonate with them.
Several researches have linked the spread of misinformation to the development of communication technology and the accompanying social media platforms (Ziga TURK, 2018). Di Gangi 2016 (quoting (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010) defines social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content.” Since the contents created and distributed on social media is susceptible to being pathological, considering the speed of the algorithm, it is the thesis of this study that when online and social media users are effectively engaged in the fight against misinformation, their understanding of how fake-content creators operate will reduce the spread.
Therefore, this study provides answers to four basic questions:
To what extent did the National Orientation Agency (NOA) create valuable content on its social media platform to amplify anti-fake campaigns?
How far have the agency’s messages on misinformation resonated with its online community?
What is the level of NOA’s engagement with other stakeholders fighting information disorder in Nigeria?
What is the level of engagement by NOA’s public with other stakeholders fighting information disorder in Nigeria?
Methods
This study employs both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. For the quantitative approach, the study developed a template for the tracking of contents posted on the agency’s social media handle, precisely Twitter. The agency boasts 863 followings and 115,000 followers on twitter till date. Based on this, we tracked:
The overall tweets posted by the agency between May and November, 2020;
The frequency of relevant tweets directed at media literacy or fact-checking by the agency within the period;
Number of “retweets”, “likes”, “comments” and video “viewing” by its online public on media literacy or fact-checking within the period;
For the qualitative aspect, the study relies on the interview granted to the author by the Director General of the National Orientation Agency via email. The study also incorporates a YouTube interview granted by the DG to @Channel Television on #EndfakeNews which was retrieved from (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxgDTtJE8AU&feature=youtube)
Results:
Q1. To what extent did the National Orientation Agency (NOA) create valuable content on its social media platform to amplify anti-fake campaigns?
A total of 1,621 tweets were posted by the National Orientation Agency (NOA) on its twitter handle between May and November, 2020.
Of these, 51 tweets (3.15%) were found to be relevant to media literacy and fact-checking on misinformation in Nigeria. In addition, 24 tweets (out of the 51 relevant items) representing 47.06% were authored by the agency while 27 (52.94%) were retweets from other partnering public and civil society sources.
Table 1. Showing contents created on the agency’s platform
Overall tweets
Total relevant tweets on media literacy and fact-checking
Total relevant tweets by the agency
Total relevant tweets by others
1621
51
24
27
Q2. How far have the agency’s messages on misinformation resonated with its online community?
Of the 24 relevant tweets authored by the agency, it enjoyed 954 retweets, 266 comments and 1,461 “likes”. While the video post (at https://twitter.com/i/status/1324344627281989633) published on November 5, 2020 generated the highest number of 127 retweets and the highest number of 3.5million views; the one posted on October 31 had the highest number of 179 ‘likes and the highest number of 69 comments.
Table 2. Showing how the agency’s public engaged with its message
Tweets by NOA
“Retweets” by its online public
“Likes” by its online public
“Comments” by its online public
24
954
1,461
266
Q.3. What is the level of NOA’s engagement with other stakeholders fighting information disorder in Nigeria?
Apart from the posts authored by the agency, it retweeted 16 posts from the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), 2 Posts from National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), 3 from the World Health Organisation (WHO), 3 from Nigeria Health Watch (NHW), 1 from the Presidency, 1 from the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and 2 from other individuals.
Q.4.What is the level of engagement by NOA’s public with other stakeholders fighting information disorder in Nigeria?
While it is commendable that the agency retweeted relevant tweets from other partners, NOA’s online public engaged more with tweets from other partners than its own. For instance, despite that the agency retweeted only one post from the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs (FMHA) on September 3rd, 2020, that same tweet generated the highest number of 1,500,000 retweets (99.8% of all retweets) by NOA’s online public, followed by the one from NOA with 997 “retweets” (0.7%) while the Presidential aide’s tweet came third with 545 “retweets” (at 0.04%).
On relevant tweets, there were 2,006,125 “likes” within the period. Of these, tweet from presidential aide on new media posted on November 2nd, 2020, generated the highest number of 2 million “Likes” on NOA’s platform (at 99.7% of all ‘likes’), followed by the one from Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs with 3000 “Likes” (0.15%) while NOA’s tweet came third with 1,544 “Likes” (0.08%).
While NOA’s tweets generated 267 comments (23.9% of all ‘comments’), the post from Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs (FMHA) generated the highest number of 444 comments (at 39.7%), followed by the post from presidential aide with 350 comments (31.3%).
(Message/Content Visualisation)
Only 6 relevant videos used to educate online audiences and to create “fake alerts” were tracked during the period . These came from CDD, NOA, and WHO. The one from NOA had the highest of 3.5million views. The video retweeted from the WHO generated the second highest of 2.7million viewings, followed by 4 videos retweeted from CDD which generated 1,083 views.
Table 3. Showing how the agency’s online public engaged with posts by NOA and other sources
Other Stakeholders
“Retweets” by NOA’s Public
%
Likes” by NOA’s Public
%
“Comments by NOA’s Public
%
No of Video
Video viewing by NOA’s Public
%
CDD
186
0.01%
232
0.012%
25
2.24%
4
1,083
0.02%
NCDC
469
0.03%
965
0.05%
–
–
–
–
–
NOA
997
0.7%
1,544
0.08%
267
23.7%
1
3,700,000
57.8%
WHO
109
0.01%
329
0.02%
32
2.9%
1
2,700,000
42%
NHW
35
0.002%
55
0.003%
–
–
–
–
–
Presidency
545
0.04%
2,000,000
99.5%
350
31.3%
–
–
–
FMHA
1,500,000
99.2%
3000
0.15%
444
39.7%
–
–
–
Total
1502341
100%
2006125
100%
1118
100%
6
6,401,083
100%
Figure 1. One of the posts tweeted by NOA, July 11, 2020
How NOA’s Public Engaged with other Posts
CDD’s Post
16 posts (31.4% of all relevant tweets) were authored by the CDD and retweeted by the agency. These then generated 186 retweets by NOA’s online public, with 25 comments and 232 likes. Of these 16 posts from CDD, there were 4 videos which generated 1083 viewings.
Figure 2. Post from CDD, retweeted by NOA
Figure 3. Post from CDD on June 25, 2020
Figure 4. post from CDD on June 29
Posts from NCDC
2 tweets (3.9%) authored by the NCDC were retweeted by NOA. This was retweeted in a frequency of 469 times, with 126 comments and 965 likes. No video.
Posts from WHO
The only one relevant post retweeted from WHO was a video. It generated 109 retweets by NOA’s public with 32 comments and 329 likes. The video generated 2.7 million viewings. Extract from the video is in text below:
“...As one who had coordinated #COVID-19 response in Lagos with @followlasg, it was easy to see what other people pass through…You can see it’s not a death sentence, listen to experts, stop fake news and #stigmatization“– WHO tweet
(Tweet from WHO and retweeted by NOA on June 6, 2020)
Post from NHW
3 tweets from NHW, representing 5.9% of relevant posts were also retweeted by NOA and generated 35 retweets by NOA’s public with 55 likes. No comment. No Video.
Figure 5: Posts from NWH, retweeted by NOA (July 8, 2020)
Post from FMHA
Only 1 tweet used as media literacy from FMHA, represented 3.7% of relevant posts. It was retweeted by NOA and generated the highest number of 1.5million retweets by NOA’s public with 3000 likes and 444 comments. No Video.
Post from Presidential Aide
Another tweet from a presidential aide, Bashir Ahmaad, representing 3.7% of relevant posts was retweeted by NOA and generated the highest number of 2 million ‘likes’ by NOA’s public with 545 ‘retweets’ with 350 comments. No Video.
As tweeted by @BashirAhmaad:
Do not let your social media posts be the reason for people to take armsagainst each other, stop spreading the fake news for a better Nigeria,message from the National Orientation Agency @NOA_Nigeria.8:25 AM · Nov 2, 2020
NOA’s Online Engagement: The Director General’s Responses
As part of the methods of evaluating the Federal Government’s responses to the menace of false information, particularly on social media, this researcher made efforts in reaching the Director General of the National Orientation Agency via e-mail to speak on the campaign plans of the agency and the methods of executing those campaigns in educating Nigerians on the evil of fake information in the public space. The responses are highlighted below in the form of questions and answers. Here, the researcher’s posers shall be referred to as “Q” while the DG’s responses shall be represented by “Ans”.
Q.The agency says (on its website) it has over 5 engagement platforms it uses to reach Nigerians. What are these platforms?
Ans: The agency reaches Nigerians through a number of platforms. These include the agency’s website (www.noa.gov.ng), as well as through its e-mail (admin@noa.gov.ng). Asides these, the agency also reaches its community through its various social media platforms including Twitter (@NOA_Nigeria), Facebook (National Orientation Agency, Nigeria) and Instagram (noa_nigeria).
Q. The agency also says it uses 3 major segmentation approaches to do its enlightenment campaigns. What are these approaches?
Ans: The agency carries out its enlightenment campaign in three segmental approaches using the National level, State level and the Local government levels which are often undertaken by the Community Orientation and Mobilisation Officers domiciled in all the 774 LGAs and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Q. “Fake news” has become endemic in Nigeria. What are the campaign plans the agency has or has been running to carry out enlightenment programmes for Nigerians on its danger and negative impact on our democracy?
Ans: There are plans which the agency has been exploring to engage Nigerians on various platforms of interaction with a view to bringing to the fore, dangers inherent in the spread of fake news in our society.
Q.What have been the approaches adopted to carry out these campaigns?
Ans: We have been developing counter narratives using postcards for social media posts, jingles (both audio and video, community engagement, public enlightenment using the Agency’s Public Address Van, holding workshops/seminar with stakeholders, training of staff on how to identify and respond to fake news as well as preparing questionnaire to get feedback. Also, the Agency regularly organises press conferences to intimate news media on efforts of the Agency regarding fight against fake news and hate messages.
Q. How does the agency create contents on the platforms earlier highlighted to engage Nigerians on anti-fake campaigns?
Ans: The Agency generates contents on topical issues of national relevance with a special reference to the feedback mechanism of NOA.
Q. Do citizens respond to/engage with these contents? What are the pieces of evidence that these campaigns or messages on these platforms resonate with citizens?
Ans: Robust citizens’ engagement on our online platforms is an evidence that NOA gets responses from the public. We also conduct e-polling to gauge the pulse of people on topical issues. Feedback mechanism by the PRS department also indicates evidence of engagement with Nigerians.
Q. Are there impacts of these campaigns?
Ans: The Agency has been able to effect a new set of values resulting in attitudinal change of citizens regarding fake news. Sustained campaign against fake news has recorded successes especially on social media.
Q. What have been the noticeable impacts?
Ans: Some of the noticeable impacts have been attitudinal change and instilled patriotism.
Q.How does the Agency evaluate its impacts on the citizens?
Ans: We do this through e-polling and feedback mechanisms of the Agency.
Q. Does the agency collaborate with other government and non-government agencies to tackle the scourge of misinformation in Nigeria?
Ans: Yes
Q. What are these agencies?
Ans: We collaborate with the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, FRCN, NTA, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Budgit, Open Government Partnership (OGP) and so on.
Q. What strategies does the agency use for this collaboration?
Ans: Some of our strategies for collaboration include seminars, workshops, sensitisation, community engagement, online engagement and capacity building.
Discussions
This study shows that while the agency created a considerable number of valuable contents on its platform, there was little evidence of sufficient readiness to up-take campaigns on information disorder on social media. This is evident from the fact that only 3.5% (n=1,461) of the total tweets for the period were relevant to fighting fake information online.
On the question of partnership, there was evidence of cooperation and partnership with other public and civil society stakeholders in the campaign against misinformation online as the agency retweeted valuable contents from its online partners.
Evidence shows that there was a considerable level of cooperation and partnership with other public and civil society stakeholders in the campaign against misinformation online as the agency retweeted valuable contents from its online partners. This corroborates the responses of the director-general of the agency that it has a robust partnership with other stakeholders, such as the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, FRCN, NTA, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Budgit and Open Government Partnership (OGP).
While evidence shows that only the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), World Health Organisation (WHO), Nigeria Health Watch (NHW), and the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs (FMHA) were active on the agency’s online platform as stakeholders fighting misinformation, result from the tracking of the agency’s twitter handle shows that other key ministries and agencies such as Ministry of Information and Culture were either not working on information disorder online or not creating any contents that resonate with the agency’s effort in fighting misinformation on social media.
While this study did not find out if the attitude of the agency’s online audience to its contents was positive or negative, evidence shows that there was a considerable level of engagement with its content by its online community. Although , the director general of the agency observed that the “robust citizens’ engagement on our online platforms is an evidence that NOA gets responses from the public’, result of the tracking of its twitter handle shows that the agency’s online public found contents authored by the agency less valuable and less resonating than contents shared from its partners. As a result, its online public engaged more with posts retweeted from other partners with a range of activities such as “like,” “comment’ and “share”.
To show that its online engagement with its audience was considerably low, there is more to be desired considering that the agency’s tweets for the seven-months period generated only 964 retweets despite being followed by 155,000 followers online. Therefore, its claim that it reaches at least 64% Nigerians on its enlightenment campaigns is perhaps, more offline than online.
The fact that audience engagement was low also shows that the agency has not really subscribed to the proposition engendered by the Social Media Engagement Theory (SME, Theory) which suggests that “an organisation will be creating a chain of value, experience and benefits when it develops a User-Generated Content (UGC) that resonates with its audience on social media. While observation shows that the agency makes spirited efforts to cover many issues of national importance, its efforts at creating media literacy campaigns and publishing fact-checks on its platforms have been grossly inadequate.
Similarly, it is not clear how the agency creates content on its social media platforms, although the director-general in an interview revealed that “the agency generates contents on topical issues of national relevance with a special reference to the feedback mechanism of NOA.” Some of these issues of national relevance, as revealed from the tracking exercise adopted for this study, include information disorder around COVID-19, #EndSARS protest, national unity among others. However, the fact that the agency created 24 relevant tweets on media literacy and fact-check (47%) out of the total 51 recorded during the period, shows that it largely depends on other relevant stakeholders to create relevant contents which it retweets for media literacy and fake alert systems.
Conclusion and Recommendations
This study has investigated the level of preparedness and seriousness on the part of the Nigerian government through its ministries and agencies to take its campaign against “fake news” and misinformation to its online and social media community of followers. Deploying the method of social media content analysis of the National Orientation Agency’s twitter handle, the findings of this study show that the federal government, through its agencies has done less to create resonating messages to its online public on anti-fake campaigns.
It is also observed that the agency was more interested in media literacy than fact-checking. All the fact-checks tweeted within the period were posted by its other partners including CDD, WHO, NCDC, National Health Watch (NHW) among others.
Again, this study shows the federal government depends more on civil society and foreign agencies to wage war against misinformation, given that more of the content posted on the agency’s twitter platform on misinformation were authored by other partners operating within the misinformation ecosystem.
The merit in this circumstance is underscored by the evidence that federal agencies are open to cooperation and partnership. Yet it is more worrisome that while the Ministry of Information and Culture had identified National Orientation Agency (NOA) as its key partner in the campaign against fake content in Nigeria, no single relevant tweet was found on the agency’s platform as either created by the Information Ministry or tweeted by any of its officials.
This rather illustrates hypocrisy on the part of the Federal Ministry which has bent more towards social media regulations than education of its citizens against the threat of mis/disinformation.
By recommendation, more study is imperative to investigate what motivates online community of users to engage with messages created and shared on anti- fake campaigns.
*This study is conducted for the Dubawa Fellowship programme, and is supported by Heinrich Boll Stiftung Foundation Abuja office.
In this piece, we examined 203 coronavirus-related fact-checks published by Dubawa and Africa Check since the outbreak of the pandemic. Our analysis was limited to fact-checks focusing on Nigeria and general misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic. Majority of claims in the analysed fact-checks centre on potential COVID-19 treatments and cures. Remarkably, government entities comprising the institution, its officials, and agencies were mostly targets of debunked claims in the study. While we cannot conclude, based on our findings here, that donor funding may have some influence on the fact-checking process, we found that fact-checks with potential interest to two major funders of fact-checking organisations, Facebook and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were significantly higher than others within the entire family of fact-checking organisations.
Screenshots of Dubawa coronavirus pages
Screenshots of Africa Check coronavirus pages
Introduction
The advent of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, brought with it an unprecedented era of information disorder. From conspiracy theories regarding the origin of the coronavirus to several unfounded and unverified myths regarding treatment options and preventive practices, the world witnessed an enormous flood of misinformation, making it impossible for many to understand what is real and what is not. The information disorder is being spread by people across various demographics from world leaders, to religious leaders, traditional leaders, key government functionaries, and private citizens.
Information disorder around the pandemic is well-established, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) describing the situation as an infodemic, “an over-abundance of information – some accurate and some not – that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” Over 100 fact-checkers around the globe under the #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance have been at the forefront of countering this misinformation, often creating a reference link for all covid-19 related fact-checks on their websites. As at 30th September, 2020, they have collectively published over 7,000 fact-checks in more than 70 countries in over 40 different languages.
Several social media platforms rose to the challenge, devising various means to track and dispel misinformation around the pandemic. Facebook, for instance, has a partnership with several fact-checking organisations to combat the spread of the pandemic. This is in addition to its policy of keeping its subscribers updated on fact-checks on information they have previously shared. Oftentimes, several posts are taken down and blocked from spreading further. Global and local health agencies such as the WHO and the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) are exploring online and other social media platforms to provide “evidenced-based information” to the general public. They are also collaborating with fact-checkers to debunk false claims and curb the spread of misinformation around the pandemic.
We employed content analysis research method to conduct the study, using a pre-established coding guide to gather required data. We explored the Dubawa and Africa Check websites for coronavirus-related fact-checks, with both having dedicated sections for coronavirus fact-checks on their respective pages.
From the coronavirus page on Dubawa, we extracted all 99 stories published on its page. Of these, 3 articles unrelated to the pandemic were eliminated from the study. General covid-19 misinformation media literacy articles and Dubawa’s bi-monthly newsletters were delisted to limit our analysis to core fact-checks. We also eliminated stories making reference to other African countries to limit the analysis only to fact-checks with specific reference to Nigeria and general COVID-19 misinformation which may likely trend locally. In all, we analysed 64 core covid-19-related fact-checks on Dubawa.
Hence, we analysed 203 coronavirus-related fact-checks on claims likely to have spread among Nigerians. The coding guide was the research instrument used to gather data for the study. A pilot study was conducted to test the instrument which was also subject to inter-coder reliability using two coders. The variables examined are misinformation source, content fact-checked, verdict of fact-checks, issue focus, fact-checking tool(s), and target entity of fact-checked claims. The study period covers from the inception of the pandemic with earliest fact-checks published in February, 2020 to September 30, 2020.
