Daily Maverick, 11 January 2017, Rebecca Davis
One of the complicating factors when it comes to South Africa’s fake news problem is that there are many shades of fake, as Media Monitoring Africa’s William Bird points out.
“We have found that some of these sites don’t only use made-up nonsense, but they sometimes copy directly from more reputable news sites,” Bird says. “So on a site you might find nonsense, but then also a fairly normal news story. What also makes it tricky is that our news in South Africa is often so bizarre that you could be forgiven for thinking it’s made up.”