A survey across Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa has found that people in all three countries are regularly exposed to fabricated political news, often share it, and generally trust the media less when they believe misinformation is common.
The study, carried out earlier in 2018, asked 755 respondents questions adapted from a 2016 Pew Research Centre survey in the United States. Its aim was to measure how widespread disinformation is, who people think should stop it, and how exposure to falsehoods relates to trust in news organisations.
Among Kenyan respondents, almost half said they often come across political stories they believe are completely made up. Across the three countries, only a very small share — between 1% and 3% — said they had never encountered fabricated news. In the United States, the comparable figure in the Pew study was 12%.
The survey also found that sharing false stories is common. Thirty-eight per cent of Kenyans, 28% of Nigerians and 35% of South Africans said they had shared stories that later turned out to be made up. When asked whether they had knowingly shared false stories, one in four respondents in Kenya and Nigeria said yes, compared with one in five in South Africa.
Respondents were clear about who they believe should bear the burden of stopping misinformation. More than two-thirds in each country said the public has a lot or a great deal of responsibility. Social media companies came next, while government ranked last.
Trust in the media was weakest in Nigeria, where average scores stayed below 50 on a 0-to-100 scale. Kenyan and Nigerian audiences said they trusted international media more than any other type of outlet, while South African respondents placed local media highest. In all three countries, social media attracted the least trust.
The researchers said the more often people believed they were exposed to fake news, the lower their trust in media tended to be. They argued that efforts to deal with misinformation should go beyond media literacy alone and include broader steps to rebuild audience confidence.
The study noted one limitation: because the data was collected online, it is more likely to reflect the views of urban middle-class respondents than those in rural areas or on lower incomes.
The authors said the research is the first to examine misinformation and disinformation across multiple African countries, and warned that the problem could further weaken independent media in sub-Saharan Africa, where state control over news remains a major challenge.
By Herman Wasserman, Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town, and Dani Madrid-Morales, Assistant Professor in Journalism at the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston
