PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AS CHANNELS OF FAKENEWS

Abstract

The study examines public knowledge of social media platforms as channels of fake news among residents in Abuja Metropolis. Anchored on the tenets of media ecology study, the survey research design was employed with questionnaire as instrument for data collection. Findings from the study indicates that respondents use different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp as well as Instagram respectively, findings also indicate that respondents lack the capacity to identify fake news on social media platforms, further findings indicates that the effects of fake news range from misinformation, misleading to promotion of falsehood and fake news spreads on social media platforms to a very large extent. Arising from the findings, the paper concludes that the problem of fake news is a global issue that has become a cause for concern in Nigeria recently as social media platforms has provided a fertile ground for fake news. The paper calls for regulation of social media to minimize the spread of fake news on social media platforms as this would go a long way to enhance accuracy, truth and objectivity, education and sensitization of social media user’s as this would enable them understand the dangers of spreading fake news on the various social media platforms and installation of security mechanisms such as artificial intelligence capabilities that would remove fake news on social media.