The conference also included a play by Theatre Nisha, highlighting the simple yet compulsive ways misinformation is spread on social media and advertising.
CHENNAI: A British Broadcasting Corporation report on fake news in the country suggests that pro-Modi political activity and fake news overlap, suggesting that the ruling party is actively and effectively peddling fake news about Prime Minister Narendra Modi across social media platforms such as Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook.
In this end-to-end research initiative conducted by gaining access to phones from a wide demographic, the BBC found that fake news stories about India’s progress, Hindu power and revival of lost Hindu glory are widely being shared without fact-checking. It has been found that by sharing such messages, people feel like they are into nation-building.
“Whilst most discussion in the media has focussed on ‘fake news’ in the West, this piece of research gives strong evidence to suggest that a serious set of problems are emerging in the rest of the world where the idea of nation-building is trumping the truth when it comes to sharing stories on social media,” said Jamie Angus, Director, BBC World Service, in a release.
Interestingly, an overview of messages shared on WhatsApp alone suggests that almost 30 per cent of messages have a nationalistic flavour. Further, it has been found that more than two thirds of the messages considered to be nationalistic are about ‘cultural preservation’.
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