Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories (“fake news”), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their “most important” source; (ii) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; (iii) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and (iv) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.

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Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

Citizen and subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism

Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time, Herbert Gans. Vintage Books, New York (1980), 393 pp., $5.95

The Arab Spring

Zimbabwe’s Exodus: Crisis, Migration, Survival

(2016). Citizen witnessing: Revisioning journalism in times of crisis. African Journalism Studies: Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 137-140.

Citizen witnessing: Revisioning journalism in times of crisis

Although the notion of measuring the performance of news stories is not a new phenomenon, the advent of online analytic tools has redefined the whole terrain of the sociology of online news product...

Analytics-Driven Journalism? Editorial Metrics and the Reconfiguration of Online News Production Practices in African Newsrooms"

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) which was first reported in China's Wuhan province in December 2019 became a global pandemic within a few months The exponential rise in COVID-19 cases globally was accompanied by a spike in misinformation about the pandemic, particularly on social media Employing Social Network Theory as a lens, this qualitative study explores how selected international celebrities appropriated their Twitter micro-blogging pages to announce their COVID-19 infection to the world The study finds that these celebrities can take advantage of their huge social media following to counter disinfodemic and promote awareness about health pandemics

/pdf/covid-19-infections-on-international-celebrities-self-2vuutqnf60.pdf

COVID-19 infections on international celebrities: self presentation and tweeting down pandemic awareness

Dissidents exist in every nation, always have, and perhaps always will – existing in that risky space between being patriots and being enemies of the state. Social media, on the other hand, is a fa...

Social media dissidence and activist resistance in Zimbabwe

This chapter investigates how, why and for what purposes political actors and citizens in Zimbabwe used traditional and digital media, especially Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, before, during and after the 30 July 2018 elections. Relying on a combination of virtual ethnography and in-depth interviews, this chapter provides new evidence of the sophisticated appropriation of the hybrid media system in a context where over 60 percent of the electorate was made up of youthful voters. Building on Mare’s (2018) previous research on Facebook and electoral campaigns in Zimbabwe, this chapter cautions against the reification of digital media as the “silver bullet” with transformative power to democratize and transform toxic electoral politics in Zimbabwe.

Trust Matsilele

Papers

Citizen witnessing: Revisioning journalism in times of crisis

Analytics-Driven Journalism? Editorial Metrics and the Reconfiguration of Online News Production Practices in African Newsrooms"

COVID-19 infections on international celebrities: self presentation and tweeting down pandemic awareness

Social media dissidence and activist resistance in Zimbabwe

Hybrid Media System and the July 2018 Elections in “Post-Mugabe” Zimbabwe