Effect of WhatsApp on dissemination of fake news.

n v Arvind
Sep 7, 2018 · 9 min read

The World is Real — The News is Fake

The 2016 US elections brought the issue of “fake news”(Allcott, 2017) out to the forefront as a tool to manipulate the general public. While current media technology has enabled everyone with the necessary tools to create content, it has led people with malicious intent to create hoax posts and fake news. Since sharing is simpler than verifying sources, fake news spreads like wildfire on a global scale. The fake news ecosystem is redefining our society’s behavior, and its impact can be disastrous. This article examines if the messaging technology itself or people’s interaction with the technology that is responsible for fake news spreading on WhatsApp resulting in dreadful consequences.

Mobile First

IMAGE CREDIT: Initiative, I. G. (2017, June 22). The 2017 Digital News Report is now available. Retrieved from https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/2017-digital-news-report-now-available

The year 2017 marked a tipping point in the US, UK, and Norway where smartphones usage for news has become equivalent to the computer counterpart. Other Asian and Nordic countries have adopted the mobile-first path directly. Since its launch in 2009, WhatsApp has become one of the top peer-to-peer messaging applications. While social media usage is flattening in most countries, new messaging applications such as WhatsApp have gained grounds over the computer access for news in most of the nations.

IMAGE CREDIT: Initiative, I. G. (2017, June 22). The 2017 Digital News Report is now available. Retrieved from https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/2017-digital-news-report-now-available

A survey conducted by Reuters Institute in 2017 found that over half the Malaysians and Brazilians use WhatsApp for news.

The increased use of social media has been responsible for spreading news that appears genuine but is fake.

A Medium of Menace

Examining WhatsApp from a technological standpoint

WhatsApp is different from Facebook. Facebook curates the news feeds using algorithms from various sources while the messages on WhatsApp is user-generated. While Facebook posts are public and visible to all the friends of the user, WhatsApp messages are protected by end-to-end encryption. However, ­this closed and encrypted nature of messaging service means that unlike Facebook where activities can be tracked and analyzed by independent entities, it is impossible to do so in WhatsApp.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/microsiervos/17027851954

Hence, any information on WhatsApp has the potential of becoming viral within minutes as users’ forward messages to groups and friends and the chain continues without a way to detect the point of origin of the news. Unless and until the users report the questionable messages, the security staff does not investigate. Even then, the security engineers themselves have limited ability to track the origin of fraudulent messages.

Fast and Fatal

Rumors and gossips have always been around for generations. However, in this new age, the swiftness of its distribution is problematic. The fake news can be pranks, or a means of polarising or inducing fear. Regardless, they do harm by playing on the innocence of the receiver. The Oxford report (Bradshaw, 2018) found the evidence of a disinformation campaign in a fifth of the 48 countries surveyed occurring over chat application such as WhatsApp.

There are various instances where WhatsApp has caused anxiety and confusion among a large mass of people. For instance, a viral video of a small Malaysian girl who was kidnapped and found begging on the streets of Thailand was found to be untrue. Then there have been rumors of the import of plastic rice into Kenya and shared images of police brutality during the last year’s protests for the independence of Catalonia (Funke, 2017). In 2016, amidst one of the worst outbreak of the deadly yellow fever virus in Brazil, terrifying rumors were spread on WhatsApp promoting the anti-vaccine propaganda. This resulted in people became resistant to the only way the outbreak could be contained (Molteni, 2018).

Fast and Fatal

Examining WhatsApp from a social standpoint

False rumors have been around for generations. However, the technological age has empowered rapid to the dissemination, which is problematic. The fake news can be pranks or a means of polarizing or inducing fear. Regardless, they harm by playing on the naiveté of the receiver. The Oxford report (Bradshaw, 2018) found the evidence of a disinformation campaign in a fifth of the 48 countries surveyed occurring over chat application such as WhatsApp.

​In recent years, WhatsApp has caused anxiety among a large mass of people. For instance, a viral video of a Malaysian girl allegedly kidnapped and found begging on the streets of Thailand was untrue. Then, there were rumors about the import of plastic rice into Kenya, and messages of police brutality during the last year’s demonstrations in Catalonia (Funke, 2017). In 2016, amidst one of the worst outbreak of the deadly yellow fever virus in Brazil, terrifying rumors were spread on WhatsApp promoting the anti-vaccine propaganda. Thus people became skeptical about the best way the outbreak could be contained (Molteni, 2018).

Death by Disinformation

Matters escalated to the next levels since last year which has led to lynching and people getting killed due to disinformation. A hoax post got circulated in Brazil in 2017 describing con artists abducting kids. An image of a random car’s license plate was shared along with the post. As the post became viral, the crazed mob tracked down the car, attacked the alleged kidnappers, and set the car ablaze.

This year the rumor of child-napping was spread on WhatsApp along with a video clip that was produced as a part of public service announcement in Pakistan but was edited to appear like a kidnapping. This drove people to mistake a 65-year-old woman named Rukmini as the “child lifter” and killed her (Goel, 2018).

https://youtu.be/WTcmUxYZVhA

In another city, distributing chocolates to children outside a school proved lethal for a software engineer who was killed by the mob (Goel, 2018). Similar rumors have resulted in over a dozen mob lynching and 20 deaths in various parts of India in 2018.

