Dynamics and contours of online disinformation based on perspectives from Nigerian internet users

This study examined how Nigerian social media and internet users experience, interpret, and respond to online disinformation. The study was guided by the Uses and Gratifications and Social Cognitive theories. It explored four interrelated research questions. A qualitative design was adopted, using 12 focus group discussions conducted across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones (urban and semi-urban locations), with 84 participants aged 18–45. Data were thematically analysed, and findings show that disinformation is routinised as an everyday feature of social media experience, generating both selective skepticism and exhaustion that erode trust in government, legacy media, and platforms. Motivations for sharing misleading content range from humour, “quiet protest” to risk management. Participants’ views demonstrate that they are not passive conduits, instead, they rely on informal verification practices. Yet, their knowledge and use of formal fact-checking organisations remain minimal. The study identified patterned “contours” of disinformation such as political propaganda, religious and ethnic provocation, security and economic rumours, misread satire, and deepfakes. Our paper approaches disinformation not merely as a top-down instrument of deception but also as a lived experience and a social practice. As such, it contributes to a better ‘provincialised’ understanding of information disorder in African contexts. The paper contends that any approach to explain disinformation must do so without undermining the relationship between structural vulnerabilities including low institutional trust, economic disparity, and infrastructural lopsidedness. Such effort should also extend to the smaller dynamics such as humour and moral positioning that influence how Nigerians share content within their networks.