The digital age, set in a dazzling array of innovations, prides in the transfer of knowledge at the speed of light.
Through gadgets dear as gems, table size, or handheld, digital devices disperse information in all its multimedia forms as fast and far as the mind can conceive.
Here’s the disclaimer. All that glitters is not good!
Digital media breeds distorted information, too.
Disinformation is the deliberate creation and dissemination of false or misleading content.
The price of disinformation is steep. It threatens social cohesion and breeds conflicts, leading to violent attacks and widespread mistrust within communities.
Disinformation is not alone in this. Misinformation and Mal-information are equally dangerous distortions of facts.
A case in point is the spread of unverified information on social media regarding the background of the murder suspect of 3 little children in Southport UK, which ignited tensions across the country and ultimately led to a violent riot.
In the World Economic Forum Global Risks Perception Survey 2023 – 2024, misinformation and disinformation emerged as the most severe global risk expected over the next 2 years.
The survey also assesses the potential impact of certain risks over the next 10 years. It reveals that misinformation and disinformation continue to rank among the top five expected global threats.
The robustness of a country’s media and news domains informs the extent to which people are exposed to the risks of disinformation.
Nigeria’s media has a medium level of disinformation risk with a score of 57 out of 100 (where 0= maximum risk level and 100 = minimum risk level), the Global Disinformation Index 2021 shows.
The premise for the disinformation risk assessment is that a range of signals, taken together, can show a site’s risk of peddling disinformation. The assessment evaluates a country’s media landscape across content and operations pillars and indicators.
The content pillar focuses on the reliability of the content provided in news domains. Overall, the Nigerian media market showed low disinformation risks in terms of content with a score of 84 out of 100.
Conversely, the average score for the operation pillar was 22 out of a possible 100 points. The pillar comprises indicators that assess a domain’s transparency and accountability in operations, such as details about ownership, funding, and adherence to good journalistic practices.
Besides publishing quality content, operational transparency is also a key pillar in lowering disinformation risk ratings.
Among the two African countries covered in the Disinformation Risks Assessment in 2021, Kenya’s media market performed slightly better than Nigeria with an overall score of 58 out of 100.
A common pattern in both countries is the low score in the operation pillars.