Results
The first variable examined is the month of publication of the analysed fact-checks. Majority of the fact-checks were published in March and April, the months following the first recorded case of coronavirus in Nigeria and Africa. Almost half of the analysed fact-checks {45 in April (24.1%) and 49 in March (22.2%)} were published during this period. Africa Check had its highest fact-checks in April while Dubawa had its own in March. Thereafter, there was a gradual decline in the fact-checks, but with some form of consistency between June and July. By the end of the study period, September, published fact-checks had dropped to a mere 2% (n=4). It is observed that Dubawa published a number of coronavirus-related articles but they are mostly media literacy articles clarifying issues of concern to consumers of media products. These were excluded from our analysis which simply focus on fact-checks.
We examined sources of the claims fact-checked. The identified sources here describe where the information was found and sometimes also publicly shared. Facebook led the list of sources with about 46% of total sources identified in the study. This excludes claims notably found/shared on more than one platform noted here as “across social media platforms”. Several claims were notably shared on “Facebook and WhatsApp” mostly on Africa Check. These were all recorded as “across social media platforms”. This might have also influenced the low frequency of claims fact-checked on WhatsApp in Africa Check. Dubawa however fact-checked its highest claims from WhatsApp followed by Facebook and Blog sites. News media were the least reported as sources of fact-checked claims. Fact-checks on news media reports focused on media coverage of issues as well as direct coverage of public officers’ speeches at public events.
Africa Check’s increased fact-checks on claims on Facebook might have been influenced by the organisation’s collaboration with the tech giant to limit the spread of false information. Africa Check has a public disclosure on this partnership which it includes at the end of its fact-checks. However, the organisation has claims it is striving “to ensure no donor has a controlling influence.”
Alternatively, the high fact-checking of claims of facebook might simply be as a result of its ubiquity among social media subscribers. As at the end of 2019, Facebook active subscribers in Nigeria are estimated to be over 27 million. Hence, it might be logical to assume that there will be more information and misinformation being shared on Facebook than on other platforms. Facebook and WhatsApp are reportedly the most common social media platforms in Nigeria. According to this survey, over 80% of respondents confirmed using each of Facebook and WhatsApp. This is in contrast to only 19% and 11% who confirmed using Instagram and WhatsApp respectively.
Claims in the fact-checks were reportedly presented as text, images/graphics, video and audio. Coding into text and images/graphics was tricky as the categorisation can sometimes be blurred. To address this ambiguity, we focused on the part of the content where the claim is made. We also relied on the description of the content as specified in the fact-check. Pictures, images, infographics, screenshots, pictures with embedded texts, and similar contents were coded as image/graphics since they are often presented as images and shared as such.
Majority of the fact-checked contents (61%; n=124) were thus categorised as text. This was followed by those categorised as images/graphics (24%; n=48) which accounted for about a quarter. Video (13%; n=27) and audio were the least with audio recordings only accounting for 2% (n=4) of the analysed fact-checks. The two organisations, Dubawa and Africa Check recorded similar patterns in contents in their analysed fact-checks.
Fact-checks often include verdicts (ratings) of fact-checkers on fact-checked claims. In this analysis, we found slight variations in the verdicts issued by each organisation. Dubawa appears more consistent with its regular use of True, False, Misleading, in its fact-checks. These are all within its published rating system.
Africa Check was, however, inconsistent as it regularly used False, Fake, Incorrect, on claims verified to be false with no identified distinctions in the use of these terms to describe false contents. Its published rating system included “incorrect”, but not “False” or “Fake” which were regularly used to rate several of the debunked fact-checks. Other claims are rated: Correct, Misleading, or Checked. Occasionally, both Dubawa and Africa Check declined giving any verdict in their fact-checks despite taking a stance in the body of the fact-check.
Over 80% (80.3%, n=163) of the analysed fact-checks were rated false and were grouped as Incorrect / False / Fake to integrate the ratings by both organisations. This was distantly followed by those rated as Correct / True (9%, n=18), and Misleading with 8% (n=17). Dubawa had two fact-checks rated Mostly False, Each of them was written on multiple claims and was rated as such because most of the claims were found to be false while others may be true or lack evidence for a logical conclusion. The fact-checks coded Insufficient Evidence were so rated by the organisations or concluded as such by the researcher where a fact-check has no rating but its contents make such suggestions. The high frequency of false claims might thus suggest that suspicious claims often turn out to be false, with obvious exceptions.
Fact-checks on the pandemic have debunked a wide range of claims since the outbreak. The global #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance has documented 26 clusters of misinformation in its waves of hoaxes around the pandemic. In this analysis, we identified 11 broad themes in the analysed fact checks. These include cure and prevention myth; official policies or pronouncements of governments or organisations; issues relating to COVID-19 funding, palliatives and freebies for the general public; prevention myth focusing on potential practices or behaviour to prevent individuals from being infected with the virus; issues around testing capability, testing data and status of individuals; coronavirus-related or speculated deaths; number of cases; origin of the virus; risk factors, transmission myth on spread of the virus; copying myth describing specific behaviours necessitated by the reality of the pandemic; among few others.
Fact-checks around issues related to treatment and cure for the virus had the highest coverage accounting for nearly a quarter (23.2%, n=46) of the 198 issue-based fact-checks identified in the study. Issues of official policies and pronouncements; funding, palliatives and freebies; and prevention myths followed in close proportions. Fact-checks on transmission and copying myths, among others, were the least recorded categories.
Apart from specific issues identified above, we also examined identified entities that were the target of misinformation in the analysed fact-checks. This was limited to 100 of the debunked fact-checks rated false among the analysed lot. Federal government, its officials and agencies and foreign governments and their officials each gulped almost a quarter of the identified entities in the relevant fact-checks. Claims targeting the federal government included key government officials falsely attributed to specific claims. The increased targets on foreign government and their officials were populated by false claims targeted at President Donald Trump of the United States, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and President Andry Rajoelina of Madagascar who became popular during this pandemic for promotion of his country’s self-acclaimed COVID-19 treatment formula. Several claims were falsely attributed to Trump despite reports that he regularly promoted coronavirus misinformation. Prominent individuals were also falsely targeted for COVID-19 false information. Prominent among these was Bill Gates and his Foundation targeted in 5 of the 10 fact-checks in this category. A New York Times report noted Bill Gates as “the leading target for coronavirus falsehoods,” which might explain the increased fact-checks on him. Others in this category were business Mogul, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, entrepreneur and footballer Ronaldo reportedly giving freebies and donating business facilities as coronavirus treatment centres.
Fact-checking tools used in analysed fact-checks included Reverse Image Search mostly done through google and then through other image search engines such as TinEye and Yandex. Other tools used included CrowdTangle, LinkTally, and audio tracing. The most common fact-checking process identified is termed cross-referencing in this analysis. This describes a combination of verification steps such as referencing, scrutinizing the information, finding verifiable facts or evidence to prove the accuracy or otherwise of the claim. It also includes conducting interviews with key actors or experts on the topic of discourse. Almost 80% (78.5%) of identified fact-checking instances identified in the analysed contents involved cross-referencing.
Conclusion
In examining the focus of fact-checks on coronavirus in Dubawa and Africa Check, findings suggest that misinformation around the pandemic was rife in the early months of the outbreak, with high fact-checks published in March and April while experiencing gradual decline afterwards. Findings here might suggest some possibility of collaborative efforts driving publication of fact-checks around the issues of interest with high tracking of misinformation on Facebook and debunking of noticeably high number of claims targeting Bill Gates, especially on Africa Check. This is so as Africa Check regularly displays Bill Gates Foundation as one of its major funders. Such likely influence can however not be concluded as some other factors, as discussed above could be driving such fact-checks of potential interest to fact-check funders.
Fact-checkers need to provide clear understanding of meanings of their ratings and explain possible differences that might be intended for similar but perhaps different ratings. Some lack of consistency in fact-check ratings found in this study could suggest unintended conclusions for readers. The high rate of false, incorrect, and fake ratings, however. suggest that suspicious claims considered worthwhile for fact-checking often turn out to be false as suspected.
Findings from this study suggest that misinformation on potential cure, official policies and pronouncements, funding of COVID-19 and palliatives; and prevention, are frequently shared on social media platforms in Nigeria. This calls for concern and continuing vigilance of fact-checkers, as some claims can have costly consequences, proclaiming unwholesome practices, and could have gone viral before they are fact-checked and perhaps subsequently taken down. Most misinformation rated false were found to have targeted government entities both locally and beyond. This calls for concerted efforts of government institutions to continuously track misinformation about them in the public place and debunk them promptly. Facebook appears to be the dominant platform through which misinformation on coronavirus is mostly spread in Nigeria. This may be due to the intended tracking of misinformation on the platform due to existing collaboration with fact-checkers. Facebook, which also owns WhatsApp, has a stipulated policy to limit the spread of Covid-19 misinformation and harmful contents across its platforms.
The first part of this research has documented the literature around information disorder in order to understand the complexities of this phenomenon in Nigeria, one of the most populous black countries in the world, with peculiar and complex socio-political and religious configurations.
This concluding part provides further insight into the fact-checking ecosystem by interrogating the history, issues and activities surrounding media organisation on the frontline of combating information disorder in Nigeria.
This intervention is necessary at a time when dis/misinformation is tainting virtually all part of human endeavours. Be it politics, health, education, religion, economy, governance, science and technology, and other human endeavours, information disorder has remained a recurring decimal.
For instance, there are already assertions that dis/misformation on Covid-19 referred to as Infodemics is one of the major stumbling blocks to flattening the curve of coronavirus pandemic in the world including Nigeria. (See Adeniran 2020a; Adeniran 2020b). Relatedly, the build up to the Edo State governorship election also pointed in a similar direction. The conduct of free and fair election devoid of violence is being threatened by information disorder in the electoral process. (CDD, 2020). Preliminary reports from the observer group prominently featured this variable. This is outside the socio-economic impact that information pollution could have on the well-being of the country. These scenarios are intertwined with political, social, religious, economic, and technological variables.
One of the major ways of combating information disorder in Nigeria is the commitment of fact-checking organisations to nip this menace in the bud. The community of fact checkers in Nigeria is mutating and their efforts and challenges need to be brought to the front burner.
As a way of addressing this issue, it is, for example, important to interrogate the fact-checking ecosystem by providing a guide for all stakeholders. It is with this background that this study collates data, analyses, and discusses them briefly in relation to media organisation on the frontline of combating information disorder in Nigeria.
Research Objectives
The general objective of this paper is to interrogate the fact-checking ecosystem in Nigeria. The specific objectives are:
To document the historical evolution of selected fact-checking organisations in Nigeria,
To examine the organisational structures of the selected fact-checking groups in Nigeria,
To understand the production process of the selected fact-checking organisations in Nigeria,
To document the programmes and projects of the fact-checking organisations in Nigeria,
To examine strategies of fact-checking organisations towards sustainability
Method and Analysis
To understand the information disorder ecosystem in view of the challenge of few experts in the field in Nigeria that could provide insights into the issue, this study adopts a user-centred approach (Hedman and Djerf-Pierre Hedman 2013 as cited in Brandtzaeg et al, 2015). This is because the establishment of fact-checking organisations in the world and specifically in Nigeria is relatively new. Experts in the field with required experience are few and therefore the selection of samples for the in-depth interview is restricted to few fact-checking experts in the country. For this reason, the samples are selected from the few media organisations that established fact-checking organisations in Nigeria. These organisations adopt this model to combat information disorder, hence their selections. Brandtzaeg et al, (2015 p. 4) added, “This methodological choice was motivated by our assumption that insight in emerging practices” such as fact-checking ecosystem which is the focus of this research, “required the respondents to hold substantial practical experience.” For instance, AFP is an international media organisation, AfricaCheck has its headquarters in South Africa, while Dubawa is established by Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) based in Nigeria. Similarly, the researcher explores data (archival materials) from internet resources, especially the websites and social media platforms of the selected fact-checking organisations to address some issues stated in the research objectives. The interview is qualitatively analysed and discussed around the literature reviewed. To allow for easy discussion, the findings are discussed under specific themes along the research objectives. The semi-structured interview enables the researcher to ask follow up questions to further clarify the information provided by the interviewees on the fact-checking ecosystem in Nigeria.
The interview data generated via exchange of WhatsApp messages with one of the interviewees was copied from the phone to the computer for analysis while the other two conducted through the telephone lasted for 40 – 49 minutes and were captured through “Call Recording” tool on the mobile phone and transcribed on the computer. The permission of the interviewees was sought before the recording of the interviews.
The researcher analysed and discussed the responses of the interviewees along the literature reviewed and research objectives. The interview data were analysed and discussed along the research objectives and literature reviewed. This was done to give insights into the fact-checking ecosystem in Nigeria.
List of Fact-Checking Organisations in Nigeria and status at September, 2020 – Folarin Study (2020)
* Verified Signatories of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) code of principles by Poynter
Interview
The study employed Key Informants Interview (KII) in line with the user-centred approach adopted. This is because the interviewees owing to their knowledge and experiences are the only set of samples who could provide key information on the fact-checking ecosystem in Nigeria. The researcher conducted three semi-structured interviews with fact-checking experts between July and August, 2020. To ensure that the respondents are adequate representatives, the interviewees were selected to reflect different models in terms of affiliations and geographical spread. In addition, the selected fact-checking organisations are part of the global fact-checking network and certified by the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). The samples include: two males and one female who are members of the selected fact-checking organisations. They are Editor, Programme Officer and Fact-Checker. These are all pioneers in the fact-checking ecosystem with a wide range of experiences in fact-checking activities including media, information and digital literacy, training, management, and general fact-checking activities in the course of combating information disorder in Nigeria.
This research was conducted as part of the 2020 Dubawa Fact-Checking Fellowship project and the researcher’s Ph.D research thesis . The details of the sample are provided in Table 1. The samples were collected through WhatsApp, e-mail messages and phone calls. The interviews took place either through WhatsApp or via telephone calls.
The interviews are focused on a fact-checking ecosystem in Nigeria. To be able to achieve the objectives of the research earlier stated, the researcher developed an interview guide with 25 items and some of the guiding questions are:
What influenced the establishment of fact-checking organisations in Nigeria?
What are the organisational structures of the fact-checking groups in Nigeria?
How do fact-checking organisations carry out their production processes in Nigeria?
What are the programmes and projects of the fact-checking organisations in Nigeria?
What are the strategies of fact-checking organisations towards sustainability?
The selected interviewees are:
Segun Olakoyenikan, Fact-checking journalist for Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Nigeria – Key Informant Interview 1 (KII 1)
Ebele Oputa, Consultant for Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), owner of Dubawa fact-checking organisation (Nigeria) – Key Informant Interview 3 (KII 3)
Data Presentation, Analysis and Discussion/ Results and Discussion
The interview data and content generated on the fact-checking organisations website and social media platforms are discussed along the following themes:
HISTORY: Ownership and factors that influenced establishment of fact-checking organisations in Nigeria
STRUCTURES of fact-checking Organisation in Nigeria.
PRODUCTION PROCESS: Basic Operations and Tools for Fact-checking claims
FACT-CHECKING AUDIENCE: Access to Fact-check contents by audience
PROGRAMMES, PROJECTS AND COLLABORATIONS
CHALLENGES
SUSTAINABLE STRATEGIES: Models and Future Plan
HISTORY: Ownership and factors that influenced establishment of fact-checking organisations in Nigeria
Fact-checking as part of media work was institutionalised in Africa about eight years ago with the establishment of Africa Check. It is a non-profit organisation set up in 2012 in South Africa to promote accuracy in public debate and the media in Africa. It described itself as Africa’s first independent and non-profit fact-checking organisation set up to promote accuracy in public debate and the media in Africa, as well as work to raise the quality of information available to society across the continent. Africa Check is a non-profit and independent organisation with offices in Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos and Dakar. The organisation produces reports in English and French, testing claims made by public figures, institutions and the media against the best available evidence. Africa Check also has regional offices in Lagos, Nigeria, set up in 2016.
The Nigerian Editor of Africa Check, David Ajikobi, said the Nigeria office of Africa Check was set up in November, 2016 to become the first fact-checking organisation in the country. The establishment was influenced by security and sundry issues generated from the spread of dis and misinformation around the purpose and benefits of the Polio vaccination leading to boycott of the exercise and the murder of health workers in the Northern part of the country (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020 and in reference to https://africacheck.org/about-us/).
This was followed by Dubawa which is a project of the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) based in Nigeria. The Consultant to PTCIJ, Ebele Oputa explained that the Dubawa project was “launched in 2018 first as a baseline study and a knowledge of the media ecosystem in Nigeria.” The findings of the baseline study according to Ebele Oputa indicated that “there is a declining trust in media organisations in Nigeria”, just as the “quality of national discourse was also being watered down.” This partly influenced the establishment of Dubawa fact-checking project established to among others, build the capacity of journalists across Nigeria in verification process, as a way of restoring peoples’ trust in the media. The establishment of Dubawa as a fact-checking organisation was also influenced by the realisation that quality information is important to development as access to verified information will influence making informed and accurate decisions. The fact-checking organisation described itself as Nigeria’s first indigenous independent verification and fact-checking project, initiated by PTCIJ and supported by the most influential newsrooms and civic organisations in the country to help amplify the culture of truth in public discourse, public policy, and journalistic practice. It is non-partisan, accepting only to uphold the values of accuracy, balance, transparency, verification, independence, and accountability in all its operations. We are guided, in all our practice, by the five principles of the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN). (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020 and in reference to https://dubawa.org/about-us/ ).
AFP Fact Check (Nigeria) is owned by an international France’s News Agency. AFP launched its digital verification service in France in 2017 and has grown to become one of the leading global fact-checking organisations, with dedicated journalists in countries from the United States to Myanmar. AFP set up a blog to focus on fact-checking in response to the multiplication of misinformation and disinformation online, and was inspired by her experience with the award-winning CrossCheck collaborative project around the 2017 French elections. Segun Olakoyenikan who is a fact-checking journalist for AFP said the fact-checking organisation for Nigeria bureau was established in 2018, after the news agency entered into a partnership with Facebook to deepen the social network’s third-party fact-checking programme in Africa. It is part of the news agency’s digital verification service launched in 2017 to verify fake news and disinformation circulating in the world. The project was influenced by the need to reduce the spread of misinformation worldwide, create a culture of accuracy in the society, and improve the quality of information that people consume (Researcher’s Interview July, 2020 with reference to https://factcheck.afp.com/about-us and https://factcheck.afp.com/fact-checking-afp).
STRUCTURES of fact-checking Organisations in Nigeria
The fact-checking organisations in Nigeria maintain a lean staff strength and are subsidiaries of some parent organisations. The experts and those who are technology-savvy or possess skills to fact-check claims based on the IFCN principles are few. The evolving nature of this endeavour provides the pioneer fact-checking organisations with little manpower to achieve their mission and vision. Though there are professionals with standard journalism skills in Nigeria, the approach of fact-checking especially during the digital era still needs to be learned. The three fact-checking organisations did not run a complex system in terms of management as they are controlled by their parent organisations.
