The year 2023 is quite a significant year for several democracies in Africa; a number of African countries, including Nigeria, will be taking the polling stations for their presidential elections, writes Vhonani Petla.
By Vhonani Petla
The year 2023 is quite a significant year for several democracies in Africa; a number of African countries, including Nigeria, will be taking the polling stations for their presidential elections.
With the Nigerian elections being just a few weeks away, there is quite some attention on this specific country. These coming elections have been described as crucial for the country’s democratic history. They are the first elections under the new electoral legislation, which was signed into law in February 2022. More so, these elections also come at a time when Nigerians are dissatisfied with the socio-economic standing of the country, and the government’s failure to remedy these issues. A poll showed that 77% of the Nigerian population were dissatisfied with how the Nigerian government has been failing to improve the livelihoods that have been deteriorating and the failure to curb corruption in the country. Hence the hope that the new leadership would restore the people’s faith in the government.
With over eleven million new voters registered, there is no question about how desperate the citizens are for change. While the Nigerian government and the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) of Nigeria are quite confident about the work they have put into issues like rigging that often delegitimise the elections, there is still much anxiety over the issue of social media around elections. The INEC Commissioner has argued that social media is a real problem in the Nigerian elections. The Institute for Security Studies also argued that, with the growing access to social media in Africa, there had been evidence of social media being weaponised in political spaces.
The use of social media in election campaigns and their success can be dated back to Barack Obama's 2008 success in the American elections. However, in recent years, evidence from other countries and Nigeria has shown that social media is a double-edged sword. This can be seen through the spread of misinformation on the platforms or smear campaigns, for example, the #WithdrawIsko in the Philippines elections. Even more locally, the Kenyan elections in 2022 saw misinformation via social media meant to reduce voter turnout, among other mechanisms to compromise the electoral process.
In Nigeria, the elections are only set to take place on the 25th of February 2023. However, there were already suspicions of social media foul play by the end of 2022. The most popular being bots. Bots short for robots refer to software that performs automated pre-defined tasks. These are favourable as they carry out tasks faster, more accurately, and at a higher volume than humans. There are genuine bots; however many bots are used dishonestly. The Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development has shown that hashtags like #BATified, #Obidient, #Atikulated, #kwankwasiya related to the presidential candidates were bot operated. Furthermore, evidence from an analysis carried out using botsight tools found that more than 1 million bots followed these electoral candidates on Twitter.
The direct implication of these bots and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools used on social media to spread misinformation is that they undermine the principles of democracy. Democracy ought to be built on free and fair elections; however, these AI tools take this away. Furthermore, the content from these bots and other AI tools, like deep fakes, also has the potential to fuel political conflict, which in some instances has caused violence.
It is quite evident from the above that besides defeating the whole point of elections and democracy, AI, through social media, also has the potential to stir violence. The question then is, what have these social media companies done to mitigate the risk that AI poses with misinformation? In answering this, it is important to acknowledge that there have been some measures in place; however, there is a long way to go in fighting these dangers caused by misinformation. This could include the countries increasing the number of people allocated to moderate social media content and making them as diverse as possible.
For example, African countries are diverse and have many languages. The moderators and tools used must be able to deal with this. For the 2023 Nigerian elections, META (Facebook's parent company) is said to have hired 70 full-time staff to work on the upcoming election. However, in a country like Nigeria, which has about 150 million internet users, 70 staff is likely not enough to moderate such a large pool of posts.
Undoubtedly, media monitoring is challenging in a country like Nigeria, with over 250 local languages and these moderators only being familiar with four languages (Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, and Pidgin). What does this mean for the content and misinformation that might come from the bots, deep fakes, or other tools in the other languages that the moderators and tools are unfamiliar with? This demonstrates the need for more work and investment in curbing this misinformation.
Organisations like Africa-Check have taken it upon themselves to verify information and flag any misinformation that might be on social media regarding these elections. It is important that for the sake of the legitimacy of these elections, such platforms are made accessible to people so that they may verify any information from social media, as highlighted that quite a number of it comes from bots, deep fakes, or just unreliable sources on social media.
The importance of a high volume of staff and tools in content moderation is currently playing out in the January 8 events in Brazil. Researchers have argued that the algorithm on Facebook and Tiktok is responsible for steering people towards baseless accusations, false claims of election fraud, and extremist content and hence the events that took place in Brazil on January 8. This highlights the need for adequate content moderation from these social media companies, especially in elections where emotions become extremely high, and any piece of misinformation can lead to violence. This then justifies the growing anxiety over the events at Twitter.
In the past couple of months, there has been an easing of content moderation, the firing of staff, particularly in the African office, and harmful accounts that had been banned from the platform being brought back. This raises questions on the platform's ability to be impartial and prioritise making the platform free of misinformation and harmful content.
It is time for African countries to consider digital literacy for organisations, governments, and citizens. This will enable them with skills to verify the information and be knowledgeable on artificial intelligence so that they are not quick to believe everything they encounter. It is time for African governments to be fully aware of the risks and challenges associated with artificial intelligence and try to mitigate these. Africans must invest in research and adequate digital literacy that allows them to understand how the digital world works and be able to adapt accordingly. The need for this is not limited to elections only but misinformation can be spread around any other issue within the country, hence the need to have digital literacy as a priority.
*Petla is a Junior Researcher, Digital Africa Research Unit, Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg.