Mitigating Information Insecurity: An African Perspective on Satisfaction With Democracy

Abstract

While Africans are committed to democracy, governments across the continent have failed to deliver on the democratic aspirations of the populace, with declinatory outcomes for satisfaction with democracy (SWD) over the past decade. A number of reliable variables (e.g., economics, political participation, democratic performance) have been used over the past 50 years to study trends in SWD worldwide. Yet the integrity of information ecosystems, including misinformation and censorship levels have not been fully explored as predictors of SWD. As concerns about the social web’s diffusion of misinformation have culminated in policy considerations worldwide, we focused on the African continent, where the current global push for government action to curb the misinformation tide could facilitate backsliding into authoritarian practices. Using a data set of 40,801 respondents from 34 African countries, we found that social media news use and perceptions about the circulation of misinformation impacted SWD and that citizen attitudes about government censorship of misinformation have a moderating influence on SWD.