The Dubawa fact-checking organisation in structural terms, is a non-profit entity that operates as a project within the Premium Times Center for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) which “serve as an incubation for innovative media development projects in Nigeria.” PTCIJ is structured to allow the Dubawa fact-checking project to operate as an independent organisation. This is similar to the model adopted for the project in Ghana, whereby Dubawa Ghana was incorporated as a separate legal entity and therefore operates as an independent organisation. As for staff strength, Dubawa Nigeria has a team of researchers with internal and external editors and occasional contributors. It has two levels editing process. The organisation also has a board and other supporting staff. According to its website, Dubawa’s governance and organizational structure is transparent; it is supervised by an advisory board that helps to hold the management of the platform focused on its core mission. The board is supported by a panel of editorial experts (editorial board) as its day to day operations are undertaken by PTCIJ. The Dubawa fact-checking team is composed of a handful of experts who develop Fact-Checker stories in a structured way. The team is headed by an editor supported by an assistant editor. Also in the team are researchers (internal or external) who provide quality contents for the Dubawa website (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020 with reference to https://dubawa.org/about-us/governance-organisation/).
AFP (Nigeria) fact-checking organisation which is a project of AFP as an international news agency’s digital verification service at the Lagos bureau. The fact-checking organisation as at July, 2020 has two fact-checking journalists (Mayowa Tijani and Segun Olakoyenikan) at the Lagos Bureau, covering misinformation in Anglophone West African countries including Nigeria. AFP Fact Check Nigeria operates a centralised operation. Journalists from AFP monitor online content in local languages and their stories are edited in regional hubs and the global team is managed from AFP’s Paris headquarters. Fact-checking editors and a worldwide network of journalists are tasked with carrying out its operations, following the editorial standards and key guiding principles of the AFP global news agency. (Researcher’s Interview July, 2020 with reference to https://factcheck.afp.com/about-us and https://factcheck.afp.com/fact-checking-afp).
Africa Check, considers itself as a non-profit media organisation and regarded its work as part of the journalistic genre. David Ajikobi says: “I will say in my opinion, (fact-checking activities) is more of 70 percent of the journalism genre and 30 percent development communication.” As at August 2020, AfricaCheck runs a lean operation in Nigeria and works with independent journalists and has about four permanent staff and one part time staff in its Nigeria office (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020).
The above indicates that the institutionalisation of fact-checking as a media work in Nigeria is pioneered by Africa Check, Dubawa, and AFP. These organisations are still at the embryonic stage and were established as concerns increased about the impact of dis and misinformation in Nigeria. So, their objectives are relatively similar though they have different ownership structures. While AFP is an international organisation, the headquarters of AfricaCheck and Dubawa are located in African countries. This indicated that the challenge of information disorder is a global problem, and efforts at the international scene to combat this menace is now being domesticated in Nigeria.
PRODUCTION PROCESS: Basic Operations and Tools for Fact-Checking Claims
Basic Operations: The basic operations of AFP (Nigeria) as it relates to fact-checking according to its staff in an interview is “verification”. Segun Olakoyenikan explained that the “fact-checking approach to verifying information depends on a number of factors. But more essentially is the fact that we combine logic, journalistic skills and technology to carry out our verifications.” AFP Fact Check explains on its website that it seeks to help the public and newsrooms come to informed conclusions about information they find online, whether from social media posts, news articles, videos or statements. It added that it selects content to investigate, based on criteria including editorial interest, how widely something has been shared, and whether it has entered public debate. AFP editors start by trying to identify the origin of a claim, investigating with its archives and journalists where necessary. It carried out these operations by using different digital tools for tracing the sources, searching for the origin of a statement or quotation, investigating videos, cross-checking information, and contacting the right sources and not just the internet. (Researcher’s Interview July, 2020 with reference to https://factcheck.afp.com/fact-checking-afp and https://factcheck.afp.com/fact-checking-how-we-work).
The basic operation of Africa Check according to David Ajikobi focused on debunking dis and misinformation, outreach programmes and media literacy work as a way of “equipping people with skills to identify and debunk fake news and disinformation by themselves.” Africa Check has a workflow structure for fact-checking through identification of claims, verification process and rigorous layers of quality assurance before the findings are published. (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020).
In Dubawa-Nigeria, Ebele Oputa noted that the organisation engaged in monitoring socio-political and economic activities and the media landscape. She added that apart from engaging in media literacy and campaigns, the organisation produces fact-checking contents which are promoted on websites and social media platforms:
“Last year, we had the week for truth where we spread the gospel of verification and fact-checking to other sets of the population that otherwise are left out of our normal fact-checking activities. So, we took fact-checking to schools, average Nigerians on the streets….So, individuals should be empowered to engage in critical thinking and to question the news they consume. We also do programmes, massive activities based on the political and socio-economic landscape. For instance, we have engaged in election monitoring with access to reports to support Nigeria with affiliation with Premium Times…We also have done fact-checking around the UN. United Nations convention…And we also this year did fact-checking on coronavirus to help reduce misinformation.” (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020).
Technological Architecture: Tools for Fact-Checking Claims
The issue of technology featured prominently in all the fact-checking processes in Nigeria. It was identified as a catalyst to the problem and at the same time one of the solutions to information disorder in the country. As purveyors of disinformation are using technology to spread false information and disrupt the information ecosystem, fact-checking organisations are using the same innovative technology to combat information disorder. Issues of Digital Divide and poor technological infrastructure in Nigeria were identified as some of the challenges to digital literacy and these provide opportunity for purveyors of disinformation to capture more victims and use them as tools for dissemination of misinformation.
The fact-checking organisations in Nigeria relied mostly on third-party tools to fact-check claims. Owing to the extent of how technology is being adopted to spread dis and misinformation in the country, the organisations are using different digital tools to combat the information disorder especially in the digital public sphere. Except for AFP that said it has an “in-house tool” other fact-checking organisations subscribed to Third-Party tools and are working on developing specific tools to carry out their tasks and achieve their objectives.
Nigerian office of Africa Check explained how the fact-checking organisation in Nigeria is using these tools for its work process. These include: surveillance, claims identification, outreach and communication, editing, engagement and conversation, debunking fake or manipulated video, pictures and text. However, David Ajikobi noted the ethical dimension in the use of the digital tools, saying that the process involved in fact-checking must be transparent as digital tools adopted by fact-checking organisations must be “open and publicly acceptable.” When asked whether Africa Check developed digital tools for fact checking or subscribed only to third-party tools, David Ajikobi identified a major challenge of digital divide between countries in Africa and the West, especially in terms of technological innovation, proficiency in the use of digital tools, fact-checking manpower, and research. He added that Africa Check is currently funding initiatives to address these challenges especially in the area of media literacy (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020).
AFP (Nigeria), according to Segun Olakoyenikan, “has some self-developed digital tools that are only usable in-house. We also rely on third party tools.” While responding to a question concerning the mostly used fact-checking tools by AFP (Nigeria), Segun Olakoyenikan said: “There is no particular tool I use most or least. It all depends on the kind of misinformation circulating and how you decide to verify it. For picture-related verification, I would say Google reverse image is mostly used” On its website, AFP said it seeks throughout to share tips and tools to help others carry out fact-checking and verification. Apart from using traditional journalism skills, AFP Fact Check uses a number of simple tools to verify online information, some common sense and a lot of caution.(Researcher’s Interview July, 2020 with reference to https://factcheck.afp.com/fact-checking-afp and https://factcheck.afp.com/fact-checking-how-we-work).
One of the objectives of Dubawa is to conduct research and build technological tools that adequately identify, analyse and counter information disorder. Ebele Oputa, said that experience with infodemics around Covid-19 pandemic has further offered fact-checking organisations in Nigeria the opportunity to explore the digital tools to combat disinformation and misinformation about the deadly virus both online and offline. She explained that “fact-checking has different stages and at each stage, there are different tools that you need….So, you get information based on what you feed into the tool.” (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020 with reference to https://dubawa.org/about-us/).
The fact-checking organisations generally related their activities with technology:
Segun Olakoyenikan of AFP (Nigeria) explained this phenomenon based on his experience as a fact checker in Nigeria: “Fake news peddlers are getting more sophisticated with their disinformation strategy, so should fact-checkers be. Technological tools are being used to distort facts or fabricate total misleading contents which would require the same level of digital skills or tools to identify such false claims. So, for a fact-checker to be successful, then advancement in digital skills cannot be overlooked.” (Researcher’s Interview July, 2020). This assertion is in line with the position of Wardle (2019) calling for the adoption of technology to combat the scale of dis and misinformation.
The first fact checking organisation in Nigeria, Africa Check has a fair share of the experience with technological architecture in the country. The Nigeria Editor of Africa Check, David Ajikobi shared this experience: “Some of our mates who are in America for example are two three years above us…in terms of what they can do. In Nigeria, we are also being limited by….Internet. And don’t forget that as a fact checker for example, government intervention, censorship…we are also living in Nigeria where there is no power, electricity, there is no this, there is no that. All of those things will limit and limit your work and what you can do. I think the solution is that whatever tool that is coming up, it has to be everybody…that is why we always champion for open tools, so that everybody could use it….” (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020).
To Ebele Oputa, technology is at the centre stage of the work processes of Dubawa (Nigeria). Technology is deplored in identifying claims, the severity and how viral the claims had spread, flagging of such claims, dissemination of findings and media literacy. She put it this way: “From using technology to search for claims, to using technology to conduct the research, writing… it is through technological tools you get information, using your mobile phone to contact your contacts is still using technology. Internally we used Google Drive and Google Doc specifically for collaborative aspects for our writers to draft reports on Google Document and share it with the editor and together all people can work on that document even in writing and editing, it is still technology for real. And then we used technology to publish and proofread your fact-checking….Technology plays a big part in all the phases of fact-checking (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020).
Integrated Approach to Automated and Human Fact Checking:
The fact-checking organisations in Nigeria favour integrated approach when it comes to adopting Automated or human fact-checking. This position was hinged on the premise that the deficiency of human involvement in the fact-checking process will be taken care of by the automated intervention; while human-oriented fact-checking will complement the automated approach.
Segun Olakoyenikan shared the position of AFP (Nigeria) on automated-human fact-checking thus:
“I think both are mutually dependent. For instance, signatories to the International Fact-Checking Network’s code of principle have a chatbot, which have been preloaded with several thousands of fact-checking reports produced by the alliance. First is the human effect before it’s automated to deliver responses based on queries. But the good side is that it is a technological solution needed at this time when fact checkers are nearly overwhelmed with the increasing number of false claims circulating online” (Researcher’s Interview July, 2020).
Dubawa in writer’s interview with Ebele Oputa put it more succinctly: “For me, I am always against a one-sided approach…I always feel that the best solution is always a blend of various available techniques and tools. In that sense, I would not say one should take prominence over another one. I will say that there is a case for human-centred fact-checking and there is a place for automated fact-checking….So, I would say that the best decision will be a synergy between the two approaches, looking at the deficiencies and things that happened to human fact-check….And plug into those areas. That would be the best solution…”
Unlike the study of Stencel (2019) which finds out that in the United States, the establishment of independent and standalone fact-checking organisations are making waves than those affiliated to media organisations; the experience in Nigeria indicated otherwise. Except for Africa Check, the other two fact-checking organisations, Dubawa and AFP have affiliations with mainstream media organisations.
FACT-CHECKING AUDIENCE: Access to fact-check contents by audience
The fact-checking organisations in Nigeria interact with their audience both online and offline but the audience have access to the fact check contents mainly through online platforms. These include blogs, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They use multimedia contents through hyperlink, text, audio, video and infographics to push their findings to the audience. Preferences are given to the platforms that the fact-checking organisations consider prone to spreading dis and misinformation. In order to have access to audiences without online presence, the fact-checking organisations are partnering with some broadcast stations in Nigeria to share the fact-checking contents and engage in media, digital and information literacy through these organisations.
For Africa Check, apart from reaching the audience through its official online platforms, other fact-checking organisations have dedicated radio and television programmes as well as work with “partners that help push our contents across the country. Such as Guardian newspaper, Freedom F.M Kano, and Correct FM Lagos with Wazobia pidgin. So we use short videos, we do animation, we do short videos on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.” The Nigeria Editor of Africa Check, David Ajikobi further explained that Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram are the most used platforms by Africa Check to distribute its fact check contents as purveyors of dis and misinformation use the same platforms. He added that the text, voice notes, manipulated pictures and video formats are prominent for the spread of misinformation from random people (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020).
Ebele Oputa said that Dubawa received feedback from its audience through e-mail and employed a social media manager who manages the official social media platforms for the fact-checking organisation and whose duty also includes responding to feedback on the platforms. (Researcher’s Interview August, 2020).
PROGRAMMES, PROJECTS AND COLLABORATIONS
The fact-checking organisations in Nigeria are involved in different programmes, projects and collaborations especially on media, digital and information literacy. As pioneers, the fact-checking organisations also partner with international organisations, tech companies, media organisations and other stakeholders to combat information disorder in the country. They engaged in training, award, research, and advocacy to achieve their objectives. Some of the stakeholders the fact-checking organisations are collaborating with include International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), Google, Facebook, Non Governmental organisations among others. They also institute fellowship, awards, and outreach programmes as a way of promoting the culture and ideals of fact-checking. Owing to the model adopted by the fact-checking organisation in Nigeria (not-for-profit), they are funded majorly through grants, donations and collaborations.
In relation to this, one of the projects of Africa Check is Chatbot, deployed on WhatsApp to combat information disorder. David Ajikobi hinted that Africa Check will soon deploy its Google Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool that can automatically identify claims (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020).
Dubawa documented through its website that it is an independent fact-checking and verification project of PTCIJ, a non-governmental organisation that engages in a wide variety of projects that are not limited to fact-checking. Ebele Oputa said the fact-checking organisation is engaged in various programmes, projects and collaborations to combat information disorder in Nigeria. Dubawa engaged in media literacy and other programmes in order to “encourage a more engaged and information-literate citizenry who are capable of making informed decisions about issues that affect their development.” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020 with reference to https://dubawa.org/about-us/).
Dubawa also carried out programmes around the activities of international organisations as well as Covid-19 pandemic:
We also have done fact-checking around the UN. United Nations convention. Like last year when they had the General Assembly, we have a representative from Nigeria too, to do fact-checking around the claims that were told around government officials on the international scene. And we also this year did fact-checking on coronavirus to help reduce misinformation. We are also going to do election fact-checking because of the upcoming regional election in Nigeria. (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020).
Other forms of partnership by Dubawa with stakeholders in the fact-checking ecosystem include individuals, media, civic and technology organisations in the area of manpower development, finance, education, enlightenment, research, and training. Ebele Oputa said: “We have partnership with Facebook or through our Fellowship programme where we trained journalists already domicile in news organisations in Nigeria mentor them to produce fact checks for a duration of time to produce fact check and hope that they are able to set up fact-checking desks for the creation of fact-checking services. So, we have this type of project across as well.” On its website, Dubawa said its fact-checking project is supported by the most influential newsrooms and civic organisations in the country to help amplify the culture of truth in public discourse, public policy, and journalistic practice. On funding support, Dubawa made this public with a proviso that the funders have absolutely no influence on its judgments and editorial decisions. Dubawa is currently funded by the MacArthur Foundation which seeks to strengthen investigative and data-driven journalism in Nigeria and Heinrich Boll Foundation which funds our Fellowship Programme.” Facebook also funds some aspect of the project through its Third Party Fact Checker program (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020 with reference to https://dubawa.org/about-us/).
AFP Fact Check is also involved in projects and collaborations. AFP’s fact-checking operations receive direct support through Facebook’s third-party fact-checking programme. It considers stories flagged on Facebook as part of the material the organisation investigates. AFP is also a signatory of the IFCN code of principles. These include a commitment to: nonpartisanship and fairness, transparency of sources, transparency of funding and organisation, transparency of methodology and an open and honest corrections policy. (https://factcheck.afp.com/fact-checking-afp)
The activities, programmes and projects carried out by Africa Check, Dubawa and AFP in Nigeria qualify them as fact-checking organisations based on the yardstick set by Reporters’ Lab at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy that developed the parameter for classifying fact-checking organisations. These parameters according to Adair and Stencel (2016) including consistency in publishing of “articles, video or audio reports that verify the accuracy of claims made by prominent public figures and institutions; debunk rumors, hoaxes and other forms of misinformation that spread online; or review the status of political promises made by candidates and political parties.”
The interventions of the fact-checking organisations in combating information disorder in Nigeria also corroborate the assumptions of the agenda setting and Gate-Keeping theories. These outlets are setting their agenda through their fact-checking activities. Though the innovative technology especially Web 2.0 has further liberalised and pluralised information flow, the negative effect on the adoption for spread of dis and misinformation especially on digital public sphere has made the agenda setting and Gate-Keeping roles of the media more demanding. The twist in the redefinition and dynamics of these theories further brings to light the social responsibility of the media to come to the rescue as the society confronts information disorder.
The above data generated from the interview with representatives of selected fact-checking organisations in Nigeria showed the relationship in Agenda Setting, Gate-Keeping, Social Responsibility Theories, and Information Disorder in Nigeria. In other words, the revisiting of these theories and the need for media organisations to further integrate and promote its principles and assumptions in their activities is a model necessary at combating information disorder in Nigeria. This means that information will go through refined processes at multiple levels that will include all stakeholders who are expected to be armed with verification skills, discerning and critical minds. This approach is expected to be voluntary as the information flow is made to take a refined order. This is termed: Refined Information Flow and Order (RIFO).
The adoption of RIFO is expected to frustrate the efforts of the purveyors of disinformation and at the same time discourage the spreading of misinformation. This however should not be limited to journalists and mainstream media organisations, citizen journalists, social media influencers, and other levels of managers of information should adopt this model. The RIFO model could also be stepped down to the receptors of media messages. The audience, while creating or generating content, distribution or redistribution, must adopt the principles of gate-keeping, agenda setting and be socially responsible as a way of combating information disorder. In addition, this is when the idea of “Personal Sense of Responsibility” is required which expects all stakeholders in the era of RIFO to act with a sense of responsibility is dissemination and reception of information.
Gate-Keeping – Agenda Setting – Information Disorder – Social Responsibility = Refined Information Flow and Order (RIFO)
Folarin model of “Refined Information Flow and Order” – RIFO (2020)
CHALLENGES
With about five years in existence, fact-checking organisations are encountering some challenges in their attempt to combat the information disorder in Nigeria. Numerous challenges in respect of the fact-checking ecosystem in Nigeria have been discussed earlier. These are issues surrounding the history, structure, production process, technological issue, access to audience and projects. Though some of the issues are related to teething and institutional challenges, others are general societal problems. The fact-checking organisations identified some other specific challenges:
Exponential increase in the spread of dis and misinformation versus fact-checking efforts: The fact checking organisations and by extension professional fact checkers in Nigeria are few compared to the rate and sophistication of information pollution. This is one of the challenges confronting fact-checking organisations on the frontline of combating information disorder.
