Understanding fake news
Fake news is now dominating our information space, covering all subjects from archaeology to zoology. No area is off limits. Things such as outright fabrication, false information, misinformation, highly biased pieces and false reports all constitute what is known as ‘Fake news.’
Although fake news has been part and parcel of our news ecosystem from time immemorial with its long history traceable to satires, where it was intended for purposes of humour, over time it is assuming the characteristics of factually false, dangerous and irresponsible content. The barefaced inaccuracies of this kind of news, and the nature of the packaging that is employed to write and spread it has made it increasingly difficult to spot or contain. In Ghana today, it is nearly impossible to consume online and social media content without coming across fake news each day.
What is fake news?
In its true form, fake news is completely generated, manipulated and published to look and feel like credible content with the sole intention of attracting maximum attention for a cause or to generate advertising revenue or engage in plain deceit. Political opponents have been known to ‘make up’ news to totally discredit their rivals and thus gain advantages such as attracting more votes.
It would appear that the widespread availability of social media and messaging tools such as WhatsApp is giving fake news more impetus to flourish. Other factors such as the growing demand for such content and the manifestation of a consumer society where marketing is more important than journalism also give energy to the phenomenon.
Fake news at work
According to The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/26/fake-news-story-prompts-pakistan-to-issue-nuclear-warning-to-israel), based on a fake news story which appeared on December 20, 2016 on the site AWD News (identified as a fake news site) a twitter confrontation was ignited between two nuclear powers – Pakistan and Israel, one of the many examples of fake news having potentially harmful impact in real world sensitive global affairs. The Guardian also reported about a fake news story about a child abuse ring prompting a gunman to fire shots inside a pizza restaurant in Washington. The gunman claimed he went to the restaurant to “self-investigate” Pizzagate.” Pizzagate is a baseless conspiracy, which falsely claims Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief John Podesta were running a child sex ring from the restaurant’s backrooms.
Fake news and democracy
There is no doubt that fake news is playing a key role in shaping our democracy. Democracy relies heavily on journalism to ensure active citizens’ participation in the governance process. Fake news, therefore, becomes a big threat to democracy when this content is presented as factual, undermining confidence in the media upon realisation that it was fake after all. During the recently ended Ghana Election 2016, the country was not spared with this problem.
The jury is still out on the impact of fake news in getting Donald Trump to become President of USA. One school of thought believes that fake news contributed to his electoral efforts while another school hold a contrary view. A recent “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election” (http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf) study suggests that although there were more "Fake news" stories favouring Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton, this did not have any significant bearing on that election.
How can you detect fake news?
Fake news is a complex phenomenon. It is not easy to detect, ironically one example of fake news detector (http://bsdetector.tech) suffered from a fake news item about it (https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/01/facebook-fake-news-flags-reliable-news-source/) attributing its creation to Facebook, something that turned out to be false. Interestingly the fake news detector could not detect this fake news about itself.
There are a number of solutions being peddled around to help check the spread of fake news; including humans checking such stories through fact checking system, the use of technology such as fake news detector browser plugins which may rely on computer algorithms to fight fake news. Big technology companies such as Google and Facebook are no doubt benefiting from fake news dissemination in the sense that it drives traffic especially content, which goes viral, a key element of profitability for their offerings. These two companies recently announced steps to restrict advertisement linked to fake news stories, but such fake news producers are constantly adapting their platforms to avoid detection and content blocking programmes.
Conclusion
The Executive and legislative arms of Government of Ghana, must take the bull by the horn by commissioning an in-depth inquiry into how fake news is impacting on the country’s fledgling democracy, media confidence and national security. Evidence derived from this study will go a long way to help policy makers understand this phenomenon in a manner which can supports proactive action to tackle it. Though laws are not a perfect panacea, countries such as Germany are considering promulgating laws to criminalise persons generating fake news. Perhaps Ghana can take a cue from them to contain the challenge.
The writer is the Executive Director of Penplusbytes.org - you can reach him at kwami@penplusbytes.org Whatassp : 0241995737