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Racing After Election Campaign Fake News

Michael Hedges February 18, 2019 Follow on Twitter

Where elections and social media intersect the result, plain and clear, is disruption. The path to disinformation, fake news and hate speech is Autodromo di Monza through the internet. The track is unforgiving, the crashes spectacular and people turn out to watch. Of course, the sponsors are pleased.

go fast, turn rightNigerians will go to the polls soon to elect, first, a president and national assembly. Two weeks later governorships and other local offices will be decided. This election cycle had been scheduled to begin last weekend, February 16th, but the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) decided at the last minute, literally, that preparations were incomplete and the presidential election will be held February 23rd with local elections taking place March 9th. The delay put jet fuel into the fake news machines. (See more about elections and media here)

Fake news “has been on steroids,” said Guardian Nigeria journalist and digital lead Lolade Nwanze, quoted by CNN (February 15). Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari took to social media to deny his own death and that a clone had taken his place for the election campaign. “It’s real me,” he posted. Fact checking collective CrossCheckNigeria confirmed (December 1) that President Buhari is, indeed, alive. The CrossCheckNigeria volunteers work with the International Center for Investigative Reporting.

Candidates and their political parties happily share completely false, often off the scale, information. Confusion reigns supreme. Early in February the Nigerian government had to deny rumors it intended to shut-off the internet. That would have effectively disabled the elections, explained INEC commissioner Festus Okoye, quoted by Guardian Nigeria (February 3), as voter cards are verified by internet-enabled card readers.

“Fake news has become like a cliche and ticket for demonising the journalist, the media, and the NGOs,” said Amnesty International Nigeria spokesperson Isa Sanusi, quoted by the AP (February 15). “The only thing that is fuelling it is the fact that information is not available. The solution to stopping fake news in Nigeria is transparency, particularly from the side of the authorities.”

Disinformation campaigns are not new, either to election campaigns or Nigeria. The infamous Cambridge Analytica used Nigeria as a test site in 2015 for effective delivery of disinformation and propaganda through Facebook. Those methods were honed for use ahead of the Brexit campaign in the UK and the 2016 US presidential elections.

Facebook made a big deal of “temporarily disallowing electoral ads purchased from outside the country ahead of the election,” said its statement in January, quoted by Aljazeera (February 14). However, Aljazeera discovered the automated ad placement system is easily tricked. Message sharing platform WhatsApp, a subsidiary of Facebook and wildly popular in Nigeria, paid for radio and TV ads asking people to “share facts, not rumors.”

Nigeria has a population of 190 million. Internet penetration is 47.1%, reports the ITU, expected to rise to 84.5% in 2023. There are 26 million active Facebook users. Just over 40% of internet users have installed WhatsApp.

That’s not the whole media story. The BBC World Service (BBCWS) Group offers radio channels in the four ethnic languages and claims 41 million listeners. “Nigeria consumes a lot of news,” said BBCWS Nigeria news editor Aliyu Tanko,” to Pulse.ng (February 18). “Soon, we will roll out workshop plans for students in Abuja and Lagos to equip them to identify and counter fake news. Nigeria is the next market.”

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