Segun Olakoyenikan of AFP (Nigeria) said that fact checkers in Nigeria are in “long battle against misinformation”, because “the number of false claims coming up keeps growing on a daily basis as fake news peddlers continue to devise new methods to misinform the public.” (Researcher’s Interview: July 2020).
David Ajikobi of Africa Check acknowledged the implication of the massive spread of dis and misinformation both online and offline, among other factors, limit the extent to which the fact-checking organisations can go because “it is not everything that you can fact check. You will only select those ones that….If I don’t fact check it, what is the impact going to be on the public? (Researcher’s Interview: August 2020).
The baseline study conducted by the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) on the media ecosystem in Nigeria found out that “there is a declining trust in media organisations in Nigeria. We also noticed that the quality of national discourse was also being watered down, a lot of conversation….are not for the benefits of society.” This challenge was what influenced the establishment of Dubawa partly to serve as a project that will build the capacity of journalists across Nigeria, so that people’s trust in the media will be restored. This form one of the project objective of Dubawa, equipping newsrooms with the skills and environment to make fact-checking and truth a norm in media houses through training and fellowships, so that eroding trust in media will be restored (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020 with reference to https://dubawa.org/about-us/).
Digital Divide and Technological Infrastructure
The challenges associated with information flow and exponential spread of dis and misinformation is also directly linked to issues of digital divides and technological infrastructure in Nigeria. The age-long phenomenon in the imbalance of information flow between developed and developing countries continued to pose threat to combating information disorder in the country. The problems of ownership of technology, adoption, domestication, proficiency of use and inadequate technological infrastructure in many African countries including Nigeria are some of the challenges to fact-checking organisations in the Continent. For these reasons, many of the fact-checking and digital tools used by fact checkers in Nigeria are third party tools. The fact-checking organisations in Nigeria are at the early stage of developing their own digital tools to aid their fact-checking operations.
Though Africa Check is investing in technology to address this challenge by developing the capacity of citizens, journalists, and other professionals in the area of digital literacy as well as developing digital tools to make its fact-checking efforts seamless, this still falls short of the magnitude of the information disorder it is confronting. KII 2 put it this way:
“In terms of the skill set, fact checking is still very much relatively still new. And in terms of technology and research, fact-checking is still a much of a global south thing…Then, the second one is that you will also see that there is a deficit of pieces of tools for people like us on this side…. An organisation for example in America can sit down to develop big tools…” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020).
KII 3 also state the position of Dubawa fact-checking organisation as regards technological architecture:
“For now, we haven’t really built our technological presence, so we use tools that have been created by others and we have access to this based on our affiliation…capacity network”. It is part of Dubawa objectives to build technological tools to combat information disorder (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020 with reference to https://dubawa.org/about-us/).
Lack of Awareness and Research on Fact-Checking
It was the consensus of the fact-checking organisations in Nigeria that there is a research gap when it comes to information disorder in the country. However, the fact-checking organisations who are pioneers in Nigeria are partnering with stakeholders to support and fund researchers to interrogate the information disorder phenomenon. They also submit that the level of awareness about fact-checking and verification efforts is not proportionate with the spread of dis and misinformation.
KII 3 is enthusiastic and interested in promoting local research that could unravel the “barrier towards why people do not care about misinformation. Or why we are not still reaching the population that we want to reach? Why does misinformation travel faster than true information?” Other questions considered essential to be relevant are: How do fact-checking organisations get people to know about their work? How do they enhance their distribution channel for people to know about their work? How do they promote their fact checks? The answers to these questions are expected to further understand the information disorder ecosystem. This is the more reason why Dubawa stated that one of its objectives is to conduct research to combat information disorder and build a body of knowledge around misinformation in Nigeria (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020 with reference to https://dubawa.org/about-us/).
Manpower and Capacity Building/Skill Sets
Though verification is considered part of the journalism genre, the institutionalisation of fact-checking and peculiar challenge of dis and misinformation in the digital age demand a high level of journalism skills that have been taken for granted. And the set skills required to be a fact-checker now go beyond mere reporting. The number of journalists with such skills in Nigeria are limited and therefore pose a challenge to the extent to which the stakeholders could combat the information disorder in the country. While Dubawa is responding to this challenge by training journalists in developing their verification and fact-checking skills; Africa Check advocates reorientation to convince media organisations, editors, and journalists in Nigeria that the verification and other fact-checking skills are required to optimally carry out their role as the Fourth Estate of the Realm. David Ajikobi put it this way:
“When I say, you can come and be a fact checker with us, people think that you are talking about special skills. But the truth is that in the 80s and as it is practiced, you have to verify. Everything you put in your newspaper has to be factually correct. Yes, you have to show your editor. Your editor will call you: ‘where did you see this one from?’ You have to show him, he has to cite it. So, fact-checking is not new, it is a critical part of journalism which is about verification. So, when people say fact-checking, fact-checking. It is a buzzword. If we have all agreed that it has to be accurate, balance, then, that is part of fact checking. (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020 with reference to https://dubawa.org/about-us/).
Complex multi-religious, multi-cultural diversity
The complex multi-religious and multi-cultural nature of Nigeria is considered a factor in the spread of dis- and misinformation. KII 2 asserted that traditionally, Nigeria just as many African countries “do not have a culture of asking for evidence” as it is considered disrespectful to ask for evidence from an elder or debunk their assumptions. Regarding such as referring to them as liars. “That culture of not holding power to account is…..What that means is that sometimes I have to fact check some people, some politicians where they would always be ..”Are you calling me a liar? There is a difference between calling someone a liar and saying that a particular statement you made about a particular issue is false.” He further narrated a personal experience to support this assertion. “In fact, biases come from a place where the Minister of Information is also where I was from. I am not close to him but my family is popular in that State. And I have had cases where I bump into him in Abuja…and he said: “You are the Ajikobi that has been calling me a liar? You can imagine if a public figure,… having a perception that a fact checker is calling him a liar…That is another challenge” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020).
He further noted the peculiar traditional environment of Nigeria as a challenge to fact-checking efforts in the country. Just as experience is the function of the environment, the context in which Nigeria operates is different to other countries. “Don’t forget that Nigeria is the most populous country…black nation in the world, we are multi-religion, multi-ethnic, we are multilingual. And also as a fact checker, you have to be aware of this context. And even in your fact checking process, you have to be deliberate to understand this” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020).
Similar challenge was noted by Ahinkorah, Ameyaw, Hagan, Seidu & Schack (2020) expressing concerns that these complexities such as “socio-cultural climate in Africa has engineered the spread of the Covid-19 related misinformation through propagation of unsubstantiated news.” Fact-checking organisations around the world understand these complexities and attempt to address them by employing fact checkers domiciled in the countries of operations with centralised approval of editorial contents. For instance, AFP Fact Check noted on its website that the journalists employed to conduct fact-checking of claims take into account local cultures, languages and politics and work with AFP’s bureaus worldwide to investigate and disprove false information, focusing on items which can be harmful, impactful and manipulative ( https://factcheck.afp.com/about-us).
Government and Political Interference – Policies, Law
Government and political interference through policies and laws are also identified as some of the challenges confronting fact-checking organisations in Nigeria. For example, the approach of the government to combating what it termed “hate speech and fake news” is greeted with suspicion and has been heavily criticised by media and civil society organisations. Further consideration of many proposed laws by the government relating to the “control” of the media landscape have been halted as there seems not to be a buy-in from major stakeholders. In addition, the ownership structure of many media organisations in the country with direct and indirect control or ownership by politicians and their cronies is also an hindrance to promote the culture of verification and fact-checking in the media organisations in Nigeria.
The Nigeria Editor of Africa Check, David Ajikobi, said fact checkers work has been affected by government intervention and censorship. He gave specific examples where political interference might affect the work of fact checkers in Nigeria:
If for example you have The Nation which Tinubu has interest in some people might say, if Tinubu owns The Nation for example and there is a fact-checking newsroom in it,…But the hallmark of fact checking is that it is not partisanship. So, it is like two arguments with pros and cons. So, if you say you want to have fact checking in ThisDay, owned by Nduka Obaigbena, like if it is pro one party or anti one party, some people might ask: ‘will the ownership not affect the claims that they fact check?’ Can you see what I am trying to say? That is also an argument of having a stand-alone fact checking organisation because of non partisanship ….At least no government will come and say, I collected N500,000 to kill a story or debar me from not publishing a story, no, no, no.It wouldn’t work like that. Because my salary doesn’t depend on one oga at one place or….It creates one form of independent and non-partisanship. Like I usually say when I am in conferences, I am not pro PDP, I am not pro APC. We are not anti-APC, we are not anti-PDP. We are just pro-fact. And the facts are the facts. You can twist it the way you want to twist it but they will not change but they will be there for you. Let me give you an example, the government for example did not release the unemployment figure for more than three to four to five quarters. They just recently released it. But the fact is, I mean, has the reality run away from us now? Even if you did not release the figure because you don’t want people to feel bad, but now the reality is there. It doesn’t change. The fact is that people are unemployed. People have increased, the …rate has increased (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020).
David Ajikobi also showed concerns over the understanding of the government about the information disorder, suggesting the blueprint that the Federal Government claimed to have needed to be reviewed to address the reality. He added that it was wrong for the government to equate hate speech with what it considered as fake news: “No, the thing is that if you go and look at the convention and definition of hate speech, it is different from disinformation….So, government need to come clean on what it want to do on disinformation and misinformation” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020).
Audience Cognitive Biases/Media, Information and Digital Illiteracy
Another challenge to the efforts of fact-checking organisations in combating information disorder are related to audience biases stimulated by media, information and digital illiteracy. Purveyors of disinformation maximally take advantage of this to use the unsuspecting audience to make themselves willingly available as an instrument of spreading misinformation. The fact- checking organisation had to incorporate media and information literacy into its programmes and project as one of the ways to address this challenge.
David Ajikobi shared his experience: “The first one is that people don’t understand the problem itself. When you go around to talk about the problem of disinformation and misinformation,…Until you make them realise how much impact it has on their lives before they realise. And people don’t see that they are part of the problem and they are also part of the solution. It is very hard to tell somebody that you are part of the problem and you are also part of the solution. It is also very difficult.” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020)
The fact-checking organisations in Nigeria are advocating a need for media and information literacy as they are training professionals and citizens to imbibe the culture of verification. For instance, Dubawa organised outreach programmes in secondary schools in the country to achieve this objective. The organisation also organised training for journalists and citizens to promote media and information literacy. Similarly, Africa Check in partnership with Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) training hundreds of people throughout the country on how to spot and debunk health related disinformation. And this is necessary because according to David Ajikobi, the situation is complex and an hydra-headed problem that required multi-trunk approach with the combination of other efforts with media and information literacy campaign to the extent of achieving a long term solution whereby everybody “start thinking like a fact checker even as from the age of five. You need to question everything, look for evidence, superior argument, facts and things like that. And it is not the job for professional fact checkers alone or editors alone …..That is what many people don’t want to hear.” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020).
SUSTAINABLE STRATEGIES: Models and Future Plan
Survival of Fact-checking organisations in Nigeria
To what extent do the challenges of running cost, due to the poor economic climate in the country, policies of government, complex information flow, among others highlighted so far be a threat to the survival of fact-checking organisations in Nigeria? Hope fact checking organisations will not be overwhelmed by the rot of misinformation and disinformation in Nigeria? Do you think Fact Checking Organisations will survive in Nigeria? When the researcher asks these questions from the selected interviewees, they are quick to answer that the fact-checking organisations will survive despite the challenges and teething problems. Though they gave various reasons for their conclusion but they are of the consensus that the fact-checking organisations in Nigeria are presently facing survival challenges.
According to Segun Olakoyenikan of AFP (Nigeria), the fact-checking organisations will survive the challenges because “there is a huge demand for truths in Nigeria, and you know the country’s media space is riddled with an avalanche of misinformation and all sorts of information disorder, which have dampened trusts in media organisations. These demands and the growing fake news culture would make fact-checking organisations thrive.” (Researcher’s Interview: July, 2020).
To Ebele Oputa of Dubawa, she sees no reason why fact-checking organisations in Nigeria will not survive as she believes that if stakeholders are looking at only the problem, there will never be a solution to anything. “If the media organisations are surviving, there is no reason why fact checking organisations cannot survive…..whatever circumstances they are facing. She however noted that limiting activities of fact-checking organisations to mere publishing findings of claims on websites is not sustainable, and such might not survive the complex media landscape. This is because “fact-checking in its broad sense, which involves media literacy, which involves active advocacy, which involves having stakeholders meeting with the government and getting their buy-in, is the one that is sustainable. Because at the end of the day, fact-checking is beneficial to everybody including the government.”
She further explained that the government need not view fact-checking work in the negative light as it provides the platform to promote accountability, set the record straight and gives credence to truthful endeavours: “When the opposition parties are spreading false rumours about the current government, it is fact checking that made people to know that it is not right. So, if the government can understand that fact checking could be used for the benefit and as well to hold them accountable, then they will not oppose it as they used to. They think that fact checking is just a way to change them but not. The truth is the truth regardless of people it hinders.” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020)
Models for Sustainability and Future Plans:
In a bid to combat the information disorder in Nigeria, the institutionalisation of this journalism genre witnessed the establishment of fact-checking organisations and setting up of fact-checking desks in existing media organisations. Presently, these are the models adopted in Nigeria. The question then arises about which of the models should be prioritised at the formation stage of the institutionalisation of fact-checking in Nigeria? There are fact-checking organisations and there is also advocacy for fact check desks in existing media organisations. Should stakeholders favour establishment of fact-checking organisations because of the enormity of the challenges of information disorder in Nigeria or the challenges of dis and misinformation should still be addressed through setting of fact-checking desks in existing media organisations?
Ebele Oputa of Dubawa believes that priority should be given to the establishment of fact-checking desks rather than fact-checking organisations because fact-checking is not alien to the media space as copy editors and journalists engaged in verification, copy editing and gatekeeping in the course of their work. She added that due to the magnitude and scale of dis and misinformation, few fact-checking organisations as it presently witnessed in Nigeria, cannot alone combat information disorder in the country. “So, we need more people who are more aware of the local realities.” She further argued that “media organisations may not have the resources to set up sole fact checking organisations. Specifically, we are still trying to build a business case….And remember that media organisations are for profit…Media organisations are set up for public good, they need the profit to run…. the best thing to do would be to look for an existing media organisations” and integrate fact-checking into their operations.
Between establishment of fact-checking organisations and having fact checking desks, what preference would you suggest to address the issue of information disorder in Nigeria? While responding to this question, David Ajikobi of Africa Check, subscribes to the setting up of fact-checking units in existing media organisations in Nigeria but expresses worry over influence of ownership and control of many of the legacy media organisations. He argued that the culture of debunking claims and fact-checking will be inculcated and transferred to the other staff through the units: “Some big media organisations have realised this. AFP has an AFP fact check which they are putting across the world. In every AFP office, they hire a fact checker…in most of their dealings, BBC too is doing the same thing to have BBC fact check across their newsrooms. It just shows you that ..may be essentially, that is the model that will work…. it is easier to do in the bigger newsroom stand …”
He, however, clarified that this does not stop the establishment of fact-checking organisations as they also have a key role to play in combating information disorder, adding that this is the reason fact-checking organisations in Nigeria are assisting newsrooms in the country to set up fact-checking desks: “As I speak to you now, I think we’ve helped about three to four newsrooms to do that. We are helping more, and more is on its way.” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020).
While fact-checking organisations in Nigeria are experimenting with two models, there are other models yet to be fully explored along the lines of the classifications by Stencel (2019). These include models whereby fact-checking organisations are “affiliated with think tanks and academic institutions.” Though Dubawa and Africa Check operate projects closely related to this, they have not fully executed these models as highlighted by Stencel (2019). For instance, Dubawa is partnering with researchers and tertiary institutions to interrogate the information disorder ecosystem in Africa. Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) also established “CampusReporter”, a “journalism program built on evidence based ethical reporting and youth engagement initiatives in Campuses around Nigeria.” Similarly, Africa Check supports students’ training fact-checking projects to build the culture of verification in students of tertiary institutions. It also made a tertiary institution in Africa as one of its operational offices especially for translation. According to its website, Africa Check’s head office is based at the Journalism Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, while its French language site is run by a team based at the EJICOM journalism school in Dakar, Senegal, since 2015. (https://africacheck.org/about-us/)
In the same vein, Stencel (2019) also identified a model whereby the fact-checking organisations “that are not part of a larger media organization include independent, standalone organizations, both for-profit and non-for-profit . Some of these fact-checkers are subsidiary projects of bigger organizations that focus on civil society and political accountability.” In the case with Nigeria, all the fact-checking organisations are not-for-profit compared to fact-checking in some countries that operate on the basis of profit model.
In addition, the formation stage of fact-checking organisations in the United States have shown similar patterns with the Nigeria experience in which, according to the study of Stencel (2019), “a bit more than half of fact-checkers are part of a media company (106 of 188, or 56%).” She however noted that “the percentage has been dropping over the past few years, mostly because of the changing business landscape for media companies in the United States.”. The study also finds out that as at 2018, 87 percent of fact-checking organisations in “the U.S. were connected to media companies (41 out of 47)” but reduced to 65 percent (39 out of 60) in 2019. Which indicated that “as the number of fact-checkers in the U.S. has grown, fewer of them have ties to those companies.”
Future plans of fact-checking organisations in Nigeria
The fact-checking organisations in Nigeria have a long term plan to make the foundation of fact-checking strong in Africa. Dubawa, AFP and Africa Check intend to expand their scope and operations to wider audiences, stakeholders and borders beyond the chores of Nigeria. They are going to be more proactive and aggressive in combating information disorder in the continent.
By 2030, Dubawa intends to expand its fact-checking project to more communities, engage in more research, stakeholders’ engagement and expand beyond Nigeria: “We started with Ghana and intend to expand to other countries…hoping that we have a more literate society. People will not just rely on fact checking organisations. They should be able to question the news they consumed themselves, aware of their biases, and ….in the way of the information they consume.” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020)
The future plans of Africa Check is to expand with a major goal of making “sure that the culture of fact checking is inculcated and indoctrinated at least across the media and across the country.” (Researcher’s Interview: August, 2020).
According to the database of global fact-checking sites, a project of the Reporters’ Lab at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy, fact-checking organisations in Africa increased from 4 to 9 from February, 2018 to June, 2019 when the database was updated (Stencel, 2019). This indicated that the numbers of fact-checking organisations in Africa increased by 56 percent within a year. This data indicated that the future plans as defined by Dubawa, AFP and Africa Check are already on track.
Conclusion
This research is a peep into the fact-checking ecosystem in Nigeria, which is about five years old in 2020, documenting the evolution of the fact-checking organisations and efforts at combating information disorder in the country. This study established that there are gaps to be filled in the information war, and stakeholders must brace up to the challenges. The media organisations on the frontlines of combating information disorder have laid a strong foundation amidst numerous challenges. For this effort to achieve its long term objectives, sustainability should be the watchword.
