Fake news: An Agenda driven system

The Parliamentary standing committee on Information and Technology had questioned the Facebook over the allegation to advertise and unfairly promote one political party.

• This brief aims to analyse the increasing cases of fake news and emphasises on the need of social media sites to acknowledge their professional and ethical responsibilities.

• Misinformation, spin, lies and deceit have of course been around forever, however, they drew attention in 2008 when due to propagation of false information resulted in killing of 20 people.
• There were several instances after that when fake news got viral on social media sites and spread among a large number of people in less time.
• In 2013, the Muzzaffarpur riots in Uttar Pradesh were caused due to the fake rumours on social media about hurting religious sentiments.
• Recently after Donald trump had won the presidential elections of US, the fake news was the major contributor to this result.

What is fake news?

• Fake news are the stories converted into news that are intentionally and verifiably false and has the capacity to misinform and misguide the readers.
• It can be used to propagate an agenda which can be political, religious and social.
• The term does not clarify whether it applies to private communications (WhatsApp chats), social media (Facebook), online media (an online-only news organisation) or even traditional print media.

• Through social media- the internet penetration in India has risen to 137 million internet users in 2012 to 600 million in 2019.
• Mostly users are from Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social media giants.
• Lack of education- due to the large number of people using internet are not educated in villages and small towns leads to inappropriate spreading of news.
• Without checking the authenticity of the news they used to believe in these false news.

• Socio-political impact- fake news is used frequently to target minorities and has a capacity to ignite a local violence and attacks.
• For example- news related to target a particular minority group which can spread hate among another group can cause violence and mob lynching of that minority.
• CAA agenda driven riots against minorities.
• Institutional impact- no proper institutional mechanism to handle the fake news will lead to spreading them in increased pace without the knowledge of any official.
• Pew research centre in a study has mentioned that 44% American adults now get their news on Facebook.
• 64% of them depend on one site for news updates.
• Pyscological impact- the person or the reader of this news will generate a perception of a particular topic.
• Religious hating or promotion of a political party will be the result of it on the human mind.
• This can further lead to tilting of opinions of large masses.
• Political Impact: Disinformation can interfere with the electoral process by misinforming voters about candidates’ political opinions, track records, previous misdeeds, and positions on important social issues.

• India does not yet have a “fake news” legislation.
• Under the constitutional scheme, all speech is free other than that which the government restricts because it is has a proximate nexus with the specific harms identified by the heads of Article 19(2) (public order, defamation etc.).

• The term “fake news” suffers from several definitional hurdles that point to deeper structural problems in our media eco-system.
• There is a direct collision between restrictions of some forms of ‘misinformation’ and ‘right to speech’.
• However, speech in India can be restricted because of its consequences, that it may lead to violence, but also because of the speech’s content– that the meaning conveyed is deemed legally objectionable.
• Therefore, any restriction imposed on speech must comply with the constitutional safeguards set out in Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(2).

• In 2022, the Tamil Nadu Government announced formation of a special Social Media Monitoring Centre, under Tamil Nadu Police "to monitor and curb the spread of fake news and misinformation online".
• The J&K administration released a new Media Policy-2020 on 15 May 2020 which read that "any individual or group indulging in fake news, unethical or anti national activities or in plagiarism shall be de-empaneled besides being proceeded against under law".
• In 2018, Google News launched a program to train 8000 journalists in seven official Indian languages including English. The program, Google's largest training initiative in the world, would spread awareness of fake news and anti-misinformation practices such as fact-checking.

• Fact checking organisation should be established in the national and state level.
• Grass root measures should be taken- the social media giants should institutionalise a team to take care of the fake new in there platform.
• Law enforcement- the fake news and associated issues should be considered as crime as it can lead to mob lynching, murder, attacks and even threat to national security.
• Assigned sections under the Indian penal code for these social media giants and they should penalize for such actions.
• There is need of a heterogeneous approach to combat the issue of “fake news”.

Social media platform acts a medium of exchange of information and connects a large number of people globally. Hence these institutions should moralise there agenda and sensitize the information being shown on their websites. They can be true “Arbitrator of truth”.