“You can make it harder to share misinformation,” says Mr Cheeseman. These changes will only have limited effect. Previous concerns over its misuse in India prompted WhatsApp to label messages as having been forwarded. Partly in response WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook in 2014, limited to five the number of times a user could forward a message. In Brazil supporters of Jair Bolsonaro used WhatsApp to deliver “an onslaught of daily misinformation”, says Luca Belli, a law professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas, a university in Rio de Janeiro. Such chicanery has been found elsewhere in the world. In Kenyan elections in 2017 “keyboard warriors” used the platform to collect the phone numbers of group members and allegedly sell them to political parties. Mr Hitchen notes that during elections in Sierra Leone in 2018, stories spread by an urban minority on WhatsApp would find their way onto popular radio talk shows. Nigeria is not the only place where WhatsApp is influencing political culture. “I don’t think fact-checking makes any difference,” she sighs. But they were soon overwhelmed by the volume of misinformation.
During the elections the Centre for Democracy and Development, a think-tank run by Ms Hassan, employed five fact-checkers who tried to refute dodgy stories. What is certain, though, is that the truth takes longer to get its boots on. The president is old and sickly, and one of his predecessors died in office.ĭo the fibs get through? Researchers find it hard enough to know how many people see fake news, let alone how many believe it.
The hilarious idea that Mr Buhari had died and been replaced by a Sudanese man named Jubril seemed credible for many reasons. Some of the most popular play on existing beliefs. Popular fake stories include one in which Mr Abubakar had been “endorsed” by the Association of Nigerian Gay Men, a fictional entity. That way an ally of a political boss will notice and perhaps slip the creator a bonus, a job or a contract. These “propaganda secretaries”, as they are known, produce videos, tendentiously caption photographs and disseminate memes for ad hoc payments of up to $84 per month. That has led to a cottage industry of social-media entrepreneurs seeking to please. Being close to a politician is often the surest way to a steady income in Nigeria. They had dedicated WhatsApp groups for supporters in every one of Nigeria’s 36 states and 774 municipalities. Both of the two main presidential candidates, Mr Buhari, the eventual victor, and Atiku Abubakar, had large social-media teams. “Big man” politicians try to win through patronage rather than policy. Nigerian elections may not be clean, but they are competitive, points out Matthew Page of Chatham House, a think-tank. Nigeria’s use of WhatsApp reflects its political culture as well. And since these groups often comprise friends and community leaders, recipients are inclined to trust what they read. The larger the group, the more quickly information can spread. These may be made up of school acquaintances, work colleagues or fellow worshippers.
A survey by Mr Hitchen and Ms Hassan in Kano, a northern city, found that locals are typically in groups ofat least 50 people. For example, Nigerians belong to much larger WhatsApp groups than Westerners do.
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