‘Tide of Nationalism’ main cause behind fake news in India: BBC Research

Dec. 1: In a path breaking research undertaken by BBC on fake news trends in India revealed that nationalism is driving ordinary citizens to spread fake news in social media. People in India share fake news stories with nationalistic messages for “nation building” purposes without any attempt at fact-checking. The research found that in India, “facts were less important to some than the emotional desire to bolster national identity”.

The research, commissioned by the BBC World Service, was part of “Beyond Fake News” — a series across TV, radio and digital where users gave the BBC unprecedented access to their encrypted messaging apps in India, Kenya and Nigeria. As part of the extensive research using big data and analytics, the BBC found that in Indian Twitter networks, known right wing sources of fake news seemed more closely aligned than left wing sources.”This allows right leaning fake news to spread faster and wider than left leaning fake news,” notes the extensive research carried out by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the three countries.

Categorising fake news by topic, the research found that 29.9% of fake news messages shared on Whatsapp fall under the category of ‘nationalism’. These include ‘common man’ stories, stories on ‘cultural preservation’ and others. Off all fake news messages on Whatsapp, ‘scares and scams’ form the biggest chunk of all fake news on WhatsApp – 36.5%. These pertain to conspiracies, health, money, technology and others. Fake news pertaining to current affairs, i.e., domestic news/politics forms 22.4% of these messages.

In all three countries, distrust of mainstream news outlets drove people to spread information from alternative sources, without attempting to verify it, in the belief that they were helping to spread the real story. People were also overly confident in their ability to spot fake news. The sheer flood of digital information being spread since 2018 is aggravating the issue. Participants in the BBC research made little attempt to query the original source of fake news messages, looking instead to alternative signs that the information was reliable. These included the number of comments on a Facebook post, the kinds of images on the posts, or the sender, with people assuming WhatsApp messages from family and friends could be trusted and sent on without checking.

The BBC Report further stated that “Widespread sharing of false rumours on WhatsApp has led to a wave of violence in India, with people forwarding on fake messages about child abductors to friends and family out of a sense of duty to protect loved ones and communities.” More than 30 people have been killed so far in incidents involving lynching rumours on various social media platforms.