1950: Mass media revolution meant the world was delivered in our drawing rooms
through Television.
Circa 2018, it’s a two-way trip – you just do not sit back and watch, but also
respond!
In its simple sense, social media is a change in how people discover, read and share
news, information and content. And in simple terms, it has transformed monologue
and democratized information. But in the process, it has changed content readers
into publishers.
Predictably information on social media is constantly mutating and evolving.
While social media played a key role in the rallying of youths in the Arab Spring
that led to the fall of regimes in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, in India, the anti-
corruption movement led by Anna Hazare in 2011 for a Lokpal was an example.
And in India, often fake news leads to violence. In December of 2017, seven
people died in two different incidences in Jharkhand, in a rampage that was born
on social media and based on fake information that the killers received over the
messaging service WhatsApp.
Earlier in May 2017, a mob in the eastern state of Jharkhand went on a killing
spree, triggered by a simple WhatsApp message.
Three innocent men were beaten to death by an angry mob that wrongly believed
those men were human traffickers, based on a warning they received in the
messages.
History repeated itself in July 2018. On a late evening close to midnight, two cross
dressers were attacked by a group at a cafe under Chandrayangutta police station
limits in Hyderabad's old city area over suspicion that they were child lifters.
Arguments soon took an ugly turn with the locals assaulting the duo, killing one of
them. The victim, 52-year-old Chandraiah was a native of Mahbubnagar district in
south Telangana and had come to Hyderabad reportedly to seek alms during the
Ramzan month along with three others.
It was fake news doing the rounds, which resulted in the tragic death of
Chandraiah.
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Not surprisingly, an independent research has revealed that there are around 55
million Indians, who are a part of some social network/media. Around 60% of
those on social media are now connected by mobile devices. India has more than
900 million mobile phone subscribers, and cheaper handsets championed by
Google and Facebook are lowering the entry barrier. And the numbers are only
going up.
Various estimates suggest Indians on an average spend around two hours every day
on social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Such is the impact of
social media today in India, that superstar Amitabh Bachchan broke the news about
the birth of his granddaughter “Beti B” on Twitter !
Social media has enormously changed the way we consume, produce and distribute
content. Today, in India, news first breaks out on Twitter before it even gets on to
the 24 hour news channel. Sociologist William Dutton at the Oxford Internet
Institute (OII) has termed this development as the fifth Estate.
Across media houses, User Generated Content (UGC) regularly leads for front
page news. But that is also putting pressure on Editors on what to use or report and
what not to. “This wave can be termed as participatory journalism which has its
merits and de-merits. Finally it’s up to editors what kind of content they want to
provide their readers/viewers. Should it be consumed or not? The answer to that
lies in how much research is done before telling the story. Then there is no
dilemma” says an editor in a national daily newspaper.
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REASONS FOR FAKE NEWS
The revolution called the Web 2.0 has promised to bring more truth to more people
but every week a new article on the internet calls into question the accuracy,
reliability and trust of the information we get from the internet.
Journalists have begun to use social media tools like Twitter, Blogs and Facebook,
but on their own terms. Social media and blogs are not replacing journalism;
however, they are creating an extra layer of information and providing diverse
opinion.
A lot of people are still happy to depend on traditional news organizations to sort
fact from fiction and serve up a filtered view, but they are increasingly engaged by
information that is often fake, particularly when recommended by friends.
One of the primary reasons for fake news is that most organizations are devoting
significant resources to exploit social networks to drive reach. “At the core of
today's media business whether in India or abroad it is revenue earning. Social
media sites could become as important as search engines as a driver of traffic and
revenue. In the process, ethics is compromised,'' says a media analyst.
Says Paul Chadwick at the Guardian, false news is more novel than true news and
precisely why we share the false much faster and more widely. Prominent
responses to false news include surprise, fear and disgust. True news tends to be
met with sadness, joy, anticipation and trust; and its human tendency.
The premier Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) studied how and why
true and false news stories spread differently, by using 126,000 stories that had
been tweeted by 3 million people a total of 4.5m times. The data spanned 2006,
when Twitter began, to 2017.
The study found that “falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper and
more broadly than truth in all categories of information”. Fake political news
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reached people faster and went deeper into their networks than any other category
of false information.
In India, fake news in social media assists in hate speech to turn into communal
violence more quickly. This is because false news travels faster and wider on
social media. . In fact, people push false news more. The MIT study showed that
false news is 70% more likely to be retweeted compared to true news.
In India, WhatsApp plays a huge platform for the exchange of both true and false
news. But compared to Twitter where tweets can be viewed by everybody,
WhatsApp is a private messaging service. Deb Roy, one of the authors of the MIT
study said, “I think private messaging networks like WhatsApp also impacts the
flow of news.''
The mobile phone reach in India has been phenomenal. When the Centre (Indian
government) made an attempt to crackdown on fake news, there was a huge
backlash from big media houses saying they are being targeted. “In my view, main
stream media must come forward and discredit and help the government in fighting
this menace, rather than taking it personally'' says a senior editor at a national
daily.
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DETECTION OF FAKE NEWS
By the look of it, fake news is designed in such a way that it can mislead
or deliberately misinform people. Because on the face of it, it’s only truly absurd
and unbelievable stories which are easily identifiable.
The first and foremost tool to detect fake news is the source of information. Then
comes the author of the story for his/her credibility, reliability and trust
worthiness. “References and links to other news stories or articles are crucial. All
these checks will help you identify if the content is fake or not,” points out a
journalism professor.
Experts say yet another vital strategy to spot or detect fake news is to check if it’s
shared with other mainstream news outlets, such as BBC News, CNN or in India,
prominent newspapers. “If it is, then you can feel more sure that the story is not
fake, because these organizations take special care to check their sources and very
rarely publish a story without having a second source to back it up'' points out a
media analyst.
During the demonetization move in November 2016, a WhatsApp forward
convinced people, and even news channels, that the new Rs2, 000 note came
embedded with GPS trackers. The story turned out to be false. “Fake news is not a
new phenomenon but social media platforms have made it much easier to spread
rumors and lies.” says the Journalism professor.
According to a report in March by the Internet and Mobile Association of India
(IAMAI), the number of internet users in India was expected to cross 450 million
by June—241 million have Facebook accounts and over 200 million are on
WhatsApp.
Many of these users have been mobile-first users of the internet, so they are not
aware of the fake email forwards and online frauds of the desktop era. They tend to
think the messages they get are genuine. More often than not, fake news operators
fudge the numbers, Photoshop images, take a photo from an old source or from
another country and try and sell it as statistics or a photo of something that it is
not,” says Sandeep K. Shukla, head of department, computer science and
engineering, at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
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It’s really important to avoid sharing stories that you are unsure about. If you are in
any doubt about whether it is real or fake, discuss it with a friend or a family
member to find out what they think about the story before you press that forward
button!
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Conclusion
The tools for building fake stories are only getting sophisticated by the day. The
fake news menace is so advanced that a study found how a new video-making tool
can now recreate an old news clip of a politician by changing both the expression
and content.
The world is finally waking up to the menace, In India, there are full page
advertisements in national dailies about how to guard against the spread of fake
news. Multiple fact-checking organizations have come up, all of them trying to get
to the source through filtering tools, automation and collaboration.
Internet giants like Facebook and Google have tied up with fact-checking
organizations to check the news they show on their feeds. In September, Facebook
ran advertisements in newspapers in India, Kenya and Britain, detailing tips on
spotting fake news. The future truly looks promising.
Thus, the rise of social media has led to the rise of fake news that not only
questions media ethics but the sensibilities of its users.