Part 2: 83% of Kenyans Encountered and Shared Fake News With Friends

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LinkedIn

LinkedIn has been growing in the last couple of years. The Microsoft-owned social media platform is for professionals where they can list their credentials and skills, and in return, they are hooked up with job opportunities.

In Kenya, the number of people using LinkedIn is substantial, but it appears a lot of people do not spend much time there.
According to a social media report compiled by USIU, 43% of Kenya LinkedIn users only access the platform for less than thirty minutes daily. These numbers were collected and examined for the year 2020.

Fake News

That aside, the fake news monster appears to be a thing still. Fake news, which refers to just that (false and unverified) have been used to achieve many things, mostly political mileage. It is a headache for genuine news outlets and consumers alike because they falsely shape their opinions based on a matter that likely doesn’t exist.


The concern is amplified for uses who are not tech-savvy or those who are incapable of taking multiple steps to verify what they are consuming. Often, the older generation is the major victim.

According to the same report, 83.5% of Kenyans who have come across fake news are likely to have shared it, mostly because they believe what they read without substantiating a story’s authenticity.

Brands

Furthermore, it has also been established that a lot of Kenyans are following and interacting with their favourite brands online, mainly only social media pages. The number for this case is 78%, measured for 2020.

Snapchat

In Part 1, we mentioned that Facebook was losing users, and we gave a couple of reasons for the development. Some of the users need a replacement, so they have migrated to the likes of Snapchat, whose user base grew by 17.7% in Kenya in 2020.

Twitter

In cases where 61% of Kenyan men are not hiding on Twitter under fake identities, the platform is still very popular and doing okay, especially among people who think they are too ‘woke’ for the likes of Facebook.

Twitter, according to the report, has since seen its user base increase by 14.3% in 2020.

In the same breath, about 47.7% of social media users are using the platforms under fictitious names.

Blogs and online harassment

The report cites that 86.9% of Kenyans read blogs (mostly entertainment blogs), and complement them with social media to make their own decisions.


Lastly, up to 33% of social media users have reported being harassed – and this is quite common if you make a couple of clicks on Twitter and Facebook.

If harassment is becoming overwhelming for you, this is how you can handle the case:

How to Report a Cyber-bullying Case in Kenya


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Kenn Abuya is a friend of technology, with bias in enterprise and mobile tech. Share your thoughts, tips and hate mail at [email protected]
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