While the Nigeria presidential election is just a few days away, and necessary preparations are set in place to ensure a credible election; the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) revealed that some presidential candidates use technology as a tool to propagate fake news by employing the services of social media influencers.
Aside from the BVAS technology to enhance voters’ accreditation, facilitate the digital transmission of results and eliminate loss of election results, Full Fact seeks to provide a solution to misinformation and malinformation in the upcoming elections.
Full Fact is a London-based media company which verifies reported facts as well as filters false social media contents in circulation with the aid of AI tools and human expertise in a bid to address misinformation in the news as it has recorded over 1,000 increase in claim detection.
Full Fact AI tool provides three excellent features;
- The search tool enables users to easily identify the most significant statements by monitoring online media networks, and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.
- The alert feature notifies users of previously repeated facts that have been proven false. This aids users in avoiding sharing false news on their social media timelines.
- The real-time tool removes the possibility of manually including false information and records by delivering live transcription of election debates and interviews.
The London-based company partnered with members of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), Africa Check (based in South Africa), Dubawa and FactCheckHub (both based in Nigeria). Details were not given on how Africa Check will join the Nigeria-based fact checkers to filter online news content in Nigeria presidential election.
Full Fact is committed to ensuring that only authentic information travels through digital platforms as it proposes to provide training and support to its local partners during the election process.
Will Moy, CEO of Full Fact, quotes, “Every vote should be an informed vote. We’ve seen first-hand how bad information spreads during an election and it can’t be allowed to undermine democracy. Our AI tools, with support from Google.org, help fact checkers stay ahead of false claims and promote accurate information. We’re proud to support our partners in Nigeria during this important time.”
Full Fact has shared its challenge in ensuring authenticity in news content on social media platforms, stating that it faces a lack of information and limited resources. However, Google.org has offered $2 million in funding to equip AI fact-checkers.
With this, do you think technology has been strategically employed to conduct a credible election in Nigeria?
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