Uses and Gratifications of Cloned Facebook News Pages among Nigerian Audiences: The Credibility-Misinformation Dilemma

This study set out to ask a practical question: how and why do Nigerian postgraduate students keep visiting cloned Facebook pages that pretend to be Daily Trust and Vanguard newspapers, and what does that behaviour mean for news use, media literacy and the spread of falsehood? Guided by Uses and Gratifications Theory, we surveyed postgraduate students to establish motives, frequency and duration of engagement with these unauthenticated pages. The results are plain and worrying: many respondents follow cloned pages for long periods and return frequently; not because they cannot tell quality journalism from counterfeit, but because brand recognition and convenience persuade them to treat what they find as legitimate. In short, reputation trumps verification. Three vulnerabilities emerge clearly: limited verification skills among users, an outsized trust in familiar media brands (even in digital impostors), and weak regulatory or platform policing that allows clones to multiply. The consequences are not abstract: users become exposed to disinformation, the public’s trust in genuine journalism is eroded, and democratic conversation is made more brittle. The paper therefore argues for modest, focused remedies, namely strengthen basic verification training, partner with reputable newsrooms to signal authenticity and push for enforceable platform accountability, which constitute measures that are feasible in our context and that respect citizens’ right to know. The paper concludes by recommending a combined strategy of enhanced media literacy education, stronger regulatory frameworks and proactive newsroom digital security to protect audiences and uphold the integrity of professional journalism in the digital age.