In the course of this interrogation through gathering of qualitative data from the pioneers of fact-checking in Nigeria (Dubawa, Africa Check and AFP), it was noted that virtually all the fact-checking organisations in Nigeria have affiliations with mainstream media organisations. They were established in response to the challenges associated with information disorder. There is a balance in ownership in terms of indigenous, continental, and international affiliations.
The three organisations that pioneered fact-checking in Nigeria operate a flexible organisational structure with few staff and are affiliated with parent organisations. Though these organisations have different ownership structures, they also have similar objectives.
The production process of the selected fact-checking organisations includes identification of claims, verifications, debunking of dis and misinformation. Also, the tools for fact-checking claims are mostly third-party tools while some of them are working on self-developed digital tools in the area of surveillance, editing, communication and audience engagement. The issue of technology featured prominently in all the fact-checking processes in Nigeria. It was identified as a catalyst to the spread of dis and misinformation and at the same time a veritable instrument of combating information disorder. Some other related variables in this respect are integrated approach to automated and human fact-checking as well as issues surrounding audience access to fact-checking contents.
The fact-checking organisations in Nigeria are also involved in programmes, projects and collaborations to combat information disorder in the country. They partnered with international organisations, tech companies, media organisations and other stakeholders in the area of media, information and digital literacy. In an attempt to address the challenges of information disorder, the programmes and projects of the fact-checking organisations exposed the relevance of agenda setting, Gate-Keeping and Social Responsibility Theories given how sophisticated the purveyors of disinformation have gone. The revisiting of these theories and the need for media organisations to further integrate and promote their principles and assumptions is a model necessary at combating information disorder in Nigeria. The result from this study led to the proposition of Refined Information Flow and Order (RIFO). Its adoption is expected to suffocate the strategies adopted in information disorder in order to reduce the negative effect of information pollution.
Rasaki (2020) had made similar recommendations calling on the media to fulfill its social responsibilities to the society whereby the fact-checking organisations would “create in-house fact-checking content and processes, specific guidelines and skills, as well as set fact-checking agenda on their own.” It is therefore essential for fact-checking organisations in Nigeria to adopt RIFO and push the concept in its advocacy programmes and projects in the area of media, information and digital literacy, if they intend to achieve the long term goal of influencing everyone to imbibe the culture of verification and fact-checking.
The challenges of the fact-checking organisations in Nigeria according to findings of this study include exponential increase in the spread of dis and misinformation compared to fact-checking efforts; challenge of digital divides and technological infrastructure; low awareness and research on fact-checking; manpower and capacity building; complex multi-religious and multi-cultural diversity, government and political interference.
The fact-checking organisations in Nigeria are already adopting strategies for sustainability. They all have confidence that these models will not only make them survive amidst challenges highlighted already in this study but are also sustainable based on the future plans they mapped out. These they intend to execute through planned programmes and projects by expanding the reach of the fact-checking organisations and fact-checking desks in existing media organisations in Nigeria and by extension other African countries.
As a response to concerns of inadequate literature in Africa in relation to this phenomenon, this research is a contribution to knowledge and to a larger extent fills the research gap in understanding fact-checking ecosystems in Nigeria and documents the efforts of media organisations on the frontline of combating information disorder in Nigeria. This study is expected to be a reference point to stakeholders who are concerned about the best approach of winning the information war against audiences biases; and media, information and digital illiteracy for the good of the society. The concerns raised by Adekunle (2020) is partly addressed by this study, however, there is still need for fact-checking organisations in Nigeria in relation to other models about improving research on information disorder in the country and the significance of further collaboration with tertiary institutions as identified by Stencel (2019).
Meanwhile, further studies are still required in the interrogation of the information pollution in Nigeria by combining quantitative and qualitative research designs to explore the behavioural patterns of purveyors of disinformation and audience who spread such misinformation. In addition, it is important to probe further the issue of information disorder, digital divides, and technology.
References
Adekunle A. (2020). Fact Check Research: Existing Literature, Studies and Lessons. A paper presented atthe Virtual Dubawa Fellowship Training Programme by Premium Times Center for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) for the 2020 Dubawa Fellows in Nigeria and Ghana, held between 18th to 23rd July, 2020.
Adeniran R. (2020a). WhatsApp, Facebook, and blogs lead as sources of covid-19 claims fact-checked on Dubawa. Retrieved from https://dubawa.org/whatsapp-facebook-and-blogs-lead-as-sources-of-covid-19-claims-fact-checked-on-dubawa/
Adeniran R. (2020b). Misinformation sharing and behavioural pattern of Nigerians on viral Stella Immanuel video. Retrieved from https://dubawa.org/misinformation-sharing-and-behavioural-pattern-of-nigerians-on-viral-stella-immanuel-video/
Ahinkorah BO, Ameyaw EK, Hagan JE Jr, Seidu A-A and Schack T (2020) Rising Above Misinformation or Fake News in Africa: Another Strategy to Control COVID-19 Spread. Front. Commun. 5:45. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2020.00045 Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00045/full
Brandtzæg, P.B., Lüders, M., Spangenberg, J., Rath-Wiggins, L., & Følstad, A. (2015). Emerging Journalistic Verification Practices Concerning Social Media, Journalism Practice, DOI: 10.1080/1751278.2015.1020331
On July 28, Nigerian social media space was flooded with several versions of a video of a woman, identified as Stella Immanuel, among a group of United States’ doctors, vehemently making unsubstantiated claims about hydroxychloroquine and the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic, while dismissing other promoted preventive behaviours. The video went viral globally, generating tens of million in views across social media platforms. The video added to the streams of misinformation on the pandemic with the potential to hinder progress being made in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. The video was fact-checked by several fact-checking organisations and they all dismissed the claims. In this piece, we examine the virality of the video among respondents, their convictions on the claims made and likely behaviour in the possibility of suspected COVID-19 infection. Our findings supported virality of the video with more than 90 percent being aware of the video, but with limited shares among respondents. Despite repeated fact-checks, those who still believed claims made in the video were found more likely to try hydroxychloroquine than those who do not. Respondents mostly expressed positive views towards wearing facemasks to limit the spread of the virus. The virality of the video compared to its fact-checks supports the need to stop misinformation from spreading in the earliest possible time. Hence, fact checkers must continuously be alert to track misinformation in the public space and stop its spread immediately.
Introduction
Among frequently shared misinformation about the coronavirus is the controversial use of hydroxychloroquine either as a curative or preventive measure to the ravaging pandemic. This was recently heightened with the viral video of a group that called itself America’s Frontline Doctors. On July 27, members of the group appeared before the United States Supreme Court in branded white coats and made a series of claims dismissing official response and measures to curtail the pandemic. The choice of the Supreme Court frontage was probably to lend credence to the group.
Among vehement speakers at the event is a controversial Nigerian-trained US-based doctor, Stella Immanuel, who made unsubstantiated claims regarding hydroxychloroquine as a cure to COVID-19 and dismissed wearing of face masks. Days later, Stella Immanuel claimed she was on a spiritual mission to save the world. Others in the video might also be of questionable personality, with this report indicating little evidence most had worked as COVID-19 frontline workers as suggested by the group’s name.
The video has since been debunked by fact-checkers (e.g. Dubawa, Africa Check, Politifact), confirming that hydroxycloroquine is not yet approved as a cure for COVID-19, since research is still ongoing to test the efficacy of the drug. In this piece, we examine how selected Nigerians perceived this viral video and their subsequent reaction following the “FALSE” verdict of fact-checkers. Specifically, we examine the virality of the video among respondents and their perception of the claims made before and after reading any of the fact-checks.
Method
This study adopted the online survey method using google form to prepare a 21-item questionnaire. The questionnaire’s link was shared through WhatsApp messaging app for people to respond to, with an additional message for recipients to help share among their contacts. Responses were gathered over a two-week period from Saturday, August 8 to Saturday August 22, 2020. A total of 222 respondents filled the questionnaire from across the country and beyond, but with the South-west recording dominance. The respondents comprise 54 percent male and 46 percent female. The age distribution of respondents is presented in the pie chart below.
Figure 1
Findings
Findings from this study support the virality of the video. Ninety percent of respondents confirmed familiarity with the video. Seven percent said they were not aware of the video while about 3 percent were unsure if they had seen the video. Majority of respondents confirmed seeing the video on more than one social media platform. Less than 20 percent confirmed sharing the video. WhatApp and Facebook led single platforms through which people saw the video.
Figure 2
Across age groups, 80 to 100 percent of respondents confirmed seeing the video. The elderly population (above 60 years) more readily shared the video. Half of respondents over 60 years confirmed sharing the video.
Figure 3
Figure 4
Respondents mostly expressed neutrality in believing her claims, but with more denouncing her claims than believing it. Those neutral about the claims and those with higher belief in the claims shared the video more than those with less conviction about the claims. Some of those who believe her claims noted they were persuaded by her convincing oratory which according to them was “detailed with proof.” Other reasons for believing her claims were confirmation of their previous suspicion of a cure, lingering controversies within the scientific community, support based on success in clinical trials locally and shared experiences of recovered covid-19 patients Those who considered the claim a hoax noted their ingenuity of covid-19 misinformation and said they considered the “staged event” a “political propaganda” with unsubstantiated claims which should be viewed with scepticism, among others.
Figure 5
Soon after the video went viral, other social media posts emerged to counter the claims in the video even before fact checks were published on the claims. One hundred and forty-six (146) respondents confirmed reading the countering social media posts even though the majority still remained resolute in their beliefs on the claims made.
Figure 6
In the days following the release of the video, several fact checking organisations published fact checks on claims made in the video, amid other elements such as the so-called America’s Frontline Doctors, and individual members who featured in the video. Almost Forty-four percent (43.9%; n=94) of respondents confirmed awareness of the video fact-check while a slightly higher percentage (44.4%, n=95) claimed not to be aware. Another 12 percent were unsure of themselves. Of the 94 respondents who confirmed awareness of the fact-checks, only 68 percent confirmed reading it.
Respondents mostly became aware of fact checks on the video after seeing online posts of fact check debunking claims made in the video. Many also found out about it through shared posts on the fact checks or were notified by social media platforms. Few respondents reported learning about the fact checks through news mention mostly on notable news media organisations such as Cable News Network (CNN) and Channels TV.
How respondents knew about the fact-checking?
Percentage of Respondents aware of fact-checking on the video
I saw the post of the fact-checked article
36%
Someone shared the fact-checked article with me
30%
I was notified on social media
27%
News media mention
7%
Total(n)
100%(94)
Table 1: How respondents aware of fact-checking of the video knew about it
Respondents in the study were neutral in supporting fact-checkers’ verdict on claims made in the video. The greatest percentage (35%) of respondents gave average scores to their support of the false verdict of fact checkers. However, the percentage of those supporting the verdict (Rated 4 and 5) are generally higher than those opposing it (Rated 1 and 2). Those opposing fact checkers’ verdict confirmed their likelihood to take hydroxychloroquine (or in combination other drugs) to prevent COVID-19 in contrast to those supporting it. Similarly, those indecisive (rated 3) and those not supporting fact-checkers’ verdict (rated 1 and 2) were found more likely to self-medicate with hydroxychloroquine if they suspect they might be infected with COVID-19.
Figure 7
Respondents expressed diverse views on promoted behaviours in the video. Majority of respondents simply expressed support for wearing facemask while a few more supported the idea with notable caution. Another dominant view focused on its preventive capability, emphasising its need to curb the spread of the virus. However, some considered the preventive ability of facemask to be relative based on specific circumstances. Less dominant views considered wearing facemask simply as a civil behaviour in obedience to official directive. Others deemphasised its necessity in curbing the virus, noting it generally filters the air we breathe in and prevents common air-borne disease. Few respondents considered it unnecessary and/or ineffective in limiting the spread of the virus while few others focused on its limitations and considered it to be hazardous suggesting it might be risky for some with underlying breathing challenges. Others were indifferent or considered wearing facemask as an individual’s choice.
Views on wearing masks
Frequency
Percentage
Support the idea
80
38.3
Preventive
77
36.8
Official directive
12
5.7
General prevention
11
5.3
Support the idea with caution
11
5.3
Relatively preventive
5
2.4
Ineffective / unnecessary
5
2.4
Hazardous
3
1.4
Indifferent
3
1.4
Others
2
1.0
Total
209
100.0
Table 2: Themes in Respondents’ views on wearing masks
Figure 8
Respondents sharing video?
Respondents’ sharing fact-check?
Total
Yes
No
Yes
6%
12%
18%
No
13%
69%
82%
Total(n)
19%(37)
81%(159)
100%(196)
Table 3: Respondents’ sharing of the video and its fact-check?
Generally, the level of information sharing on the video appears to be minimal among respondents. As noted in table 10, the extent to which respondents shared the original video and its subsequent fact checks is minimal, occurring in less than 20 percent in both cases.
Conclusion
Findings from the study above confirm earlier observations that fact checks do not often attain the virality of misinformation posts they countered. As noted by Funke (2019), this need not discourage fact checkers as there have also been several promising results on potential of well-written fact checks to change people’s misconceptions. Fact-checkers must learn to debunk misinformation without further promoting the misinformation, by limiting detailed references to the debunked claims.
Efforts of giant social media platforms, though commendable, need to be intensified to stop the spread of misinformation as early as possible. For instance, the viral video examined in this study had been viewed more than 14 million times on Twitter and 16 million times on Facebook before its removal. Despite that, it is still likely available among millions of social media users who had downloaded it to their device’s memory while still available. No doubt, the number of views would have been much higher had it been left online. Fact checkers thus have to be increasingly alert to stem the spread of misinformation through prompt publication of their fact checks and aggressive promotion of their fact checks.
There have been studies conducted on what exactly constitutes “fake news” and its variants. Researchers have looked into the Nigerian examples of ‘fake news’, its mode of transmission, the reasons it spreads in Nigeria, its impact on our democracy as well as possible structural solutions to the menace.
Yet, there is a need for a holistic view of the issues around the scourge within the Nigerian context. This article adopts the method of contextual analysis of a selected studies, situating the studies within the Nigerian milieu, assessing the positions of the authors, experts, readers (including offline and online audience) and other texts to understand the scourge.
The study finds out that ‘fake news’ thrives in Nigeria in its different variants. These variants include misinformation, disinformation and mal-information. It finds out that the nation’s culture of ‘closed’ (as opposed to open) governance, which thrives on official secrecy and dearth of timely official information is a recipe for the scourge to spread. It also finds out that increased Nigeria’s population on social media and other digital space is an escape route from muffled voices in the mainstream; an avenue to create, share and distribute contents of all sorts, many of which populate the misinformation ecosystem in Nigeria.
This study’s contribution to knowledge is underscored in how it justaposes selected past research on ‘fake news’ in Nigeria and analyses contextual factors and impacts of fake news proliferation. The study therefore recommends among other deliverables, aggressive engagements with online and social media users whose increased media literacy will help reduce the spread of ‘fake news’ in Nigeria.
Introduction
Collins dictionary says “fake news” is “false, often sensational information disseminated under the guise of news reporting” (independent.co.uk). Ethical Journalism Network says “fake news” is information deliberately fabricated and published with the intention to deceive and mislead others into believing falsehood or doubtful messages. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) defines fake news as “completely false information, photos or videos purposefully created and spread to confuse or disinform (Umaru Pate, et al, 2019).
New insights have thrown up the reasons the term should be explained, rather than be defined because of the damage or its impact on the legitimacy of news media. One of these voices was Cherilyn Ireton and Julie Posetti (2018) who posited, in their UNESCO report that “fake news” and whatever it represents revolve round three typologies: Misinformation, Disinformation, and mal-information. In their position, they said:
It can be helpful, however, to propose that misinformation is information that is false, but the person who is disseminating it believes that it is true. Disinformation is information that is false, and the person who is disseminating it knows it is false. It is a deliberate, intentional lie, and points to people being actively disinformed by malicious actors. A third category could be termed mal-information; information, that is based on reality, but used to inflict harm on a person, organisation or country
The above description shows different levels of information disorder ecosystem.
One, it shows “fake news” as a form of misinformation that contains misleading content;
a form of disinformation that thrives on false context, imposter content, manipulated and fabricated content;
It can also be a form of mal-information which highlights some content around hate speech, stereotype and blackmail among others.
One or more of this information disorder have pervaded our national lives. They have infiltrated the media, government institutions, democratic and development agencies, private sectors and civil societies. There have been studies conducted on what exactly constitutes “fake news” and its variants. However, there have been more raging questions around misinformation ecosystem than researchers have been able to provide answers to. What is the recurring dimension of the mode of transmission in Nigeria? What has been deduced as the factors influencing the spread in Nigeria? What are the impacts of continued spread and transmission of false information on our democracy as well as possible structural solutions to the menace?. This study seeks to harmonise the findings of the existing literature to provide answers to the above questions. Sequel to the foregoing, the objectives of this study include:
1. To review existing literature which has covered the scope of the typology of misinformation ecosystem in Nigeria;
2. To highlight cases of information disorder in Nigeria;
3. To identify from existing literature the reasons for the spread of misinformation, its mode of transmission and its impacts on the Nigerian democratic setting.
Contextual Analysis:
This study relies on the method of contextual analysis of a selected studies, situating the studies within the Nigerian milieu, assessing the positions of the authors, experts, readers (including offline and online audience) and other texts to understand the scourge. Gisele Marie Tierney (1986) adopted this method as developed by Scheflen (1973) and Jones and Yarbrough (1985), and also adapted it to accommodate the distinct elements of communication strategy use in the context of dyadic interactions.
Contextual analysis is simply an analysis of a text that helps us to access that text within the context of its historical and cultural setting , but also in terms of its textuality or the quality that characterises the text. Leveraging on how contextual analysis works, researchers most often rely on some critical questions that will aid their work. These questions include: what does the text reveal about itself? What does the text tell us about its audience? What are the author’s intentions? What is the occasion for this text? Is the text calling for actions? Can we identify any non-textual circumstances that affected the creation and reception of the text?
In essence, contextual analysis as a concept reveals the social, political, cultural, economic, philosophical and aesthetic conditions that existed at the time and place when the text was created. Gisele Marie Tierney (1986) says “contextual analysis provides a necessary cross-situational approach to communication research”, aiding researcher to make decisions regarding which variables to be addressed after data have been collected
Victoria Phelps (2015) argues that when one analyses a piece using contextual analysis, one focuses on the environment in which the text was produced. Others key areas to focus on include some parameters that may explain why the author holds a certain stance. Since the issue around misinformation ecosystem is understood differently, depending on the context, the adoption of contextual analysis by this study is justified. In some settings, fake information appears mostly as hoax, satire and parodies and contained in audio-visual format. All these will be discussed and understood differently from others mostly in written format. For instance, much of the fake information posted on the internet during the 2016 presidential election in America appeared in written text and recorded segments (Denise-Marie Ordway, 2017). In Nigeria, study has shown official personalities and political actors were found to spread fake information during the 2019 presidential election (Paul Anderson, 2019).
