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.
