Politics and Social Media: The Danger of Misinformation

 by Fraser Langley

As we move into a more and more digitised age, undoubtedly the very foundations upon which a society is run- politics and democracy- will become more and more associated with social media. However, there is growing fear that this interweaving of politics and social media, can cause certain ideologies to be perpetuated through certain algorithms on the internet and through highly influential people on the internet; meaning that people cannot access the broad and varied political landscape that exists. This has become intensely more pertinent with the elections in Nigeria this year, where it has been discovered that there have been numerous attempts by parties to misinform people through social media, and to endorse narratives that are wholly false, in order to gain an advantage over their political adversaries. 

This has been uncovered by a BBC investigation team, aiming to bring to light the actions of these parties that have been paying highly prominent and prevalent social media influencers to deliberately spread misinformation, with fabricated stories about political rivals developed in order to improve certain candidate’s chances within these elections. Numerous influencers that the BBC have spoken to confirmed that these deals had been happening, where they had personally received payment, through lavish gifts or sums of money, in exchange for their endorsement of their political campaign, or to tarnish their rivals name, by spreading false narratives about them. Additionally, larger influencers, like one that the BBC spoke to that remained anonymous, who has a huge influence on the populace, with almost 150,000 Facebook followers said that he is paid by political parties to post completely false stories about political opponents. However, due to the possibility of backlash and outrage, he does not do it openly but rather plants false stories through other micro-influencers he hires. This portrays how simply and easily that these false stories can manifest themselves into people’s views, as such damaging disinformation can be spread simply through the use of small micro-influencers posting about them. Therefore, social media has had an immense impact on the political climate in Nigeria, as specific ideologies and portrayals are promulgated more than others. 

While morally this seems wrong and unethical, it is not actually illegal for political parties in Nigeria to hire social media influencers to promote their political agenda. However, spreading misinformation and being intentionally perfidious is illegal, and against many social media platforms’ policies, like Twitter for example. However, distinctly defining something as a falsity is intensely difficult, as it is hugely difficult to unequivocally say that a narrative is completely and utterly false, and it is also intensely difficult to locate the original sources of these stories. Locating the source of these sources is a particularly important piece of tackling this issue, as if someone that has been manipulated by a fake narrative, and believes it to be true, and then feels compelled to further extend the reach of this story by posting about it themselves, they have not acted immorally or illegally, as they have not intentionally spread disinformation. This is a key distinction of the law, as they have not acted illegally in a deliberate and purposeful sense, as they were manipulated by the false narrative themselves, so therefore in their eyes they were simply informing people of a story about a candidate that they think is truthful. Therefore, we can see how destructive and damaging spreading false information can be, as it can bring about distrust in the foundations of a society, and can ‘undermine trust in the electoral system’ (a quotation from Idayat Hassan, director at the Centre for Democracy and Development) and therefore has interfered with politics, which is incredibly worrying, as the future will only see social media become more influential, therefore we will most definitely see similar stories to this again.