This study seeks to build on the existing literature by harmonising their findings on ‘fake news’ as well as proposed solutions to curb its spread. Umaru Pate et al (2019) finds out that “fake news” spread because there is general distrust of elites, leaders and politicians by majority of Nigerians, sensationalization of fake news disseminated for economic, political, and cultural reasons, especially on social media and the desperation by politicians, ethnic and religious jingoists, foreign interests and mischief makers to generate fake news for influence or to persuade the audience. Cherilyn Ireton and Julie Posetti (2018) also opine that the spread of disinformation and misinformation is made possible largely through social networks and social messaging, which begs the question of the extent of regulation and self-regulation of companies providing these services. David M.J et al (2018) leverage on the social and computer science research regarding belief in fake news and the mechanism by which it spreads. Thay find that the rise of ‘fake news’ has not only taken a politically-oriented incarnation but also highlights the erosion of long standing institutional bulwark against misinformation in the internet age.
Just as Denise-Marie Ordway (2017) pulled together academic studies to help newsrooms better understand information ecosystem in Europe and America, as well as its impacts, this study also digs into the psychological and socio-political context of the Nigerian experience of various authors, contextualising their thoughts on the problem in order to find a common ground on its solutions. As Denise-Marie opines, news media has written a lot about fake news and other forms of misinformation, but scholars are still trying to understand it — for example, how it travels and why some people believe it and even seek it out .
The Nigerian Context
A Study conducted by the Center for Democracy and Development and the University of Birmingham on WhatsApp’s role during Nigeria’s 2019 elections, cited parents and grandparents as the “biggest sharers” of misinformation (QuartsAfrica, 2019). Others such as jokers, scammers, politicians, conspiracy theorists, insiders, relatives and celebrities are among the perpetrators of misinformation (BBC, 2020). Quite a number of hoax being spread in Nigeria include:
A false report peddled after the 2015 general elections that the Independent National Electoral Commission had determined that under-age youth in northern Nigeria had voted in the elections. The claim caused a serious uproar among the public and opposition parties (Amobi, 2019);
A tweet by President Buhari’s Special Adviser on Social Media, who in the lead to 2019 election posted a video on Twitter which showed the president’s supporters at a big rally when in reality the images were from a religious gathering the year before was an example of disinformation (Paul Anderson, 2019).
Another example of disinformation was a tweet by the same presidential aid accusing Mr Abubakar of sharing food and money during his campaigning. It came with a photo of food packs with money attached and a caption saying: “Keep them in poverty, then give them handouts. Atiku in Sokoto yesterday.” (Paul Anderson, 2019)
Fake News: Why it spreads in Nigeria
The growth of Nigerian population has witnessed an alarming rate from about 40million in 1960 to approximately 200million in 2019 (World Bank, 2019). This means the quantum of information needed by the citizens to make informed choices should alos be upscaled. On the contrary and given this huge figure, what has happened is a weakened and ill-informed populace. one major issue confronting the nation is the mode of governance that is shrouded in secrecy, with no timely and adequate information about the running of the state. So, where the public cannot access factual and reliable information either from the government or the media, it is expected that rumour, hoaxes, falsehood and outright lies fill the gap. With government and state actors, having muffled the public voices in the mainstream, and with the democratization of the digital space, millions of Nigerians have found willing collaborators in the social media, search engines and other enable sites to produce, distribute, share information and form communities. Some of the practical reasons “fake news” spread in Nigeria have been highlighted.
Umaru Pate et al (2019) state that “fake news” spread because there is:
General distrust of elites, leaders and politicians by majority of Nigerians.
Absence or most often late arrival of official information on issues.
Sensationalization of fake news disseminated for economic, political, and cultural reasons, especially on social media;
Desperation by politicians, ethnic and religious jingoists, foreign interests and mischief makers to generate fake news for influence or to persuade the audience;
High level of authoritative lies from government sources at all levels.
Mode of Transmission
Greater percentage of misinformation in Nigeria is transmitted via the internet, particularly on social media, judging from Amobi (2019) that instant messaging platforms are among the greatest purveyors of misinformation and disinformation and that “false claims are on the rise in Nigeria, partly because of citizen journalism, where there is stiff competition to be the first to publish information”. With the population of Nigerian internet and social media users witnessing a surge in recent times, this makes our democracy more susceptible to misinformation disoder.
According to Datareportal (2020), as at January 2020, there were 85.49million internet users in Nigeria, a number increased by 2.2million (at 2.6%) between 2019 and 2020. Taking from the above statistics, 27 million Nigerians were social media users as at January 2020 with an increase of 3.4million (at 14%) between April 2019 and January 2020. The take away from the above implies the level of engagement on the part of Nigerians with the digital and socia media. On this note, we can then draw a connection between the American context where most fake news spread via the internet in written text and recorded segments (Denise-Marie Ordway, 2017), and the Nigerian context where study has shown official personalities and political actors were found to spread fake information using the social media (Paul Anderson, 2019).
Fro instance, statistics on the presence on social media show that WhatsApp is the most-used social media platform (94%) by Nigerians, followed by Facebook (87%), YouTube (76%), and Instagram. Others include (67%) FB messenger (66%), Twitter (50%), LinkedIn (33%), SnapChat (26%), Pinterest (21%), Skype (14%), Tic Tok (13%), We-Chat (5%), ReDoIt (5%), Viber (5%), Tumber (5%) and Slack (3%).
This explains the level of internet penetration in Nigeria and how viral messages can travel in the digital space within a few hours. This also explains why the government and other critical stakeholders need to double down on media literacy targeting Nigerians, particularly young people who are very active on social media to know what to share, when to share, how to verify every trending information.
Table showing most-used social media platforms by Nigerians as at January, 2020
WhatsApp
Facebook
YouTube
Instagram
FB messenger
Twitter
LinkedIn
SnapChat
Pinterest
Skype
TicTok
We Chat
ReDoIt
Viber
Tumber
Slack
94%
87%
76%
67%
66%
50%
33%
26%
21%
14%
13%
5%
5%
5%
5%
3%
Courtesy: datareportal.com
“Fake News”: Its Impacts in Nigeria
Experts have construed negative impacts of fake news under three categories:
First, the problem of increasing fragmentation and politicisation; ‘
Second, the promotion of “safe news” at the expense of difficult or challenging news stories;
Third, the need for credible sources to allocate ever-diminishing resources to debunking inaccurate information (which poses both financial and reputational costs).—(Information Society Project, 2017)
Fake news is weaponized by many actors to further widen our national woes for personal and selfish goals. These actors include politicians, spin doctors, social-cultural, ethnic and religious bigots. The Information Society project at Yale Law School (2017) highlights impact of fake news on any democratic system:
fake news “devalues and delegitimizes voices of expertise, authoritative institutions, and the concept of objective data—all of which undermines society’s ability to engage in rational discourse based upon shared facts”.
Mr. Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture underscores impacts of fake news on democratic institutions like the media:
“For the media, the epidemic is even worse. This is because fake news, in most cases, is designed to misinform, undermines confidence in the media. And once the people lose confidence in the media, the society is in trouble.” (Premium Times, 2018).
Structural Solutions to Fake News in Nigeria
While the Nigerian government has launched a “public campaign against fake news” (Premium Times, 2018) and has also launched “campaigns to media houses and cooperation with Facebook and Google” (AllAfrica, 2020), other experts have added some therapies, and these include:
Supporting the increasing number of fact-checkers (Paul Anderson, 2019)
Need for increased media literacy for the public, particularly young people (Umare Pate, et al, 2019)
Other social media platforms should copy from Twitter in restricting number of text user can post and identification of a verified account (Fredrick Wilson and Muhammad Umar, 2019)
Journalists… should be very careful about making mistakes.( Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, BBC 2020)
Media should bring the work of independent fact-checking groups to larger audiences (Cherilyn Ireton and Julie Posetti, Unesco, 2018))
Conclusion
This article has shown that “fake news” in Nigeria takes the form of misinformation, disinformation and mal-information and has also highlighted some case studies within the Nigerian context. Adopting the concept of contextual analysis, the study shows that the huge Nigeria’s population has found solace and voices on the digital and social media to fill the gap left behind by lack of or inadequate credible and factual information from the mainstream media and official quarters. The impact of this is underscored in how millions of social media users produce, distribute and feed massive unverified information to the disadvantage of official and legitimate sources. Solutions offered by government and other experts were also included in this article.
Recommendations
As government launched a “public campaign against fake news” (Premium Times, 2018) and has also launched “campaigns to media houses and cooperation with Facebook and Google (AllAfrica, 2020), this article recommends a future study to investigate how the federal government, through its agencies is truly stepping up efforts in engaging Nigerians on social media to fight fake news. The finding of this study has also raised the need to have research studies answering such questions as:
What has been the trend with regards to fake news and misinformation since the outbreak of COVID-19?
How has the fake news and misinformation impacted the work of the media and the fight against the pandemic?
What are some of the measures undertaken by the media and other stakeholders to address the spread of fake news?
What are citizens/activists actions against the spread of fake news and misinformation in Nigeria?
What has the government measures against fake news and misinformation affected the media?
This article is written for the Dubawa Fellowship programme (2020), and is supported by Heinrich Boll Stiftung Foundation Abuja office.
Ireton, C. & Posetti, J (2018). Journalism, “Fake News” and Disinformation: Handbook for Journalism Education and Training; UNESCO, France https://en.unesco.org/fightfakenews
Pate, U., Gambo, D., Adamkolo, M. I. (2019).”The Impact of Fake News and the Emerging Post-Truth Political Era on Nigerian Polity: A Review of Literature” in Studies in Media and Communication: RedFame Publishing https://www.researchgate.net/publication.The_Impact_of_Fake_News_and_the_Emerging Post-Truth_Political_Era_on_Nigerian_Polity_A_Review_of_Literature
Could stakeholders address the challenges associated with information disorder in Nigeria without understanding the complexities of the fact-checking landscape? This is the question this research article answered by interrogating the fact-checking ecosystem through the prism of media organisations on the frontline of information disorder combat in Nigeria. This research article examines the fact-checking ecosystem by documenting the evolution, issues and activities about media organisations on the frontline of combating information disorder in Nigeria. The need to interrogate this phenomenon became more apparent in the way dis/misinformation is negatively impacting all strata of the society. Therefore, this research is designed to contribute to the body of knowledge on information disorder labels that are still evolving in Nigeria. This is the first of a two-part research dedicated to examine the information disorder and discuss whether the set up and activities of fact-checking organisations qualify them to be classified as media entities. The research also examines whether there should be preference in establishing fact-checking organisations over fact check desks. It thereafter revisited the Gate-Keeping theories and its relevance to fact checking.
Introduction
The term information disorder has evolved over the years, with researchers asserting that it was as old as the historical evolution of information itself. (Brandon, 2018). Technological development which gave birth to the internet, social media, and other digital tools has further enhanced the advocacy for Democratic Participant theory of the press. Caroline Anipah, Programme Officer/Editor Dubawa (Ghana), has observed that the disruptive innovation of technology is facilitating mass production and distribution of information (Anipah, 2020)
This evolution of information disorder also witnessed attempts by professionals and researchers to understand and situate the issues surrounding information disorder in relation to attaching by experts of different nomenclatures to the phenomenon. Some of these nomenclatures include: Alternative Fact, Fake News, Misinformation, Disinformation, Malinformation, Hoaxes, Pranks, Deep Fake, Propaganda, Post Truth, Information Pollution, among others (Wardle & Derakhshan 2017 p. 4, Bannikov & Sokolova 2018, Ibraheem & Garba 2019 p. 151, Wardle 2019 p. 7).
The latest concept is that of Infodemic, a concept that depicts how “infected information” can cause a widespread of the “dis-misinformation virus” across the world. (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017, p .4) noted that information pollution at a global scale is spreading through what they called “contemporary social technology”. The COVID-19 pandemic presently ravaging the world has further popularized this concept. Ahinkorah, Ameyaw, Hagan, Seidu & Schack (2020) expressed worry that “socio-cultural climate in Africa has engineered the spread of the COVID-19 related misinformation through propagation of unsubstantiated news.”
Fact-checking organisations in Nigeria such as Agence France Presse (AFP), Africa Check and Dubawa are partnering with Google and Facebook to combat the infodemic. (News Agency of Nigeria 2019, Stencel 2019). For instance, in April, 2020, Google committed “$6.5 million funding package to fact-checkers and non-profit media outlets” to combat coronavirus misinformation. (Alexander, 2020).
Similarly, Facebook had in 2018 launched a Third-Party Fact-Checking Project in Nigeria and “partnered two organisations, part of a global network of fact-checking certified by the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network. They are Africa Check, Africa’s first independent fact-checking organisation, and AFP (Agence France Presse), a well-respected news organisation.” According to David Ajikobi, Africa Check’s Nigeria editor: “Nigeria has experienced a surge in misinformation on social media, particularly about health issues…. The partnership with Facebook presents us as fact checkers a unique opportunity to tackle misinformation on this key platform. We expect that as we move along, millions of Nigerians who get their news through Facebook will start seeing less content that may be socially harmful.”(Ochelle, 2018)
Concerned by the adverse effects of the challenges posed by Information Disorder to socio-cultural, economic and political climates of the society, stakeholders have equated this to a war-like situation. Attempts had also been made to understand this phenomenon through the prism of communication theories (Bannikov and Sokolova 2018).
Some researchers have also called for more concrete measures to address the challenges posed by the negative adoption of technology. (Bannikov and Sokolova 2018; Graves 2018; Ibraheem & Garba 2019; Ahinkorah et al. 2020)
It was argued that if the internet, social media and other digital tools are causing negative disruption in the information flow, stakeholders must device means to adopt it also as “Weapon of Mass Development” rather than “Weapon of Mass Destruction” to address the problems associated with the information war (Wardle, 2019 p. 6).
In Nigeria, stakeholders have taken steps to address the challenges occasioned by information disorder in the digital age. Despite the challenge of Digital Divide, the media institution in the country has joined others across the world to use the same weapon of technology to address the issue of Infodemic and associated concepts.
The issue of whether fact checking can be integrated in the work of journalists has also been interrogated by Bannikov and Sokolova (2018) with clarifications that the verification process or fact checking is not suitable for news reporting and opinion journalism.
They thereafter proposed the concept of “sense establishing journalism” which advocates “establishing the truth of events and claims and finding the real relationship between them.” This concept is based on the following formats: Fact-check and verification, Specifying the research subject, Forming signs of the Fact-check format, Forming signs of the debunking format, Forming signs of the promise tracking format, Forming signs of propaganda deconstruction format, and conclusion.
While some argued that fact checking should be considered as an independent genre on its own; others argued that the verification process and efforts to ensure accuracy of contents, which is part of journalism, is also an integral part of the fact-checking process. The set-up of fact-checking organisations across the world tilted towards the two approaches. While some fact-checking organisations are not part of media organisations, others are. Stencel (2019) however in his study finds out that the experience in the United States indicated that establishment of independent and standalone fact-checking organisations are making waves than those affiliated to media organisations.
These interventions, to certain extent, interrogated the issue of whether fact checking should be regarded as part of journalism practice. The question, however, is whether fact checking should be situated in the media landscape as an independent body or an entity within mainstream journalism? In Nigeria, there are few fact-checking organisations and some media organisations are already setting up fact-checking desks in their newsrooms. Meanwhile, the media organisations in Nigeria are bracing up to this challenge amidst concerns that media technology is advancing more than their ability to survive this disruptive innovation. This is what the British-American author, Andrew Keen, as cited by Udoka (2015), referred to as Digital Darwinism. As Digital Darwinism is taking its toll on the media ecosystem in Nigeria, some organisations are toeing the line of Digital Transformation to address the challenge of information disorder in the country.
In the last five years, the media industry has witnessed the establishment of fact-checking organisations in some African countries including Nigeria. They were established primarily to fight the war against media and digital illiteracy which is one of the factors that fuelled the spread of the infodemic. If the media practitioners including citizen journalists possess the skills to distinguish between facts and fiction in the process of production and dissemination of media contents, it will go a long way in frustrating the efforts of the purveyors of disinformation.
Ebele Oputa, the project officer and deputy editor for Dubawa, one of the pioneers of fact-checking project in Nigeria, said:
“The basic assumption, which is integral to our theory of change, is that factual information enables people to make more informed choices in a democratic society and on other public interest issues. Therefore, providing verified information will likely promote good governance and accountability in West and Sub-Saharan Africa,” (Egwu, 2019).
Relatedly, it is imperative to document the efforts of the fact-checking organisations in Nigeria in providing the platform to fight the war against Information Disorder.
It is with this background that this paper develops a fact-checking guide of the media organisations on the frontline of combating Information Disorder in Nigeria.
Research Objectives
The general objective of this paper is to interrogate the fact-checking ecosystem in Nigeria. The specific objectives are:
· To document the historical evolution of selected fact-checking organisations in Nigeria,
· To examine the organisational structures of the selected fact-checking groups in Nigeria,
· To understand the production process of the selected fact-checking organisations in Nigeria,
· To document the programmes and projects of the fact-checking organisations in Nigeria,
· To examine strategies of fact-checking organisations towards sustainability.
Statement of Research Problem
Is it correct to assert that fact checking is relatively new as the body of knowledge has just been created or popularized outside the academy? The Deputy Programmes Director of Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), Mr Adedeji Adekunle, has expressed worry over the dearth of data on information disorder in Nigeria. Mr Adekunle who identified this research gap during the virtual training for the 2020 Dubawa Fellows in Nigeria and Ghana, revealed that as one of the major fact-checking organisations in Nigeria, researchers in the country have not taken their time to interrogate the mis- and disinformation ecosystem by exploring the dynamics of work process of Dubawa and other fact-checking organisations in Nigeria (Adekunle, 2020).
This is coming at a time when the phenomenon called “Fake News” is getting the attention of all stakeholders in the media industry with its attendant implications on the Political, Economy, Social and Technological architectures of the country. The challenge posed by the phenomenon of information disorder is huge and thus indicates that there are no corresponding efforts to win the war. In an attempt to win this war, especially in an era when digital tools such as blogs and other social media platforms are deployed as Weapons of Mass Destruction or Mass Development, fact-checking organisations were established.
Bannikov and Sokolova, (2018) noted that due to the above reason, “This global challenge made it necessary for the professional journalistic community to appeal to the fact-check format. Although the format has been in existence for more than 20 years (FactCheck.org, the first fact-check resource in the world, launched in 2003), only in recent years has it acquired worldwide signification and implication.” To buttress the assertion of Bannikov and Sokolova, (2018), though the “first fact-check resource” was reportedly launched in 2003, it was not until over 10 years later that similar effort was attempted in Nigeria.
Relatedly, the database of global fact-checking sites is a project of the Reporters’ Lab at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. The fact-checking database tracks several hundred non-partisan organizations around the world (Adair and Stencel, 2016). According to the 2019 tally by the Duke Reporters’ Lab, the number of fact-checking outlets around the world has grown to 188 in more than 60 countries amid global concerns about the spread of misinformation,” (Stencel, 2019). According to the tally, Fact-Checkers in Africa increased from 4 to 9 from February, 2018 to June, 2019 when the database was updated.
