How to wade through the news on social media and emerge clean

Political campaigns are now in full throttle.

As we head into the final lap towards election day, expect increasingly sensational news across all media outlets; some real, some fake and some mixing both fake and real.

All Kenyans must have skills so that they can differentiate between the categories of content above, which will be coming through their mainstream channels and social media feeds.

Of course, one obvious way to judge content for factual accuracy is to evaluate the source. 

Established media outlets, such as Nation Media Group ,are likely to have more rigorous, cross-checking editorial processes before they run with breaking news as compared to, say, a ‘one-man’ blogging service.

This is not to say established media houses are always right. But they have established mechanisms to withdraw and apologise in the event they get it wrong.

Similarly, this is not to say the ‘one-man’ blogging services is always wrong because, often, they get it right and are able to publish some embarrassing truth that mainstream media may wish not to be entangled with.

However, when the one-man blogging service gets it wrong, there is no established mechanism that can be enforced to have the story withdrawn, other than going through long-drawn court cases.

The best practice is to strike a balance between mainstream media and social media. 

My rule of thumb when it comes to judging important or sensational breaking news is to get updated on social media but cautiously wait for verification when one or two mainstream media outlets pick up the story.

More often than not, competitive pressures ensure mainstream media houses are not more than an hour behind social media.

In other words, any breaking story on Twitter, Facebook and personal blogs, amongst others, tends to be validated within an hour by the mainstream media. Otherwise, just ignore it.

THE PARODY PROBLEM

A few months ago, social media ‘killed’ Churchill, a popular local comedian, claiming he had been involved in a fatal road accident.

As the story spread widely, I scanned the mainstream media outlets and cautioned users to ignore the story until the traditional houses published it. Of course the story never made it to the traditional news and it died a natural death.

Now the fake news perpetrators know the trust established media outlets have with consumers and have come up with parody accounts that mimic the official Twitter or Facebook pages of these outlets.

Such parody accounts also exist for leading personalities in politics, media, government and other circles.

So consumers get ‘breaking news’ from fake accounts that look exactly like the real accounts. @UhuruKenyata is one fake account that pretends to be the official @UhuruKenyatta Twitter handle.

One easy way to beat the parody problem is for leading personalities to "verify" their accounts.  Readers should therefore look out for the blue-tick symbol that confirms the the given account is verified as belonging to the real Uhuru Kenyatta.

All other non-verified accounts purporting to be from the President should be ignored. The same logic will, of course, apply to content from unverified @RailaOdinga parody accounts.

CONTEXT, INTENTIONS AND SOURCE

But it gets a bit complicated, because it is election time. Nothing stops verified accounts from spreading content, pictures or videos that are a bit spiced-up to gain political mileage.

Kenyans must be wary of "Alternative facts", where authentic sources post content that is partly true and partly false.

It's difficult for the average reader to tell which part of the content is true and which one false, and requires a lot more research to filter through alternative facts and get to the true picture.

Nation NewsPlex is trying to help in this regard but is limited to the extent that it cannot analyse everything the politicians say.

At the end of the day, what to believe and what to reject from the news will depend on crosschecking, being aware of the context, intentions and source of the published information.

Trust, but verify, should be the buzzword for everyone as we get deeper into electioneering and fake news.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT. Email: [email protected], Twitter: @jwalu