Social media literacy: fake news consumption and perception of COVID-19 in Nigeria

The emergence of social media in the late 90s resulted in information dissemination and consumption transformation. Social networking sites have increasingly been popular and appealing to youths, who often spend much time navigating across the platforms, exploiting the communication affordances. Whereas social media eases the consumption of news and information, it nurtures the spread and consumption of fake news which tends to influence users' perceptions, particularly, those lacking the requisite literacy to guide safe consumption of fake news. Unfortunately, during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite efforts to enlighten people on the safety measures against the disease, the spread of misinformation and disinformation about the pandemic through social media platforms tends to undermine adherence to preventive measures advised by health experts and results in incautious behavior that can worsen, instead of flattening the curve on the COVID-19. This study, therefore, examines the students' consumption of COVID-19 related fake news on social media and the extent to which social media literacy moderates its effect on their perception of the disease. A survey design has been adopted, a convenience sampling was used where a questionnaire was formed on google form and distributed to the students of the two selected polytechnics through Facebook and WhatsApp. A total of 108 responses were generated; thus, descriptive and T-test analyses were run and the result revealed that the students possess the requisite literacy to identify fake news on social media platforms, and that has a significant on their perception of COVID-19, despite consumption of fake news related to the disease based on the T-test p = 0.05. Therefore, the result suggests that the effectiveness of media literacy as inoculant moderates the effect of fake news, as asserted by the inoculation theorists, it has no bearing on the long established stereotypical notion that certain diseases are conspiracies to reduce the population of the world.