With a population of over 200 million people in Nigeria and proliferation of blogs, and increased engagement of the citizens on social media platforms as the internet penetration increased year by year especially at a period of COVID-19 pandemic, do we have corresponding efforts for addressing the challenge of information disorder associated with these developments?
For example, to what extent do stakeholders in the media industry understand the dynamics of these fact-checking organisations? As a novel research area, is there enough literature to understand the fact-checking landscape in Nigeria? These are questions to be answered through rigorous research and further interrogation of the Information Disorder in Nigeria. It is in response to the above observations that this paper conducts critical exploration of the fact-checking ecosystem in Nigeria, in order to provide the basic understanding of one of the institutions working to address the challenges of information disorder in the country.
Methodology
Due to the nature of this research and its objectives, it has adopted interviews as research design and explores archival materials of selected fact-checking organisations in Nigeria to develop a guide for all stakeholders in the media industry. There are limited fact-checking organisations in Nigeria. Therefore, the selected fact-checking organisations include AfricaCheck, AFP, and Dubawa. The selection of these three fact-checking organisations was based on their consistency in the production of fact check contents compared to others. They are part of the global fact-checking network and are certified by the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). The existence of a database of global fact-checking sites, a project of the Reporters’ Lab at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy, has also influenced this selection. Apart from aggregating information on the website and social media pages of the fact-checking organisations, the researcher will also interview representatives of the fact-checking organisations in Nigeria. The data generated from the interviews and online contents of the fact-checking organisations will be qualitatively analysed through the thematic approach.
Information Disorder Labels
“Information disorder is complex. Some of it could be described as low-level information pollution — clickbait headlines, sloppy captions, or satire that fools — but some of it is sophisticated and deeply deceptive. In order to understand the complexity of information disorder, we need to pay special attention to definitions of terminologies associated with the phenomenon.” (Wardle, 2019 p. 57).
The tools and terms used to negatively disrupt information flow in the society include fake news, propaganda, hoax, rumour, prank, dis-misinformation, deep fake, infodemic, among others. This research will attempt to define some of these terms in order to put them in proper context for interrogating the fact-checking ecosystem in Nigeria. This is because the categorisation of the terms associated with information disorder and the labels associated to such categories, according to Wardle (2019 p. 12) “helps people to understand the complexity of this ecosystem.”
Below are some of the labels of information disorder:
Disinformation: This is false or misleading information that is spread deliberately to deceive. Disinformation according to Wardle is a “content that is intentionally false and designed to cause harm. It is motivated by three distinct factors: to make money; to have political influence, either foreign or domestic; or to cause trouble for the sake of it.” (2019 p. 8) Merriam Webster Dictionary also defines disinformation as “false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.”
Disinformation also means “false information, about a country’s military strength or plans, disseminated by a government or intelligence agency in a hostile act of tactical political subversion.” It is also used more generally to mean “deliberately misleading or biased information; manipulated narrative or facts; propaganda.” (Dictionary.com, 2020)
Misinformation: This can be defined as “false information that is spread, without the intent to mislead.” Today, misinformation spreads very easily in response to changes in information technology. And in part because of such frequent incidents, it is a hot topic of debate if big tech companies like Facebook and Google should be responsible for stopping the spread of misinformation—or even if they even can without violating free speech. While Oxford Dictionary picked “post-truth” as the 2016 Word of the Year, the Dictionary.com named its own Word of the Year in 2018 as “misinformation.”
Wardle (2019) pointed out the intersection of disinformation and misinformation with the explanation that “When disinformation is shared it often turns into misinformation,” adding that misinformation is “false content but the person sharing doesn’t realise that it is false or misleading. Often a piece of disinformation is picked up by someone who doesn’t realise it’s false, and shares it with their networks, believing that they are helping.”
Further, Wardle identified socio-psychological factors that influence the sharing of misinformation: “Online, people perform their identities. They want to feel connected to their “tribe”, whether that means members of the same political party, parents that don’t vaccinate their children, activists who are concerned about climate change, or those who belong to a certain religion, race or ethnic group”, (p. 8).
Malinformation: The term, malinformation, according Wardle (2019), is used to describe “genuine information that is shared with an intent to cause harm. We are increasingly seeing the weaponization of context, the use of genuine content, but content that is warped and reframed.” Malinformation also includes private or revealing information that is spread to harm the reputation of a person or group (Wardle, 2018).
While noting the efforts of tech companies, such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp to clamp down on cloned or fake accounts on their platforms, and amend their policies to flag fake contents, Wardle (2019) observed how the purveyors of disinformation now change strategy by promoting genuine contents and manipulating them so that they are “less likely to get picked up by AI systems.” He added that this strategy makes such malinformation to be “deemed ineligible for fact-checking”, defeating in a way, for example, the Third Party Fact-Checking Project of Facebook.
Closely related to this is Satire or Parody, strategically adopted to “bypass fact-checkers and to distribute rumors and conspiracies, knowing that any push back can be dismissed by stating that it was never meant to be taken seriously. Increasingly, what is labelled as ‘satire’ may be hateful, polarising and divisive.” (Wardle 2019 p. 14)
Wardle (2018) also showed how disinformation is related to satire, whereby disinformation agents label content as satire to prevent it from being flagged by fact-checkers. In Nigeria for example, President Muhammadu Buhari was said to be the clone of Jubrin of Sudan, a narrative considered as satire but later picked up and used by conspiracy theorists. And as this spreads, the satire in the analogy of (Wardle 2019 p. 15), loses “connection to the original messenger very quickly as they get turned into screenshots or memes.”
Propaganda: Propaganda is true or false information spread to persuade an audience, but it often has a political connotation and is often connected to information produced by governments. It is worth noting that the lines between advertising, publicity, and propaganda are often unclear (Jack, 2017 as cited by Wardle, 2018).
Deep Fake: According to Wardle (2018), Deepfakes is the term currently being used to describe fabricated media produced by using artificial intelligence. By synthesizing different elements of existing video or audio files, AI enables relatively easy methods for creating ‘new’ content, in which individuals appear to speak words and perform actions, which are not based on reality. Although Deepfakes are still in their infancy, it is likely we will see the term ‘deepfakes’ used more frequently in disinformation campaigns, as these techniques become more sophisticated.
Deepfakes according to Wikipedia are synthetic media devices in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else’s likeness. While the act of faking content is not new, creators of deepfakes leverage powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate visual and audio content with a high potential to deceive. The main machine learning methods used to create deepfakes are based on deep learning and involve training generative neural network architectures, such as autoencoders. (Brandon 2018; Kietzmann, McCarthy, Kietzmann, 2020) Related to this is Manipulated Media which Wardle (2019 p. 15) described as “when an aspect of genuine content is altered. This relates most often to photos or videos.”
Post Truth: According to the article published by Pavel Bannikov and Tasha Sokolova in 2018, post-truth was tagged the word of the year in 2016 by Oxford Dictionary, which “characterises a new way of consuming information, in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” They traced the history of the concept of post-truth to the end of the 20th century when the usage appeared in 1992. The term got popularised during the 2015-2016 presidential election in the United States.
Fake News: Bannikov and Sokolova (2018) define Fake news as false reports of events, written and read on websites related to the news agenda including visual narratives. They added that fake news can affect key issues of public importance and are spread with the intention to mislead in order to damage a public movement, public person, political campaign etc.
Attention has also been drawn to the inappropriateness of the combination of “news” with “fake.” The nomenclature has come under debate among scholars and professionals, with Anipah (2020) saying for example that the combination of “news” with “fake” is problematic:
“Problematic because ‘news’ means verifiable information in the public interest, and information that does not meet these standards does not deserve the label of news. In this sense then, ‘fake news’ is an oxymoron which lends itself to undermining the credibility of information which does indeed meet the threshold of verifiability and public interest – i.e. real news.”
Ibraheem & Garba (2019, p.152) has also observed that the concept has “not only become much-used and much-hyped terms nowadays, it is also much-aligned: it is often blamed for having a disruptive impact on the outcomes of elections and referenda and for skewing democratic public debate.”
Wardle (2019) expressed similar view when she exposed how websites and social media accounts of credible media organisations are cloned by impostor to promote “misleading hyper-partisan content”, manipulation of technological architecture, as well as “conspiracy communities” in the digital public sphere “busy trying to fool reporters into covering rumors or hoaxes.”
These authors further elaborate on the misuse, abuse and misinterpretation of Fake News:
“The term ‘fake news’ doesn’t begin to cover all of this. Most of this content isn’t even fake; it’s often genuine, used out of context and weaponized by people who know that falsehoods based on a kernel of truth are more likely to be believed and shared. And most of this can’t be described as ‘news’. It’s good old-fashioned rumors, it’s memes, it’s manipulated videos and hyper-targeted ‘dark ads’ and old photos re-shared as new…The failure of the term to capture our new reality is one reason not to use the term ‘fake news’. The other, more powerful reason, is because of the way it has been used by politicians around the world to discredit and attack professional journalism. The term is now almost meaningless with audiences increasingly connecting it with established news outlets such as CNN and the BBC. Words matter and for that reason, when journalists use ‘fake news’ in their reporting, they are giving legitimacy to an unhelpful and increasingly dangerous phrase.” (p. 6-7)
These observations are also what Edgerly, Mourão, Thorson, & Tham (2020 p.53) mean when they observed that “Discussions about the rise of “fake news” after the 2016 presidential election exemplify one of the many manifestations of the fragmentation of informational ecosystems.”
Fake news has also been flagged for fuelling propaganda, hate speech, violence, and even killing, especially in multi-cultural, multi-religious settings such as Nigeria. (Ibraheem & Garba 2019 p. 152).
Information Disorder: Due to argument that the term “Fake News” is vague in its usage, First Draft, a global, non-profit, non-partisan organisation that exists to help those on the frontline of reporting, “advocates using the terms that are most appropriate for the type of content; whether that’s propaganda, lies, conspiracies, rumors, hoaxes, hyperpartisan content, falsehoods or manipulated media. We also prefer to use the terms disinformation, misinformation or malinformation. Collectively, we call it information disorder (Wardle 2019 p. 7).
The definitions and explanations of the above information disorder labels are essential to enable stakeholders to understand the “different ways content can be used to frame, hoax and manipulate.” Wardle (2019 p. 57) added that “rather than seeing it all as one, breaking these techniques down can help your newsroom and give your audience a better understanding of the challenges we now face.”
Anipah (2020) defines information disorder as the “ways in which the information environment is polluted. The term is a conflation of three main notions: Misinformation, Disinformation, and Mal-information”
What is Fact-Checking?
Fact-checking, according to Wardle (2018), emerged in the U.S. in the 1990s, as a way of authenticating claims made in political ads airing on television. As at 2018, there are around 150 fact-checking organisations in the world, and many now also debunk mis- and disinformation from unofficial sources circulating online (Funke, 2018 as cited by Wardle, 2018).
According to Anipah (2020), fact-checking concentrates on claims that contain at least one fact or figure whose truthfulness can be objectively verified. Further, Anipah (2020) identified two moments that are significant to the growth of fact checking. These include: the launch of fact-checking projects, Snopes, Factcheck.org, and PolitiFact; as well as the global surge in so-called ‘fake news’ predominantly in 2016.
Bannikov and Sokolova (2018) observed that as at 2018 there was no academic definition of fact-check in the world and what was close then was the one offered by the Oxford English Dictionary defining Fact-check as ‘the process of investigating the problem in order to verify the facts’. They, however, noted that the above definition is incomplete as it alienates fact-checking from the journalism system.
Fact-checking (in the context of information disorder) is the process of determining the truthfulness and accuracy of official, published information, such as politicians’ statements and news reports (Mantzarlis, 2015 as cited by Wardle, 2018).
Bannikov and Sokolova (2018) define fact-check as a format for establishing journalism that verifies factual claims in public statements and media. It is important to note that as a format, fact-check can deal only with factual information, not with common narratives in the society, as they may not be factual. For verifying narratives, there is a different format — debunking.
The theorising of fact-checking by Bannikov and Sokolova 2018 will enable journalists, media organisations, and fact checkers not to lose track when they act as the vanguard of change in the information disorder.
“The concept proposed in this work allows not only to identify the fact-check as a trend and separately existing and developing format of journalistic material, but also considers a fundamentally different species division within journalism.” (Bannikov and Sokolova, 2018).
Do Fact-Checking Organisations qualify as Media Organisations?
One of the labels earlier mentioned that emerged from information disorder is “Fake News” typology. Though it has been argued that if information is fake, it can never be news. This is because news is built on the foundation of factual presentation. This label points to the relevance of fact checking to the work process of media organisations. The question now is whether a fact-checking organisation qualifies as a media organisation.
In their study titled: “Theoretical base of fact-check as a journalistic format”, Bannikov and Sokolova, 2018, argue:
“Obviously, fact-check can not be placed inside the concept of opinion journalism, since it deals with the personal author’s view of the problem, as opposed to representing an objective and comprehensive analysis. But is it possible to consider fact-check as a part of news reporting? On the one hand, the basis for both of them is pure facts, but on the other hand, there is also a significant difference. The basis for news reporting is a fact (or event), which is investigated by a journalist guided by the above-mentioned principles of work — independence, accountability and verification. From this basis, journalistic materials are produced. As a result, the very product of news reporting journalism can become the basis for a fact-check. Thus, fact-check can not be placed in the concept of a standard journalistic dichotomy of news reporting and opinion journalism.”
Similar debate has been raised with social and digital platforms (tech companies) such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and others. The dominant position was that these technological based organisations remain as platforms and not media organisations. Though the contents produced by traditional and online media organisations are promoted through these platforms, they do not qualify as media organisations.
Olorunyomi (2020) went further to argue that there is a distinction between media forms and journalism:
“Not all media forms execute their practice with the methodologies of journalism. So we say simply that whereas all journalism is media work, not all media work is journalism. Reviewing the content structure of the ever expanding media universe we encounter a wide diversity that does not necessarily all fit what we would technically call journalism.”
Dapo Olorunyomi who is the publisher of Premium Times online newspaper, thereafter noted the complexities of the media landscape when it comes to deciding whether some media contents fit into the technical definition of journalism. He identified some of the media platforms to include: various online platforms/outlets, social media platforms, blogs and various formats of community media, data journalism platforms, fact checking platforms, and solution-based journalism platforms.
Olorunyomi (2020) provided the criteria to be met for media content to qualify as journalism work. The four core elements are: Its claim must be truthful and accurate; its discipline must be rooted in verification; the practitioners must be independent and be accountable to their readers/viewers/listeners; and it is about accountability with the end goal of public good.
Arguing on the same line, Anipah (2020) drew comparison between reporting and fact-checking with accuracy, timeliness, focus of event, and source attributions, as the measuring rods.
Bannikov and Sokolova, 2018 assert that “fact-check can not be placed in the concept of a standard journalistic dichotomy of news reporting and opinion journalism.” However, they theorised and came up with the concept of “sense establishing journalism” to make the activities of fact checking organisation qualify as media organisation.
Going by this argument, they further noted that it is “impossible to work with the term ‘fact-check’ without coming to an understanding regarding the term ‘media.’” And the ‘media’ as defined in the Recommendation of the Council of Europe, offers six fundamental criteria that should be met for inclusion as the media — intention to act as media; purpose and underlying objectives of media; editorial control; professional standards; outreach and dissemination; and public expectation.”
Bannikov and Sokolova, 2018 developed working principles that will allow the work of fact-checking organisations fit into that of media organisations:
“…fact-check as a format makes it unacceptable to refer to anonymous sources, no matter how confident they are. All sources the fact-checker works with must meet the open source criteria. In addition, the principles and methodology of the editorial board must be available to the audience. Selection criteria: the claim/statement must be verifiable and the claim itself has to be factual, concrete, and connected with objective measurable reality. In addition, the journalist must be able to verify claims using only open data and available resources; public resonance (the significance of the claim for society, the impact of the sounded fact on the life of society and its individual members); and retransmission level (the number of citations and references in the media). It is important to note that timeliness (the statute of limitations) is not one of the main criteria, since information distorted in the past can have consequences and become actual in the present.”
Bannikov and Sokolova (2018) in their interrogation and attempt to isolate fact-checking from news reporting, however did not consider the role of copy editors who work on news reports and other contents produced through the same journalism process; as part of the role of the copy editor is to ensure the accuracy and validity of information contain in an editorial content. The theorisation of fact-checking as journalistic format by these researchers also did not note that investigative journlaism adopt approches similar to fact-checking. For instance, if two news sources gave conflicting information to a reporter, standard journalism practice does not only required the reporter to quote both of them but go a step further to establish the accuracy of their claims.
Fact Checking Organisation versus Fact Check Desk
Having established that fact-checking organisations qualify as media organisations, Stencel (2019) conducted a study to classify fact-checkers. In the findings of the study, the researcher discussed the results:
According to the report, a bit more than half of fact-checkers are part of a media company (106 of 188, or 56%). That percentage has been dropping over the past few years, mostly because of the changing business landscape for media companies in the United States. In our 2018 census, 87% of the U.S. fact-checkers were connected to a media company (41 out of 47). Now it’s 65% (39 out of 60). In other words, as the number of fact-checkers in the U.S. has grown, fewer of them have ties to those companies. Among fact-checkers in the rest of the world, the media mix remains about half and half (67 out of 128, or 52% — very close to the 54% we saw in 2018).
The fact-checkers that are not part of a larger media organization include independent, standalone organizations, both for-profit and non-for-profit (the definitions of these legal and economic entities vary greatly from country to country). Some of these fact-checkers are subsidiary projects of bigger organizations that focus on civil society and political accountability. Others are affiliated with think tanks and academic institutions.” (Stencel, 2019).
Adair and Stencel (2016) said that there is a database of global fact-checking sites by Reporters’ Lab at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy that developed the parameter for classifying fact-checking organisations. They are expected to regularly publish articles, video or audio reports that verify the accuracy of claims made by prominent public figures and institutions; debunk rumors, hoaxes and other forms of misinformation that spread online; or review the status of political promises made by candidates and political parties.
The Lab also specifies many attributes in determining which organizations to include. This is whether the site: reviews statements by all parties and sides; examines discrete claims and reaches conclusions; transparently identifies its sources and explains its methods; or discloses its funding and affiliations.
They also consider whether the project’s primary mission is news and information. That’s clear when fact-checking projects are run by professional journalists, produced by news media organizations, or affiliated academic journalism education programs. Other fact-checkers are typically associated with independent, non-governmental groups and think tanks that conduct non-partisan research and reporting focused on issues such as civic engagement, government transparency and public accountability. (Adair and Stencel, 2016)
Fact-checking organisations in Nigeria have been investing in capacity building initiatives for journalists, researchers, and students in the area of building fact-checking and verification skills. They are also involved in advocacy to promote digital and media literacy as a way of flattening the dis-misinformation curve in the country. While Dubawa since 2018 has been training journalists and researchers through Fellowship programmes; Africa Check encourages fact checking efforts through awards and other programmes.
