How fake news is posing a threat to India's social fabric

The dissemination of fake news in the country has emerged as a major challenge for fact-checkers and civil society, only to be exacerbated further through social media and government-driven propaganda

In May 2022, a rather disturbing video was doing the rounds on social media. In the video, a group of people was seen attacking a man, who was reportedly a Bangladeshi Hindu leader, for failing to attend an Iftar party. Last week, the video went viral again, accompanied by a caption which translates thus: “Gehlot [Ashok Gehlot, chief minister of Rajasthan] shut down Jodhpur’s internet today because a shopkeeper is being punished for being Hindu by Jihadis. Everyone watch this video and share it as much as possible.”

Fact-checking website BOOM Live found that the video is actually from Haryana’s Yamuna Nagar district, and the violence occurred as a result of a personal, monetary dispute, with four people since been arrested in connection with the case. “Something communal happens in the news and the same videos come back up with different claims,” says Abhilash Mallick, Editor-Fact Check at The Quint's WebQoof, a fact-checking initiative by the online platform. “That’s a major problem.”

Technology as an enabler for fake news

Fake news is a concern across all news beats from health to policy and  the stock market. It is also a reflection of what’s concerning people most at the time. For instance, in 2020, at 1527 cases, India saw a 214 per cent increase in recorded cases of fake news, from 486 cases in 2019. According to onestudy, India also emerged as the largest source of COVID-related misinformation.

But a constant that emerges strongly through all fake news in India is the tendency to give a communal spin to any news piece. “A large chunk of the fake news on a daily basis is religious polarisation, I would say about 80 per cent,” estimates Karen Rebelo, deputy editor at BOOM.

While social media has certainly democratised free speech, it is exacerbating the problem of fake news by giving more voices with particular agendas a platform. Social media’s algorithms bombard users with more of the same thing, offering the space for echo chambers to exist. “Because they [users] follow similar kinds of pages, they keep seeing such posts again and again. Our fact-check does not reach them, because they are always in their own circle,” says Mallick. This, in turn, is strengthening prejudices and deepening the divides in society, making technology the ultimate enabler for fake news. In the world’s largest secular democracy, deeply polarised at the moment, inciters know that adding a communal angle to any news piece is a definitive way of arousing emotions and getting more traction. While news tides and rumours eventually die down, the emotion one feels when reading a piece of news lingers, the associated memory deepening one’s biases, beliefs and behaviours. 

“We focus on it [fake news that is religiously polarising] not because we choose to but because it is the most viral and has the potential to do the most harm, in terms of undoing the fabric of society, instigating riots or leading to somebody getting harmed,” says Rebelo.

Further fuelled by social media

Fake news spreads because of the troubling trend of people in India largely relying on social media to consume news. As of 2022, there are 470.1 million monthly active social media users in the country. According to a study from University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 54 per cent of Indians trust the news they get on WhatsApp. 

The messaging app entered India in 2009, and at 487 million, India has the most WhatsApp users in the world. Several reasons have come together to create the perfect storm, making sure the ‘WhatsApp university’—the large number of forwards carrying lies, baseless claims and propaganda-driven information—flourishes. 

As the Internet penetrated deeper into the country, data became cheaper; between 2016 and 2019, India had the world’s cheapest mobile data plans. Smartphones became more accessible and easier to use, and a chunk of the country’s population was suddenly online. For the most part, these were people who believed what they saw and created messages as they deemed fit. As a subject, media literacy was only introduced in schools in 2010, and although there’s been much advancement, “the focus continues to be on skill development rather than critical thinking.”

Weaponising fake news to drive political agendas 

Within a few years of this, India had elected a nationalist, majoritarian government to power, leading to an uptick in the circulation of messages glorifying the country while othering certain sections of society. “Role models are actually a great source of influence,” says psychologist and integrative psychotherapist Anis Syed. For instance, when faced with someone “who has shaped my ideas and perspective towards life, I would be a lot more influenced by what they have to say. So even [with] the kind of information they present me with, I might believe that’s true instead of clarifying or trying to find out whether it’s true or not,” explains Syed, underlining the proliferating culture of political leaders viewed as not just opinion makers, but also hero figures within certain communities.

With this power over public opinion, political parties’ IT cells have also contributed manifold to the increase in fake news. "Both political parties [the ruling party and the Opposition] have taken every chance they get to put out misinformation," says Adrija Bose, senior editor at BOOM who leads its vertical Decode. Advancements in technology, like bots and deepfakes, are being used further to peddle misinformation that is often tinged with ulterior agendas, that may be political or religious in nature. “Fake news has been weaponised very effectively,” says Rebelo. “Politicians have used it as a weapon against journalists and any negative coverage they don’t like.”

