How can the spread of fake news be curbed without curtailing the freedom of expression?

Fake News: The new cancer online

The term fake news is not a new phenomenon however the volume,  speed of spread, accessibility and dissemination are new.  In an era where 44 million Kenyans can access internet and anyone anywhere can send any information to anybody then internet has revolutionalize the spread of fake news. The recent election events drew attention pointing to an increase in the number of fake news making rounds on social media. Social media has given fake news an excellent breeding ground.

What's the motive of fake news

The two main motive for fake news is to: insert influence;

image source:pixabay

Heightening tension in the country during election, 

Distort election campaigns- fake news played tricks on Paul Otuoma in his bid for gubernatorial race in Kenya and to damage opponent’s reputation

Quick way to make money-bloggers are making millions through ads by creating fake contents which will generate huge traffic.

Propaganda and misinformation are the newest cancer online and there is a big challenge in dealing with them. When fake news is mentioned the events that took center stage after august 8 2017 elections up to the repeat elections in Kenya always comes to ones mind. It is during this period that fake news dominated our social media platforms. 

In a polarized country, biased news spread like bush fire so as to serve political interests . Kenya has a record of negative ethnicity, social media gives the youths a platform to air out their grievances about past injustices while fake news are spread aimed to propagate the hatred among tribes to serve political ends.

A fake new will make its way and reach half of the world while the truth is still deciding the shoe to wear. What does that tell us? Fake news spread very fast since its feeds population crave for information. There is therefore need to devise ways of curbing fake news without curtailing the very freedom of expression.

Ways to curb fake news without curtaling freedom of expression

Facts checking- stop, reflect and verify

Some of the websites looks suspicious for example some political pages (uhuru for us) attracts huge traffics but the individuals behind such accounts  are not known. Therefore information from such accounts should be handled with care. People are good at sending some fake news under the umbrella of sent as received message.  Before hitting on that button it is good to stop verify and reflect on the content so as not to be an agent of spreading of fake news.

Infohub enumerated various ways to spot fake news:

Being skeptical about the headlines. Misinformation mongers always use catchy headlines to spread  fake news. This will attracts many to click and read the story.

image source: fake-news

Confirm the date, Old stories are likely to pop up even when they are not relevant to the present events

Interrogate the source: Interrogating the websites which hosts that information. Many fake news website seems legit and very appealing to any casual observer, interrogating the website before sharing the content is therefore very important. Fake news websites have links very similar to those of credible websites or trusted sources. Another unique thing on fake news websites is that they are dominated by ads, more ads than content automatically indicating quick spams for money. It is therefore important to know how a fake link looks like so as to curb the spread of fake news.

Examine any supporting link or source attached to the article: Check whether the information that appears after clicking the link supports the article, any discrepancy indicate fake news.

image source: propaganda

Check for your personal biases: Any information skewed  towards a certain sides and satisfying ones beliefs can influences ones judgment. Hate speech and tribal statements can be readily accepted as true by tribalists.

Check the author, do a quick background check of the author, find out if he is credible.

Check for grammatical errors- reputable organizations hardly make spelling and grammatical errors. A fake aljaazeeranews-tv.com contained many grammatical errors.  

Use tools such as google reverse image search to fact check photos used in the news and check by meedan to verify breaking news stories.  Such innovations will help identify the original source of the image. Reverse image search helps in verifying the authenticity of a photo used in the story. 

A good example is where a photo of Nyali MP Mohammed Ali was doing round being accused of defying orders from his party leader and went ahead to vote on august 26th 2018. google reverse image tool detected that the photo was taken on august 8th election.

Creating awareness about fake news on social media. Awareness on proliferation of fake news on social media needs to be created and people to wait for authoritative validation of news from more credible source. Young people need to be informed of the possibility of coming across fake news.

Media literacy- Digital literacy and enhancing  skills that could help them spot fake news can help combat fake news. Information literacy skills will ensure that readers of fake news will not readily accept the news as given but they will interrogate the content.

Reduce the incentives for creating fake news-fake news are not created for political influence but for profits. Restricting advertisements on fake news will kill the motive behing creating such news. Makers of fake news sites take advantage of non attentive consumers of fake information and create content that will enable them make huge amount of money from Google and facebook. 

In conclusion, fake news are not motivated by the infuence they insert on human emotions rather by money. Fake news spread very fast and media literacy is key in ensuring social media users are able to detect fake news on the onset and stop further spread.