The Cause or the Catalyst?

While WhatsApp itself is simply an alternative to other texting and messaging services; analysts have frowned upon its immeasurable impact that cannot be estimated publicly. It’s wrong to place the blame only on the medium rather than people who start and spread disinformation. Even with its closed nature, there can be hundreds of participants in a single private group. These group chats are themselves confined since an existing member must invite anyone else. When families, friends, etc., continue creating their individual secret networks, it moves beyond anyone else’s control. There is no way to know that a particular group even exists unless the person is a part of it. This closed nature of the platform intensifies pockets of powerful echo chambers or filter bubbles, especially in a political climate, where the environment is profoundly polarized and makes tracking the extent and origins of disinformation nearly impossible for researchers, journalists, and police.

​However, the convenience of pranksters hiding behind the secrecy of WhatsApp could be just one reason for such rash outcomes of disinformation. There could be different reasons coupled with the use of WhatsApp. First, all these countries are developing nations with extremely skewed literacy rates. While mobile subscribers are growing enormously, tech illiteracy is still high. The rapid growth of the smartphone market has enabled millions of poorly educated citizens in developing nations to come online or get in touch with technology for the first time. Around 80% of Brazil’s population (Molteni, 2018) use WhatsApp, 86% of Kenyans have mobile phone subscriptions. In India, while only 47% had a toilet in their homes, 53% of people had a mobile phone by 2016 (Bhattacharya, 2016). Yet all of these nations are large markets for WhatsApp. Therefore, with limited exposure to technology, these people are quick to believe whatever is shared on their phones as true.

​Also, mob violence and misjudged lynchings are nothing new in parts of India and Brazil. The messages in Brazil and India have only preyed on the fear of injury to a child or cow slaughter. The fake news such as kidnap warnings is transmitted from friends and family. The idea of verifying information received from friends or relatives via a message does not exist for many users which means that the trend continues. Also, there is less faith in the rule of law in these nations, which eventually drive mobs to take matters into their own hands and seek revenge or justice. In many cases, the emotional trigger for hate crimes was an excuse. For instance, 15 people out of 25 involved in lynching incident in Maharashtra, India were drunk, and only four had passed higher secondary school. Thus, the conditions existing in these nations are already ripe for such incidents. The spread of smartphones and WhatsApp is helping spread it across all social divisions promoting misguided and polarized views through forwarded posts.

Good, bad and ugly

While journalists and rights group praise WhatsApp’s commitment towards user privacy, not everyone shares the same view. WhatsApp is also the breeding ground for trouble that may be brewing and remain invisible until it becomes massive.

​In different countries like Columbia, fact-checking initiatives for shared content have been placed. Law enforcement in Italy launched a portal for citizens to report fake news in social media and messaging applications before the elections this year. In some countries like Thailand, the group admin in the WhatsApp group is responsible if members spread fake news. In Kenya, Government officials closely monitor WhatsApp conversations and trends.

Some Governments have taken a slightly more suppressive route. In Brazil, WhatsApp had been banned three times already. The Brazilian Government has also used the help of the army to repress fake news. Cyber troops have been involved in “astroturfing” campaigns in other countries like Ecuador, Israel, and Serbia (Woolley, 2017). However, in a few oppressive regimes, we already see many journalists being wrongly imprisoned after being accused of spreading “fake news.” With this trend of Government intervention, the freedom and security that WhatsApp provides to its users could be at stake. It demands bigger questions of what all needs to be considered as “fake news” and who shall be responsible in deciding the policies pertaining to the legality of “fakeness” and the associated penalties.

After recent unfortunate events, WhatsApp is already making efforts to curb the fake news phenomenon. It has already begun labeling all forwarded messages in India (Goel, 2018). WhatsApp has published ads to educate people about such fake news phenomenon. The company has promised to work with police departments. WhatsApp is also trying to use machine learning techniques to determine suspicious links that are being shared. However, we still don’t know how efficient and unbiased these fake news filters and policies will prove to be.

Conclusion

IMAGE: [url=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:How_To_Spot_Fake_News.jpg]How To Spot Fake News[/url] [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], by IFLA, from Wikimedia Commons

Freedom of expression is a human right, and its protection is very crucial. These horrible incidents arising from disinformation disseminated through WhatsApp has already compelled different Governments to regulate and modify the way WhatsApp works. Future will decide whether WhatsApp remains the leading tool for upholding the freedom of speech in our technological world filled with constant surveillance.

The examination of the phenomenon shows that the closed nature of this messaging app is only one of the reasons for dreadful consequences arising from the spread of fake news, we also find that this phenomenon is more widespread and lead to a crisis in countries having mob culture and media illiteracy. In the end, we have to understand that technology is just a tool. Consequently, it’s upon each one of us to follow what Ronald Reagan once advised, “Trust but verify.

Bibliography

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