Reinforcing a sometimes misplaced trust in social media is the widespread phenomenon of people not having faith in the media anymore. Media houses today are working under tremendous pressure. There’s always a race to be the first one to break news and get indexed on Google. This means pushing news out without always fact-checking. “Even big news organisations which are credible have fallen for fake news because of this urgency, this need to produce stories quickly and grab attention,” says Bose. To gain back that trust, journalists have to decide to act ethically, to not let Google dictate how they report, and focus on impact-based journalism instead of participating in the rat race. 

Fake news and the human psyche

As individuals facing such chaos, our minds are prone to two psychological responses. There’s motivated reasoning, which means one reasons emotionally, actively looking for reasons they are right and rejecting information that doesn’t match their belief systems. And there’s confirmation bias, a tendency to focus on and interpret information in a way that reinforces the beliefs or values one already holds. “How these play out in the tech world is, the more we search for something, social media channels amplify that,” says Syed. “This is why a lot of our own beliefs and biases become stronger, because our algorithms are tuned around what we want to know versus what is the truth.” 

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Added to this is the “social” aspect of social media. In as much as we’re social beings who feel the need to belong, and strongly identify with certain groups, our social media behaviour is a reflection of these feelings. A paper published earlier this year found that there’s often an unsaid rule within groups—if one doesn’t agree with certain beliefs, they risk exclusion. “Our studies reveal that group members who do not conform to the behaviour of other members by sharing fake news are often subjected to social penalties… the likelihood of social interaction between users who shared a fake news story and others who did not decreased over time,” says Asher Lawson, one of the authors of the paper. Speaking online means we’re deeply aware of the feedback we’re receiving, in terms of likes and shares. We’re constantly bonding with our peers and feeling the social reward when we get their approval—a feeling that’s much stronger than the bland truths that fact-checkers present. As sociologist Zeynep Tufekci says, “Belonging is stronger than facts.”

Keeping these factors in mind, fake news, quite often, becomes more appealing than the facts and logic of genuine reporting, owing to the sensationalism that underlines it in order to grab more attention. It is, therefore, imperative to acknowledge the profound impact such narratives can have on society—both at a collective and an individual level.

A ripple effect

“Fake news has a very detrimental effect on society. It increases the divisions among people. It’s extremely effective in creating fissures among communities,” says Rebelo. It signals a lack of tolerance for differing perspectives, and maybe even a lack of empathy for the perceived ‘others.’ Because of the constant exposure to negative fake news, “people’s implicit biases (when our biases, instead of facts, affect our decisions and judgments) are getting stronger, becoming more explicit in terms of expression,” says Syed. “This is making it more difficult for people to coexist, and leading to more violence.”

However, measures are being taken to combat fake news. The most direct response is fact-checking. “Fact-checking is like medication,” says Rebelo. “There needs to be media literacy, good journalism, and strong democratic institutions like courts and the police,” she adds. 

While fact-checkers are continuously fighting against the barrage of misinformation and disinformation, there are also media literacy programmes, or educational initiatives that teach users how to think critically and help them identify potentially fake news, by organisations like the Misinformation Combat Alliance (MCA). “We’re looking to create curriculums that can be taught to students in school,” says Rajneil Kamath, Vice President of the MCA and founder of Newschecker. “The idea is to teach them how to be safe online, what are appropriate ways to engage with information online, and how to develop the skill which can help you understand what can and shouldn’t be believed.” Essentially, depending on the students’ age group and skills, they’re creating curriculums that will teach students to reason and equip them with skills like doing searches on their own, spotting fake news and sensationalism. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has also released an infographic detailing how one can spot fake news online. 

“Given that a lot of the problem is compounded by technology, it’s also helping us with the right tools and interventions to be able to detect, diagnose and mitigate the impact of misinformation,” says Kamath. Several fact-checkers are using WhatsApp tip lines to maintain an open channel of communication with people. Organisations like Factly use tech tools such as VidCheck which standardises fact-checking related to videos and Dega, an open-source publishing platform with built-in features for fact checkers. Big tech is also responding to the issue through efforts like the Google News Initiative and the Meta Journalism Project. “Technology companies do recognise the responsibility that they have in combating the problem and are trying to look at effective interventions at the product level as well as the service level,” adds Kamath.

In India, the Press Information Bureau launched its Fact Check Unit in 2019, to fight fake news about the Indian government and its departments and policies. The challenge of finding the delicate balance between regulating fake news without censoring free speech is evident in the ongoing debate about amendments to the IT Rules.

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