By: Sejal Goyal

Fake news during COVID

Fake news is travelling much rapidly than the coronavirus across India. Even before the country’s first case on 30 January, India’s social media was flooded with fake and untrue posts like, wild rumours, conspiracy theories, and doctored videos regarding the disease’s origin, its subsequent spread and possible remedies. Once the country started reporting further more cases, a torrent of faux messages began populating all major social media platforms, particularly Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, TikTok so on. COVID-19 related fake news which began climbing within the third week of March took a large spike in early April. Out of 178 fact checks the onset of COVID-19 within the country, the maximum amount as 35% of them were fake videos, 29% images and the same percentage were doctored messages on range of issues like fake treatment and diagnosis of the virus, fake quotes by celebrities with their photos, false notifications and lock down guidelines among others. Fact checks were on news reports (4%) by mainstream media organisations. Most of those stories were found to form false claims against a selected community.

After the Tablighi incident, a considerable portion of pretend news was directed to focus on a specific minority group depicting them because the vector of the virus, thereby complicating the collective fight against a rapidly spreading global pandemic. The growing fake news menace prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to flag the identical in his recent address to the NAM summit. the globe too is battling the deluge of misinformation about the evolving pandemic. The fake news surrounding the origin of the virus, its subsequent spread and threats it poses has nearly engulfed every nation, although with varied intensity. over 240 million digital and social media messages globally on COVID-19 by mid-March, at a median of three.08 million daily messages. An enormous majority of those messages were found to be false or very misleading in their intent. The rise of fake news during COVID.

Fake news particularly in social media are often put into five broad categories: content about causes, symptoms, and cures, spread of the virus, government documents and misrepresentation of comments, photos and videos of politicians, and conspired theories blaming particular country, groups or communities for the spread of virus. The crisis of faux news is way more severe in India largely thanks to the country’s rapidly growing social media base and sloppy regulation of social media platforms. With the maximum amount as 376 million people using every kind of social media platforms, India is on the radar of most social media companies with a rapidly growing internet base. However, compared to several countries, an oversized number of Indians are more vulnerable to fake news and disinformation campaigns. Doctored videos and pretend messages are routinely circulated via popular platforms like WhatsApp and TikTok, sometimes triggering communal tensions, cases of lynching and negative stereotyping of people, specific groups and communities. However, many wouldn’t have imagined fake news becoming a serious menace within the time of life-threatening pandemic. Yet, this has become business as was common in India.

Two categories of misinformation that caught the eye of the researchers because of their consistent rise were stories around culture and government. This pattern emerged with a visible increase in stories around Muslims and COVID-19 also as stories around police brutality. By the month of March 2020, the quantity of false stories increased with the Tablighi Jamaat event at Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi being highlighted as a vector of novel coronavirus, in step with media reports. the fake news about non-vegetarian food, particularly how consuming chicken could lead on on to the COVID-19 infection. This false news, which spread like wildfire, caused massive damage to the poultry industry as many people stopped consuming the meat. The misinformation resulted in many poultry farmers killing chickens worth crores of rupees, or in some cases set them free. From one reliable estimate, chicken farmers incurred a staggering Rs 2,000 crore loss due to fake rumours.

The spreading of misinformation can only stop if an individual stops sharing it and believing it. The fake news is even worse than corona virus. Following are the ways to spot any fake news.