Are We Spreading Fake News?

WhatsApp is used by millions of people in India to make calls, chat and share information. But the service is also providing an unfiltered platform for fake news and religious hatred. The difficulty with WhatsApp is that it’s impossible to know how this information is spreading. It’s very easy for a political party or for anyone else to spread misinformation and no one can trace it back to them. So many of its users are new to the Internet and not digitally literate; and because conversations happen within private groups, it can be difficult for the broader public to correct false information. WhatsApp’s largest market is India, where it has more than 20 crore (200 million) users who had sent 2000 crore (20 billion) New Year’s Eve greetings via WhatsApp this year. Almost from the beginning, WhatsApp messages have been used to incite mob violence in India. Indian officials, feeling helpless to stop the spread of WhatsApp content, have resorted to shutting the Internet down in tension-filled places, with more than 70 stoppages during 2017 as compared with six in 2014.

Karnataka Elections 2018 whose results came out on May 15, 2018 are being dubbed as India’s “WhatsApp First” election. Most well-meaning people may be aware of the recent allegations about complicity of Facebook in data-breach for use/abuse in Indian politics besides undermining democracy by failing to control hate speech, Russian disinformation and inaccurate news; but they may not be aware of Facebook having bought WhatsApp in 2014. Facebook executives have clashed with WhatsApp’s leadership on a host of issues, including privacy and how to profit off WhatsApp’s broad base of users. Its co-founder, Jan Koum, resigned last month in part over Facebook’s attempts to collect more detailed information.

Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an EMOTIONAL rather than a RATIONAL response to the information that is presented. Propaganda is associated with governments, activist groups, companies and the media. Identifying propaganda has always been a problem. The main difficulties have involved differentiating propaganda from other types of persuasion, and avoiding a biased approach.

"Fake news" was not a term many people used 18 months ago, but it is now seen as one of the greatest threats to democracy, free debate and the World order. "Fake news" was also named 2017's word of the year, raising tensions between nations, and may lead to regulation of social media.

Social networks are a very potent platform for spreading propaganda. With people spending more time on these sites as a way to get the latest news and information, their importance in spreading fake news cannot be underestimated. However, there’s a difference between simply posting propaganda and actually turning it into something that the target audience consumes. Propaganda and Fake News campaign are designed to "dumb us down" in order to turn people into material suitable to work for or against a political cause. Propaganda and Fake News campaigns are motivated at times, simply by a desire for monetary gain via advertising. In other cases, the goals can vary from the criminal to the political. Regardless of the motive, the success of any such campaign is ultimately based on how much it affects the real world.

Of all the potential targets for providing voluntary and unquestioned assistance in the last link connectivity to the target audience of propaganda and fake news, children and the professionals are the most vulnerable. While children lack the strength of critical reasoning, professionals, given the depth of their expertise, usually lack the width of the context and are readily willing to accept propaganda as pure information and knowledge. There is enough evidence that only the children or the highly educated absorb propaganda indiscriminately and get indoctrinated. 

Both children and the professionals have the relentless need for “phatic communication” where what is important is not the content of what is being said but the ritual of affirming and maintaining social bonds through routine communicative exchange. Professionals also have a sense of “Competitive Collegialities” wherein competing professionals need a collaborative social bonding and therefore a need to exchange information.

These vulnerabilities are used by the propaganda and fake news masters. They plant the “information” in the social media and then keep affirming and amplifying key messages by strategists and influencers through likes and shares, thus creating “illusions of engagement”. Community-level fake account operators are tasked to post a prescribed number of posts or comments on Facebook community groups, news sites, or rival’s pages. By actively posting content from generic greetings to political messages within Facebook community groups, they are often responsible for maintaining activity and initiating bandwagon effects that would drive real grassroots supporters (children and professionals) to come out and openly express their enthusiasm for a particular message. The “Shares” on social networks like ‘Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter’ and “copy and paste” into ‘WhatsApp Groups’ are measures of “Influence Maximization” and “Information Diffusion” and “Epidemiological Models” are used for “Impact Measurement.”

Are we aware that the Madras High Court on May 10, 2018 observed that a message forwarded on social media amounted to accepting and endorsing it? Are we naively complicit in making a fake or a false message going “VIRAL” thereby spreading an epidemic?

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