India had witnessed many wars but the most dangerous of all, is the war against the spread of fake news.
The spread of fake news through internet is so easy and become so common that somewhere every individual is responsible in passing the fake news or fake stories and misinformation.
2019 has been the year of Misinformation
India as a country reported, witnessed more mob lynching and attacks than any other country in the world.
This depicts that just you see anything on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true.
WHAT IS FAKE NEWS?
Well according to Wikipedia
“Fake news in India refers to misinformation, disinformation or mal-information in the country which is spread through word of mouth and traditional media and more recently through digital forms of communication such as edited videos, memes, unverified advertisements and social media propagated rumours.”
80% of the news we read online is fake and meant for propaganda.
Fake news travels faster than anything in the world, and penetrates deeper than the truth.
HOW MISINFORMATION LED TO MOB KILLING IN INDIA.
On July 13, 2018, five friends took a road trip to the south Indian village of Handikera, which is in the state of Karnataka.
The five men, Salham al-Kubassi, Mohammed Salman, Mohammed Azam, Mohammed Afroz and Noor Mohammad, traveled to the outskirts of town for a picnic. They drove by children getting out of school and offered them chocolates. Kubassi is from Qatar and had brought some chocolates with him on his visit to India.
Rema Rajeshwari, the district police chief in Telangana, is familiar with this case and has spearheaded initiatives to educate local communities in India about false child-kidnapping rumors on WhatsApp
It’s quite usual that Indians or friends who come from abroad, they always carry a box of candies for the children,” Rajeshwari said.
Rumors about child kidnappings had been circulating across India for months via WhatsApp and other social media platforms. The stories increased parents’ suspicion of outsiders in small rural communities.
“These types of videos and images were being circulated to create panic,” Rajeshwari said. “There was this state of mass hysteria in many parts, because these villages saw these videos and really believed that yes, there is a gang out there that is going to take their children.”
According to eyewitness accounts, adults working in the fields saw the visitors handing chocolates to the children and believed they were kidnappers. The villagers approached the visitors and started deflating the tires of their car. Quickly realizing they were in danger, three of the men, Kubassi, Salman and Azam, escaped in the car, leaving Afroz and Mohammad behind.
Before the men escaped, villagers sent video of the friends and their car to a WhatsApp group in the neighboring village of Murki. The videos identified the men as child kidnappers and warned the people in Murki that they were on the run.
Villagers in Murki placed a roadblock to stop the car. A mob of hundreds dragged the men from the car and started beating them. Police were eventually called, but the mob was too large to control.
The violent attack killed Azam and injured the other two men. Azam was 32, a father and a software engineer from Hyderabad.
Azam was not the first innocent person in India to die because of misinformation on WhatsApp about child kidnappings. India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with more than 400 million users. WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, has 2 billion users worldwide.
In the first half of 2018, more than two dozen people died in India in incidents connected to WhatsApp.
This report has been published by the Washington post, the survey and interviews they conducted to know the truth.
Pratik Sinha, the editor of Alt News, a fact-checking outlet in India, blames a lack of media literacy and government inaction for the uncontained spread of fake news. “There’s a huge section of population which is getting access to mobile and Internet services for the first time in their lives, and they do not have the capacity to figure out what is authentic and what is not,” Sinha said.
After the spike in rumors and violence in 2018, WhatsApp took action. The app labels when a message has been forwarded and limits forwarding to five group chats. According to WhatsApp, that move reduced forwarded messages in India by more than 25 percent. The platform also worked with local expert groups to create digital literacy training to teach users how to spot fake news.
Allow me to share a quote by Joseph Goebbels, who was the propaganda minister during Nazi Germany
He said which I quote
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
This is what happening in India.
I request you all before posting, sharing and believing anything you see on internet please check the facts first.
Search it on google or you have so many fact checking companies just send the videos to them and they will confirm the rest.
all the data used above in the article is secondary and the primary source is wikipedia and the washington post.
BY ARUSHI SHARMA
THOUGHT-SO-RAMA 