A survey of five African nations found that social media is the primary source of news for most.
The firm says that misinformation breeds on social media and more needs to be done by platforms to address it.
However, the reliance on social media is surprisingly a concern for KnowBe4. According to Senior Vice President of Content Strategy and Evangelist at KnowBe4 Africa, Anna Collard, “80% of respondents are consuming news on Facebook and over 50% use TikTok. This is alarming as neither of these channels is very reliable in terms of news.”
When quizzed about whether respondents could spot fake news, 82 percent said they were confident in their ability to do so but Collard doesn’t buy it. Rather than demonise social media, perhaps what we need is to hold these platforms to account and encourage them to police their spaces for disinformation and misinformation. This is thankfully something KnowBe4 highlights in its research.
The matters of misinformation and disinformation are complex and require collaboration to address properly. People are using social media and as such, we should be finding ways to address the scourge of misinformation rather than simply tarring it as the source of misinformation. For example,there are countless websites that charge a subscription to feed an audience lies but we aren’t saying all pay-walled websites are a hub of misinformation.
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