SOCIAL MEDIA: DETERMINANTS OF FAKE NEWS ON COVID-19 AND UNDERGRADUATES PERCEPTION OF HEALTH REALITIES OF THE VIRUS IN SOUTH-EAST NIGERIA

Abstract

The advent of social media as a result of the proliferation of the internet witnessed a new transformation of news production, dissemination, and consumption especially on the outbreak of COVID-19 Pandemic. The purpose of this study is to examine “social media, determinants of fake news on COVID-19 and undergraduates perception of health realities of the virus”. The study was anchored on Technological Determinism theory of Mass communication. The study used the descriptive survey research method to sample the opinion of 399 respondents that were exposed to social media fake news on COVID-19 pandemic. It was discovered through the data generated that there are factors that often lead undergraduate students into social media shared fake news on COVID-19 which are altruism, socialization, status seeking, and entertainment. The study equally found out that there is a significant difference in the level of perception of undergraduate students on the health realities of COVID-19 virus in South East Nigeria. As it was discovered that undergraduate students through social media fake news believed that the virus does not exist at all and cannot affect their health and COVID-19 has no adverse effect on African blood due to genetic and climatic peculiarities. Social media fake news on COVID-19 made also made undergraduate students to accept that 5G network is actually perilous to human lives. Based on the findings, this paper recommends that that social media users should be aware of factors that often lead to fake news on social media and try not to spread fake news in form of helping people to get informed or for the sake of status seeking and entertainment. More so, it recommends that students should know that not all information on social media is true and should not accept social media messages hook, line and sinker especially on a health issues such as COVID-19.