Covid-Disinformation Dispatch from Kenya: Fake News Goes Viral on Social Media

This article is part of IranWire's ongoing coverage of Covid-19 disinformation in different countries, in partnership with Health Studio.

By Shon Osimbo for Health Studio

Even as a deadly virus has continued to claim lives and leave thousands jobless, disinformation, which only serves to worsen the pandemic, has still been spreading online. Here in Kenya, for instance, there has been widespread take-up of the false story that Covid-19 was produced in a laboratory. 

Social media has been used as the principal tool for propagating this toxic “information” in different communities. Websites and apps like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter offer individuals a free platform – both cost-free, and free of regulation or the requirement for accuracy – on which to spread fake news about Covid-19. These lies are often defended by their promoters in the name of “freedom of expression”.

Unfounded rumours have also circulated online claiming that the pandemic was a political ruse to achieve various ends around the world. In particular, it has been claimed that the US presidential election was an intended target. These reports were quashed after the US did indeed hold a successful election that saw President Trump lose to Joe Biden.

Looking back to the beginning of the pandemic, there were initially many conspiracy theories circulating that suggested Covid-19 was an excuse by the telecommunications industry to keep people at home while it erected 5G masts around the world. Many prominent figures helped to spread this narrative on social media. Just one tweet promoting this idea by the British boxing champion Amir Khan, for instance, gained more than 200 retweets and 100 comments. The conspiracy theory has been dismissed by doctors and scientists as “scientifically impossible” and “complete rubbish” and has now largely been forgotten – having been overtaken by other conspiracy theories, often spread by the same people.

Twitter has also been at the center of a widely-shared conspiracy theory that claims Covid-19 vaccines were sponsored by the Bill Gates Foundation only as a nefarious way of implanting “microchips” in the population, which would eventually be used to control the world. According to countless Twitter users, the vaccines are the vehicle through which the microchips will be installed in people’s bodies. Twitter has since sought to discredit the claims by flagging some of them as false on its pages.

The same platform has also been used to propagate specific fake news stories about the Covid-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. A number of people have reported side effects after receiving these vaccines, but out of this truth spun a number of alarmist and false stories about early recipients, including nurses in the US, having died on the spot or shortly after receiving one of the vaccines. It has since been established that with more than 15 million Pfizer vaccinations now having been given to people, there has not been a single reported death as a consequence. The stories that have stated otherwise so far are not true, and should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

Since these stories started emerging, Twitter has made a decision to remove all kinds of misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine from its pages. In addition, as millions of doses of Pfizer’s vaccine are now being distributed worldwide, to combat disinformation the company has publicly released all the ingredients used in its product.