Caroline Anipah who is the Programme Officer of Dubawa-Ghana, a fact checking organisation in Ghana, and doubles as its editor, said that the efforts of fact checking organisations in the world including Africa include: aggressive media literacy, working with tech giants, self-regulation, and establishment of fact-checking departments. (Anipah, 2020)
Revisiting Gate-Keeping Theory with Fact-Checking Organisations
Ibraheem & Garba (2019 p. 156) while citing Oso (2014) noted that the Gate-Keeping theory was first used by Kurt Lewin and the application of the theory was in 1959 by David Manning White in his study on the process of news production. This study launched the tradition of Gate-Keeping research in mass communication.
According to McQuail (2005), gate-keeping is like a metaphor that explains the process involved in the selection of media contents with particular emphasis on opening and closing the “gates” to determine the type of news reports that find their way into the news channels.
The emergence of digital technology, especially the internet and social media platforms associated with Web 2.0, has faulted the assumptions of Gate-Keeping Theory. Before the advent of these digital platforms, mainstream media organisations and media practitioners, especially the editors, determined the inflow and outflow of information. The interactive nature of the social media platforms brought about by Web 2.0 has overturned this. Citizen journalists can now create contents and distribute them through these platforms, unlike what was operational in the past.
This though further promoted the ideal of freedom of expression, it has also been identified as one of the factors encouraging the spread of fake news, disinformation, misinformation and associated terms. As the negative effect of this bite harder, stakeholders turn to the media organisations to get credible information. This made the role of fact-checking organisation more demanding.
References
Adair Bill and Stencel Mark (2016). How We Identify Fact Checkers. Updated July 9, 2020. Retrieved from https://reporterslab.org/how-we-identify-fact-checkers/
Adekunle Adedeji (2020). Fact Check Research: Existing Literature, Studies and Lessons. A paper presented atthe Virtual Dubawa Fellowship Training Programme by Premium Times Center for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) for the 2020 Dubawa Fellows in Nigeria and Ghana, held between 18th to 23rd July, 2020.
Ahinkorah BO, Ameyaw EK, Hagan JE Jr, Seidu A-A and Schack T (2020) Rising Above Misinformation or Fake News in Africa: Another Strategy to Control COVID-19 Spread. Front. Commun. 5:45. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2020.00045 Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00045/full
Anipah Caroline (2020). The Information Disorder Ecosystem. A paper presented atthe Virtual Dubawa Fellowship Training Programme by Premium Times Center for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) for the 2020 Dubawa Fellows in Nigeria and Ghana, held between 18th to 23rd July, 2020.
Brandon, John (2018). Terrifying high-tech porn. Creepy ‘dewpfakw’ videos are on the rise. Fox News. Retrieved, from https://www.foxnews.com/tech/terrifying-high-tech-porn-creepy-deepfake-videos-are-on-the-rise
Dictionary.com (2020). “Misinformation” vs. “Disinformation”: Get Informed On The Difference. Retrieved from https://www.dictionary.com/e/misinformation-vs-disinformation-get-informed-on-the-difference/
Edgerly Stephanie, Mourão Rachel R., Thorson Esther, and Tham Samuel M. (2020). When Do Audiences Verify? How Perceptions About Message and Source Influence Audience Verification of News Headlines. In Newsgames and News Verification, Social Media Activism and News Sharing: Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. Vol. 97 No. 1 pg 52 – 71.
Ibraheem Isamil Adegboyega & Garba Kabir Alabi (2019). Undermining the Freedom of Expression: the case of Fake News in Nigeria. In Owens-Ibie, Oji Majority & Joyce Ogwezi (Eds.). Fake News and Hate Speech: Narratives of Political Instability. Association of Communication Scholars & Professionals of Nigeria (ASCPN) Book Series 4. Canada University Press, Canada.
Ion Mihai Pacepa and Ronald J. Rychlak (2013), Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism, WND Books, pp. 4–6, 34–39, 75, ISBN 978-1-936488-60-5
Kietzmann, J.; Lee, L. W.; McCarthy, I.P.; Kietzmann, T. C. (2020). “Deepfakes: Trick or treat?”. Business Horizons 63 (2): 135-146.
Merriam Webster Online Dictionary. Disinformation. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disinformation
McQuail, Dennis (2005). McQuail’s mass communication theory. London: Sage Publications.
News Agency of Nigeria (2019). Facebook Partners Nigerian firm to intensify fight against fake news. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/amp/s/guardian.ng/technology/facebook-partners-nigerian-firm-to-intensify-fight-against-fake-news/
Ochelle Felicia Omari (2018). FACEBOOK LAUNCHES THIRD-PARTY FACT-CHECKING IN NIGERIA. Retrieved from http://venturesafrica.com/facebook-launches-third-party-fact-checking-in-nigeria/
Onukwue Alexander O. (2020). Google commits $6.5 million to fund Africa Check, others against coronavirus misinformation. Retrieved from https://techcabal.com/2020/04/03/google-fact-check/
Olorunyomi Dapo (2020). Accountability Journalism. Comment atthe Virtual Dubawa Fellowship Training Programme by Premium Times Center for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ) for the 2020 Dubawa Fellows in Nigeria and Ghana, held between 18th to 23rd July, 2020.
Stencel Mark (2019). Number of fact-checking outlets surges to 188 in more than 60 countries. Retrieved from https://reporterslab.org/number-of-fact-checking-outlets-surges-to-188-in-more-than-60-countries/
Udoka U. E. (2015). Social Media and Political Effects: A Case Study of the 2015Nigeria’s Presidential Election. International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research ISSN 2348-3164 (online) Vol. 3, Issue 2, pp: (134-141), Month: April – June, 2015, Available at: www.researchpublish.com
The novel coronavirus outbreak has led to a global pandemic that disrupts lives in ways previously unimaginable. An increasing cause for concern is the accompanying infodemic with various forms of unverified information being peddled about the virus and the resulting pandemic. Fact checking sites (e.g. Dubawa, AfricaCheck, Snopes) have been at the forefront of countering such misinformation, often creating a reference link for all covid-19 related fact checks on their websites.
Methodology
In this piece, I examine the focus of covid-19 related fact-checked stories published on Dubawa since the outbreak of the pandemic. The objective is to examine the patterns of coverage of the covid-19 infodemic on the fact-checking platform. Using the coronavirus link on Dubawa to extract all stories published on covid-19, I have extracted 92 stories from the link. Of these, 2 articles unrelated to the pandemic were first eliminated from the study. I further removed the general covid-19 misinformation articles and the newsletters to limit our analysis to coronavirus-specific fact-checked stories. This resulted in 60 mainstream covid-19 fact checks which were all analysed for this piece.
I conducted a content analysis of these stories using an open ended coding guide. I identified variables relevant to the study. These include: date, title, author, claim source, verdict, source link, content, target, issue, entity, tool and notes. There are no predefined options to choose from. I read through each article and recorded appropriate terms to code content of a story for each variable examined. Some of these categories were later harmonised based on similarities.
The analysed fact checks span February, 2020 to July, 2020. This covers the early stages of the pandemic when the severity of the covid-19 outbreak was increasingly alarming, culminating in the recent viral video of the dramatic outburst of the controversial Nigerian-trained US based medical doctor.
Findings
The coronavirus factchecks featured claims produced in varied communication formats. The claims are sometimes published in various formats. Half of the verified claims were embedded in plain written text as shown in Table 1. Contents labelled as text only refer to those with the verified claims embedded in the written texts irrespective of any supporting image. The texts are sometimes combined with images or video to support the claims highlighted in the text and vice versa. Images and blog posts are other leading forms of presentation of covid-19 claims fact-checked on Dubawa. Other less occurring formats are video, audio, speech, and webpage.
Table 1: Formats of presentation of covid-19 claims verified on Dubawa
Presentation Formats
Frequency
Percentage
Cumulative Frequency
Text
30
50
50
Image
9
15
65
Blog post
6
10
75
Text & Image
5
8
83
Text & Video
3
5
88
News reports
2
3
91
Video
2
3
94
Others (Audio 1, Speech 1, Webpage 1)
3
6
100
Total
60
100
Majority of the analysed fact checks were published in the first half of the study period. Seven out of every 10 analysed fact checks were published during this period. The highest percentage was published in March, 28%, followed closely by April with 25 percent, and February with 17 percent. Collectively, the three months amassed 70 percent of the published fact-checks on coronavirus-related claims on Dubawa. The remaining months (May 13%, June 7% and July 10%) had only a 30 percent inclusion rate.
Table 2: Monthly distribution of covid-19 fact checked stories on Dubawa
Month
Frequency
Percentage
Cumulative Freq.
March
17
28
28
April
15
25
53
February
10
17
70
May
8
13
83
July
6
10
93
June
4
7
100
Total
60
100
Circulation platforms for misinformation
WhatsApp is noted as the most popular social media platform in Nigeria. The popularity of the platform affords millions of Nigerians the opportunity to share information. Unlike other platforms, it is also popular among the older population, who have been accused of innocently using it to spread fake news. This study found WhatsApp as the lead source of covid-19 misinformation items on Dubawa. Other leading sources of the covid-19 claims verified on Dubawa were Facebook and other blog sites. Some claims trend ‘across different social media platforms’ and these were separately coded in the study. Occasionally, some media reports also feature suspicious claims warranting fact-checking. Out of the five fact-checked media reports, two were proclaimed to be false, another two considered misleading as their screaming headlines were not supported by the body of the reports. Another provided insufficient information to justify the claim made. Public officers’ speech was the least source of claims fact-checked in the study.
Table 3: Sources of COVID-19 claims fact-checked on Dubawa
Claim Source
Frequency
Percentage
WhatsApp
14
23
Facebook
12
20
Blog site
11
18
Twitter
8
13
Across social media platform
7
12
News media reports
5
8
Public Officer’s speech
3
5
Total
60
100
‘False’ as most occurring verdict
Fact-checking usually entails issuing verdicts on verifiable claims. This was found as a core element of fact checks analysed in the study. All items analysed in the study had a verdict except one. These verdicts were certified ‘false’ or ‘mostly false’ confirming fact-checkers’ suspicions of specific Covid-19 claims making rounds. Few were rated ‘misleading’, with rare occurrence of a ‘true’ verdict and another one with ‘insufficient evidence’ to arrive at a conclusion.
Table 4: Verdict on covid-19-related fact-checked stories on Dubawa
Verdict
Frequency
Percentage
False
49
82
Misleading
6
10
Mostly false
2
3
Insufficient Evidence
1
2
True
1
2
Missing
1
2
Total
60
100
Availability of evidence
Fact-checks also feature webpage links or other evidence of claims being verified. This study examines the availability or otherwise of original sources of covid-19 claims verified on Dubawa. All the analysed fact checks in the study, except one, included documented evidence allowing readers to see the original claims being fact-checked. Thirty-six (60%) of the provided claims links of analysed fact-checks were available. Ten of the source links (17%) were not available as the links failed to open at all. It was observed that the claims on WhatsApp were mostly embedded in the fact-checks with screenshots of the message. Thirteen of the analysed fact checks showed the claim using screenshot. Most of the WhatsApp evidence in support of claims were provided with a screenshot of the claim. This was probably adopted for WhatsApp due to the nature of the platform.
Table 5: Availability of source link in fact-checked stories
Source link
Frequency
Percentage
Available
36
60
Shown
13
22
Unavailable
10
17
Not provided
1
2
Total
60
100
Depending on the kind of information or their dissemination platforms, the available links sometimes open but the content of the claim has been blocked and flagged as ‘false information’. I found this mostly with Facebook posts. It reflects recent policies of social media giants on misinformation. Also the provided links might pose some risks to the user as they are sometimes phishing websites fraudulently urging users to provide personal details at users’ risk. I found an example of phishing in the fact-checked claim that Nigerian government was set to disburse N30,000 to citizens as Covid-19 lockdown funds? Another characteristic of these links, especially blog sites, is that the reported claims are often poorly written, immediately prompting skepticism of their authenticity. Also some of the reported ‘fake news’ on the blog sites still had ‘more details soon’ months after posting the screaming unverified claims as breaking news.
The verified claims were mostly issue-based (83%, n=50), while others targeted entities which could be specific to individuals, public officials/organisations, private organisations, international bodies such as World Health Organization (WHO), etc. The issues presented in the verified claims varied widely, ranging from prevention myths to quick cures. Issues such as travel ban, official policies, etc. are among the least verified covid-19 claims on Dubawa.
Table 6: Issues in COVID-19 claims verified by Dubawa
ISSUE
Frequency
Percentage
cure myth
11
21
Prevention myth
8
15
Death
5
10
Palliatives
4
8
Testing
3
6
lockdown
3
6
Risk factors
3
6
Transmission myth
3
6
Funding
2
4
Racial myth
2
4
Vaccine (Vaccination, trial)
2
4
Coronavirus spread
1
2
Corruption
1
2
Covid scare
1
2
Distrust
1
2
Official policies
1
2
Scare myth
1
2
Travel ban
1
2
Total
52
100
Fact checking tools used
Commonly used fact-checking tools found among the published fact checks are audio tracing, interviews or contacting key actors or experts on the topic of discourse, cross referencing, reverse image search using google, Tineye and Yandex , CrowdTangle, and Linktally. The most commonly used procedure was cross referencing which entails scrutinizing the information, finding verifiable facts or evidence to prove the accuracy or otherwise of the claim.
Language, spoken or written, is a means of human communication consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way.
It is widely considered one of the essential ingredients of effective human communication. However,communication could be ineffective when the message which is channelled through a familiar language is not understood by the recipient.
And, such cases,result in distortion and misinformation.
Although English is the official language of communication in Nigeria, it is heavily perceived in some quarters that many do not understand the bequeathed language while others understand it to a limited extent. This is evident in Unesco statistics on the level of literacy in the country.
This reality creates a justification for various advocacies on promotion of indigenous language in all facets of the country. This piece takes a look at the importance of broadcasting in indigenous language in Nigeria.
Indigenous language and broadcasting.
Unlike other media channels,the broadcast is language sensitive owing to the dynamic nature of the channel to accommodate many languages.
This is accomplished through translations from English to other languages like Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Edo, Fulfulde, and Kanuri among others or dishing out all information in local languages.
A research work conducted by Oyero Olusola reveals that indigenous language is significant because it gives good understanding and better meaning of radio messages to the listeners.
“The survey shows that majority of the respondents, 88 percent, understand radio programmes better in their indigenous language (Yoruba), 10 percent do not and 2 percent could not tell.
Also, over 95%, as shown in the table below agreed that they derive better meaning from the Radio messages when Yoruba language is used. Only 3.5% and 1% disagree and undecided respectively”
A similar study by Eric Ogri also emphasises the need for the media to embrace indigenous languages for national development.
It notes that the preference for English Language as the official medium of expression and communication in Nigeria, over hundreds of existing indigenous Nigerian languages, does not speak well of our national identity and pride as Nigerians.
“English language still dominates the sphere of communication at all levels and can be said to be Nigeria’s truly national language or Lingua Franca. The National Language Policy on Education (NLPE) and the Nigerian Constitution also recognize the use of English language as the nation’s Lingua Franca. Even the mass media cannot be absolved of this linguistic attachment. “
A study on broadcasting in Tiv language, a language in Nigeria’s north central noted that
radio communication in a foreign language is becoming a source of worry to language experts especially on media contents. This concern is hinged on the belief that the media is the conscience of the society and that people have greater inclination to believe their messages. The study worries further: “The fear is the misuse of language of communication in the mass media in Nigeria and who to make corrections as languages are being used to promote violence and vulgarism.”
The mother tongue factor
In a research work by Akpan et. al, published in 2012, majority of respondents were of the opinion that Nigerian broadcasters were affected by mother tongue interference in the course of their programmes.
“Majority of the respondents agree that most Nigerian broadcasters are not grounded in the phonological structures of English language, hence cannot pronounce most words .
This indicates that in broadcasting, effective communication is of utmost importance. However, noise, either in grammatical structure or external interference, affects effective communication. More worrisome is the presence of noise in grammatical structure as a result of mother tongue interference.
The effects of mother tongue on English Language cannot be overlooked. It goes further
in causing phonetic problems to the second language speaker/listener. In most cases, every second language user tends to bring elements or structures of his/her native language in speaking a second language.
Despite efforts made to promote the effective learning of English as the mainstay of communication in Nigeria, many people, including broadcasters, still find it difficult to effectively manipulate the phonological features.”
The study concludes that, although little,mother tongue interference affects the contents of broadcasts.
Corroborating the aforementioned is the paper published by Olusola Oyero in 2010 in which he submits that with all the numerous potentials of radio for development, the central aim of development messages may not be realised if the messages are not packaged in the right language.
“Considering the number of people in Africa who cannot communicate in English language, the need to communicate with people in the language they understand well cannot be under-emphasized.
Because language cannot be separated from culture, this makes indigenous language unique. People’s indigenous languages are part of that culture. Therefore, cultural
context and intimacy with a culture will give a deeper meaning to the understanding of language and the circumstance in which it occurs will determine believability or sense of reality.
When development messages are communicated to people in their native tongues, it gives better understanding, assimilation and recall of such messages.
By reducing ‘knotty terms’ of English language in development messages to
indigenous language, the audience will grasp deep meanings of such messages”.
All these issues raised by authors mentioned above are pointers to the fact that, though English is the official language, many people; broadcasters and the audience do not possess good command of English language and on many occasions misunderstandthe message.
Translation and distortion
Translation is a process, in the media, whereby the language of a program is being encoded in another language to suit the interest of a certain audience.
Since English is the official language, some broadcasters prepare their scripts in English and such scripts are subsequently translated into other languages. This is evident the observation of seven radio stations, including Premier fm 93.5, Amuludun fm 99.1, Pensioners fm 106.7, Lagelu fm 96.3, Jamz FM 100.1, Oluyole FM 98.5 and NTA Ibadan, by this author.
It has been observed that various broadcast organisations refer to the same story in different ways with translators using different, but not always, synonymous words to describe various scenarios or people.One example can be found in the words armed robber and burglar which can be translated to mean “Adigunjale” and “Alonilowogba” in Yoruba. The word “thief” can be used for both words, but “burglar” cannot be used interchangeably with the word “armed robber”.
Again, for the purpose of getting messages across to the grassroots, BBC introduced pidgin language,a mix of English and local languages to enable more effective communication.
Research study by Athraa Kitab, in 2017, notes that messages may be distorted in the process of translation.
“Since translation takes place in someone’s brain, it’s inevitable that certain personal problems are likely to distort the process. Unless one is completely objective in his handling of the message, it is easy for misconceptions about the nature of language, the task of the translator, and the ultimate purpose of the translation to skew the results”
This fact-check is a republished article from Radio Nigeria Ibadan per our Dubawa 2020 Fellowship partnership with newsrooms and media organisations.
