By Rakiya A. Muhammad
The avalanche of fake news dashed precious James’ hopes for active participation in Nigeria’s general election on social media platforms, leaving her weary and discouraged.
The 19-year-old does not hide her disappointment with the violent incitement on cyberspace in Nigeria’s upcoming polls. “It is deeply repulsive,” she said. “The political actors have thrown caution to the wind, weaponising fake news.”
Precious and her parents had been out of the country and returned only two years ago.
She had looked forward to exercising her civic duty during the 2023 general election, having attained the eligible age for voting.
“I was hoping to exercise my franchise as a first-time voter and was expecting issues-based discussions during the campaign periods to make an informed decision,” she disclosed.
“Shockingly, what flooded the social media space has been fake news, hate speech, and inciting statements which have completely discouraged me from participating in the exercise. I’ve run out of enthusiasm and steam.”
Concerns have been rife over campaigning by political parties and their candidates with a deluge of false materials created and disseminated to deceive the electorate, many of whom need to gain the skills to evaluate the credibility of online sources.
“Since the start of campaigning in September 2022, the political battles have been fierce. The different political camps have all used disinformation in abundance,” stated Africa Check, one of the notable organisations tackling misinformation through fact-checking in Nigeria.
“This shows no sign of abating. It is likely that false and misleading information will still be used to push the narratives even after the winners have emerged.”
Africa Check identified eight types of election disinformation, including claims that one candidate has stepped down for another, fake endorsements, photos and videos of violence, or videos taken out of context.
Others are photos and videos with allegations of vote buying, phoney election results or results from previous elections, false reports of people voting without voters carding certain polling stations, and false news relating to existing narratives about leading candidates.
Similarly, the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) noted that a proliferation of electoral disinformation, misinformation, and false news dominated the period.
“In recent years, CDD has increasingly raised concerns about the potentially disruptive influence of disinformation on the election,” stated Idayat Hassan, director of the centre.
“The centre has noted the common forms of disinformation in the election include Dissemination of false information to discredit political opponents or to influence voters or the voting process, falsification or manipulation of contents, polling data, delegitimisation of electoral institutions including INEC, the police and other state agencies.”
The Department of State Security DSS described the spread of fake news and hate speeches on social media Fake news as a major cause of violence in society and the greatest threat to the 2023 General elections.
He underscored the need for journalists to always fact-check information before publishing.
“We are into elections, and political programmes have started. What the media and every stakeholder should do is to ensure that the game is played according to the rule.”
Rise Network, a data science and artificial intelligence company, contributes to curbing the menace.
It recently launched the Run Am mobile App, which has a news check feature, an image check feature, and a voter education feature to check for misinformation that can cause violence during the election.
Toyose Akerele-Ogunsiji, Founder of Rise Networks, said the initiative could ensure information efficiency and accountability during the 2023 election and beyond.
“During the election, fake news is used to create a lot of voters apathy, so you can see a lot of news like fifty people have been killed in a particular local government, and that is why the people who have PVCs will not want to go out and vote because they are afraid.”
“But when you find out, you see that this information is not true, but when the voters do not show up, then it will be easy for them to rig the elections, and those are the problems that RunAm App is meant to solve.”
Also, the Safeguarding Online Civic Space for Electoral integrity employed innovative strategies to curb disinformation, misinformation, fake news, and violent incitement in cyberspace.
The group trained 100 fact-checkers across the country’s six geopolitical zones to spot and detect fake news, especially concerning elections.
“As the general elections are approaching, the overarching goal of this project is to protect online civic space by combating voter misinformation while improving access to accurate information,” said Dr Funmi Akinyele, Chair of Safeguarding Civic Space (SOCS) Group.
“Because we are dealing with digital space, we are deploring fact-checkers online to build a massive movement of people that will spot fake news.”
She expressed concern that misinformation and repression of both offline and digital civic space had contributed to the negative perception of members of the international community about Nigeria.
The SOCS Chair, however, said they engaged critical stakeholders across government, telecommunications, civil society, and the general public united by the overarching interest in protecting the online space to maximise the benefits and minimise the threats for proper enlightenment and education of the populace on civil rights.
Shirin Anlen, a media technologist at WITNESS, a non-profit that helps people use video and technology to protect and defend human rights, identified the need to build on existing journalistic skills and coordination to tackle manipulated media.
Speaking on Deepfakes, Synthetic Media and AI, she noted tools for detecting deep fakes had just started being available. However, she identified an existing gap between forensics and journalist/fact-checkers dealing with high-quantity, low-quality content in real-time across platforms.
“Detection is not yet adequate, and access to skills/tools is limited and unequal,” she stated while featuring on an ICFJ Empowering the Truth Global Summit session.
“Detection tools must complement media literacy, journalistic fact-checking and Open Source Intelligence, OSINT skills. Authenticity infrastructure is emerging commercially but needs guard rails.”
As recommended approaches for journalists and regular fact-checkers, she urged review for synthetic media-derived glitches or distortions, application of existing video verification and forensic techniques and utilisation of emerging new AI-based approaches and emerging forensics approaches when available.
