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I'd like to share a quick fact-checking technique – I call it, the 'probablity test'. This is a pre-assessment tool, that allows you to look at data and determine whether or not is probable or even possible (before you get into detailed data).
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For example, a few years ago, some news reports claimed that between 5 million and 6 million people from Malawi lived in South Africa.
Malawi's *total* population is less than 20-million. It is implausible that a quarter of the country's population lives in South Africa
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Malawi's *total* population is less than 20-million. It is implausible that a quarter of the country's population lives in South Africa
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This was clearly explained in an @AfricaCheck fact check on the claim: https://africacheck.org/reports/totally-out-of-the-question-that-a-third-of-malawis-population-live-in-sa/
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Now let's look at the claim around '15 million' undocumented migrants. Before I even get to the part where I show you how even the largest estimates in the last few years have been 2-3 million foreign migrants *in total*... Is this claim even plausible?
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South Africa's population is just shy of 60 million people. If there were 15-million undocumented migrants (not to mention the documented ones), that would mean one in every 4 people in ZA was a foreigner. It's implausible that this would go unnoticed by all but a few.
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And by the way, the census doesn't exclude people on the basis of their nationality or citizenship or documentation.
Also, 15 million people... is a LOT of people. It's really, really hard (impossible) to hide this many people without there being SOME data (a lot of data!) ...
Also, 15 million people... is a LOT of people. It's really, really hard (impossible) to hide this many people without there being SOME data (a lot of data!) ...
So... when citing figures, especially about populations, it's easy to use basic, commonly available information to do a plausibility test. Doing this might make you pause or even stop from sharing or tweeting a false or malicious claim.
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