The Fourth Estate in Ghana’s Fourth Republic: From “Culture of Silence” to Fake News and Post-Truth Politics

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ghana’s democratisation process under the Fourth Republican Constitution in 1992 restored a raft of civil liberties and democratic institutions truncated by the erstwhile Provisional National Defence Council’s (PNDC's) authoritarian military regime. One of these institutions is the mass media which has been assigned the role of the Fourth Estate, with its rights, independence and freedom stipulated and strongly protected by Chapter 12 of the 1992 constitution. This new-found freedom of the media and information not only led to the springing up of a multitude of private print and electronic media outlets but also stimulated the general transformation of the public sphere with the emergence of the digital media, particularly the social media platforms. Using existing data for thematic analysis and through the lenses of postmodernism, I examine the various cases of post-truth news (also called post-truth politics in this study), their implications and the methods used in combating them. The study finds that the prevalence of post-truth news leads to rising political tension and national security problems. Measures including arrests, detentions, harassment of perceived offenders and independent fact-checking have so far proven ineffective because of the perceived selective applications of the law and paucity of technical and technological capability.