NJOMACS

The NWICO debates are popular as people in the Third World countries advocated for a balanced news flow and proper representation of people and occurrences in the countries by the dominant Western media. The introduction of the social media is considered a unique phenomenon in the world; and for people in sub-Saharan Africa, it is another source of information and news. In Nigeria, it has gained followers in recent times with over 31 million Nigerian users of different social media platforms. The coming of social media was a collective "prayer answered" for people in Third World countries as in them was found the media so liberalised to the point that they are able to tell their story to the world unhindered. It promoted a greater participation in the news process; gathering, processing, and dissemination. However, there are disturbing trends about the platforms that suggest negativity; and that is the fact that social media are enablers of the spread of fake news. Therefore, it was argued in this study that the spread of fake news on social media platforms is disruptive to the positives that their introduction hold for the world news flow imbalance and reportage. The study concludes that social media fake news are negatives to the very positives of the use of platforms in the global news architecture – from the prism of the NWICO debates. This is because the agenda for liberalised news space seem to have been further disrupted by the phenomenon that encourages the spread of falsehood.