Analysing the most adversely affected population from the phenomenon

of Fake News

Aditi Agrawal, Dishti Jain, Priyanshi Gupta, Shreyasi Saxena and Tannishtha Maherda
Department of Fashion Technology, NIFT- New Delhi

Supervised by Chandra Shekhar Joshi

1. Introduction

● Fake news is not novel. History abounds with various examples of twisting the truth for
material increase, popularly called lying, or flexing the truth for political gain, named
propaganda.
● In the fast-moving internet age this role has been primarily challenged as rumors and false
information are being viral, sometimes leading to tragic results.
● This study aims to emphasize on the circulation of fake news through social media
platforms, primarily WhatsApp and to identify the group of people most vulnerable to this
issue.
● We also aim to highlight and consider a few cases which led to any kind of social change/
disruption in the nation due to dissemination of misinformation through WhatsApp.
● This study aims to help the authorities and digital media platforms to identify the most
affected groups and act accordingly towards safeguarding the citizen’s interests.

2. Literature Review

During the preliminary research, it was found that not many analyses have been made to
understand fake news in a better way and the impact it has in the Indian scenario. Digital
media giants are oblivious to the groups which are being tremendously affected by the
blurring lines between fake and real. It has inspired us to explore fake news through various
examples, to understand its societal impact in a better way.

3. Methodology

Case study method is used as a means to conduct our exploratory research. The case
referred is “WhatsApp Vigilantes: An exploration of citizen reception and circulation of
WhatsApp misinformation linked to mob violence in India”1 conducted by London School of
Economics and Political Science.

Careful examination of existing case is done to arrive at appropriate conclusion.

4. Case Study Referred To

On July 16, 2018, an IT worker Mohammed Azam visited a relative in Bidar district in
Karnataka with three of his friends. They saw a few children returning from school to whom
they gave Qatari chocolates out of affection.
However, suspecting them to be child-snatchers, the villagers turned hostile. The group fled
in their car but the villagers called ahead to the next village and villagers there blocked the

1 (Banaji and Bhat 2018)

2. (Banerjee and Haque 2018)

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 road.
Their car was flipped into a ditch. People then dragged the group of four only to beat them
up with sticks and stones, killing Azam and injuring the other three.
On July 24, 2018, four women in West Bengal's Dawkimari village, Jalpaiguri, were injured
in an assault by mobs on suspicion of being child-lifters.
On July 28, 2018, a 29-year-old man in Dindori, Madhya Pradesh, suspected of being a
child kidnapper, was set upon by a mob wielding iron bars and bamboo rods.
Similar incidents occurred in Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra,
Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Assam, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Tripura, Gujarat, and several
other states, all owing to the suspicion of the victim being a child-lifter.

Everyone who's been following the news knows that this suspicion didn't just bloom out of
nowhere, but was injected into people's brains through a message which was circulated on
WhatsApp. The fake message claimed that there were child-lifters in that area and people
should be alert. It spread like a plague, and made people blind enough to turn on any
random person trying to talk to or get associated with a child. Even parents who were out
with their kids got attacked. Not only this, people were beaten to death because they
weren't native to the area and were present there for some work.

Since neither the Indian government track incidents of public lynching nor the Indian Crime
Records Bureau keeps data regarding their occurrences across India, we do not know the
exact number of people who got lynched owing to fake news.

4.1 Why fake news propagates so fast on WhatsApp

In order to understand why fake news propagates so fast on WhatsApp, India Today
Education talked to dozens of people from urban and semi-urban areas. And, some of them
are hard-core WhatsApp users, who do not use any social media platform but rely solely on
this messaging app.

4.2 Key Findings from the case

● In India, people are reluctant to share messages which they think might incite violence but
feel duty bound to share nationalistic messages
● Fake news stories about India's progress, Hindu power, and revival of lost Hindu glory are
being shared widely without any attempt at fact-checking
● In sharing these messages, people feel like they are nation building
● There is also a feeling of duty to share breaking news just in case it is true and could
affect those in their networks.
● A sense of duty to democratise access to information is also seen to be at play here.
● Fake news is being unwittingly spread by people across India, Kenya, and Nigeria, as they
forward messages in the hope that someone else will check the truth of the story for them

5. Discussion And Conclusion

5.1 Chalking Out The Target Groups Of Whatsapp

According to a research study aimed at figuring out “Target groups of Whatsapp”:

● Most of the people aged between 21 and 28 don’t forward messages. While they
have different reasons for it, most of them don’t do it because they don't know how to
verify the authenticity of a message and couldn't risk forwarding fake news.
● This age group not only refrains from forwarding messages related to political claims
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 and government policies but also messages carrying religious information and other
things as such.
● Some people from this age group acknowledged that they do forward messages that
they think are important, but only after proper verification.
● While some people checked the authenticity of the messages on Google others took
the following measures:

✔ Asking a person if they think they know about the matter

✔ Asking another person to verify the fact for them, whom they identify as a person
who knows how to verify the info
✔ Checking the information on fake news buster websites like Alt News

● Another section of users aged between 30 and 48 accepted that they forward the
message if they 'think' it is genuine, or if it 'feels like' it is genuine. They didn't know
how to properly verify the info provided in a message but they claimed they have a
general idea of what a fake message looks like.
● When presented with some WhatsApp forwards, they managed to verify more than half
of fake news based on their 'hunch', but one or two messages did manage to pass
them.

Both of these age groups have one thing in common -- if the source is a person
they think won't forward fake news, they not only believe it instantly but also
forward it another WhatsApp group without thinking for a second.

Who exactly is prone to forwarding messages?

Upon analysing, it was evaluated that people who are less aware of news are more prone
to forwarding fake news. When asked why they forward a message in the first place, they
said that they don't want to keep information to themselves in case it is true and affects
people they know.

Another reason was found to be eminent for sharing fake news: Nationalism: People in
India are sharing fake news stories with nationalistic messages for 'nation building'
purposes, with the consolidation of national identity taking precedence over the need to
fact-check a story.

Another school of thought suggests that:

While it was thought that spreading fake news or rumours was due to a lack of digital
literacy (‘people are unaware of what they are forwarding’) or a lack of education (‘ignorant
villagers believe in ignorant things’), A new LSE study strongly argues that a section of rural
and urban upper and middle-caste Hindu men and women are predisposed to simply believe
information against discriminated groups.

So the spread of fake news in India that sparks mob lynchings is largely done out of
“reasons of prejudice and ideology”, rather than “ignorance or digital literacy”.

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(Shakuntala Banaji 2018)2

It was also found that: This type of technologically-literate, male, Hindu user is also more
likely to create and administer the groups responsible for ideologically charged
misinformation, disinformation and hate-speech on WhatsApp in the first place.

On the other hand, if a WhatsApp user is lower caste, Dalit, or Muslim and/ or a woman
and/or rural, particularly with lower levels of technological literacy, then such a user is less
likely to create and curate and unlikely even to forward ideologically-charged misinformation
and disinformation.

Education and media literacy levels don’t really matter in this regard, the study’s
focus groups with WhatsApp users also noted.

Particularly amongst well-educated users who are aware of the need for a politically
correct stance on disinformation, we found a tendency to position themselves as alert, ethical,
responsible and savvy media users. However, even very educated and media literate users
are often not aware of the contradictions in their beliefs and behaviours. 3

Post First Syndrome: Another aspect was noticed, a few members in groups who want to
“post first” or “forward first”. These people do so in hopes of gaining social capital and
acquiring a reputation for being very knowledgeable and informed, and hence often less
concerned with the reliability of the news they forward.

On top of that these people built a reputation as being very knowledgeable and informed.

6. Limitations

● Can’t generalize the results to the wider population.

● The results of the study cannot be generalized because we can never know whether
the case we have investigated is representative of the wider body of "similar"
instances.

● Time-consuming.

7. References

1. https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/anatomy-of-a-whatsapp-forward-why-people-
spread-fake-news-1389242-2018-11-15
2. WhatsApp Vigilantes: An exploration of citizen reception and circulation of WhatsApp
misinformation linked to mob violence in India by Shakuntala Banaji and Ram Bhat
3. Is Fake News Real in India? By Amila Banerjee and Mehrazun Neesa Haque
4. https://thewire.in/communalism/mob-lynchings-whatsapp-fake-news Commented [1]: accessed date bhi kuch random daal
de
Commented [2]: okay

2 https://thewire.in/communalism/mob-lynchings-whatsapp-fake-news
3 WhatsApp Vigilantes Report