Political Responsibility and Fake News

Sometimes we don't need to be the first one but the verified one

Cartoon By- Satish Acharya

With the advent of the ‘age of information and technology’ came a trend of sharing seamless information across platforms. The availability of cheap internet facilitated the spreading of information and news much faster, even covering a large audience than it was able to do before.

Life became more leisurely, with information shared quickly with less money to spend on it. The easy flow and sharing of information created an inclusive environment where everyone has access to the same resource at the same time.

However, whatever inclusivity the internet promises, many other aspects create panic in the reader's mind; some are hoaxes, an edited clip or a picture, or what is being widely circulated these days are fake news. Sometimes all these forms of misinformation can be harmless, but it takes a dangerous turn when these tools are used to achieve political advantage.

This writing mainly highlights the recent events of sharing fake news, images, and videos during the post-West Bengal elections in India.

The most awaited results of the state elections came out on the 2nd of May, giving a clear picture of who will form the next government in the state. It was a painful defeat for the centre ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP’s persuasion led the Election Commission to come up with an 8 phase long election, but in the end, it turned out to be a lost cause.

The defeat was undoubtedly humiliating and even identity damaging. For one, the state mattered the most for the BJP to spread its ideology and implement the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Apart from that, the election rallies led by the BJP were start-studded, with the Prime Minister himself being the most active campaigner. Moreover, BJP’s rallies also saw the participation of Union Ministers and the Chief Minister of UP and even its local Bollywood star Mithun Chakraborty. The desperation of the BJP was quite visible, but the results did not favour their cause.

What happened after the results were declared was something unimaginable, given the ongoing healthcare crisis. On Twitter, hashtags like #BengalBurning, #PresidentRuleInBengal were used to share several videos and clips which allegedly showed BJP workers being beaten up by TMC goons, pictures of dead bodies of people,,, being claimed as that of BJP workers, news of women getting gang-raped and so on. Such images and videos became instantly viral, and there emerged a social media chaos as such posts got shared in a huge number over all the social media platforms. Even an Instagram post started its caption with, “if you are outside Bengal, then I am practically begging you to repost this”. This post became viral like a wildfire, and more than 1.6 million people have liked it, showing the kind of response it garnered.

However, here comes the problem: today’s generation wants an accessible medium to read news, and being active users of social media sites, the users bother less to google in, thus unaware of the absolute truth behind issues. Furthermore, there is another factor leading to the virality of such posts. These posts claimed that the TMC goons attacked the BJP workers, and BJP workplaces were being burnt down and somehow created a narrative that Hindus would be tortured like this under the TMC. The narrative provided many BJP supporters with a weapon to attack Mamata Banerjee and TMC.

With no transparent verification for hours and TMC leaders countering the BJP leaders and trolls, the situation seemed to be drifting towards the BJP, which had already garnered support and sympathy for being the victim of the whole mess. While the political blame game continued, a series of fact-checkings by Alt News debunked many of those images and videos. Surprisingly, many of them were dated older or were from Bangladesh. This certainly does not give the TMC any clean cheat, but BJP’s mastermind behind building a riot-like situation got unmasked.

Whom to blame?

By now, it is a fact that the fake news and other clippings were firstly promoted by the BJP IT Cell (in the case of Bengal post-elections violence), But this time they successfully hit the right cord, thus getting reactions from the common masses as well. Moreover, this has not happened for the first time and will continue if all these Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook posts get such widespread responses. For me, we can blame three categories of people-

1. The group that manufactures this fake news. They are agenda-driven, and propaganda is used to spread their ideology, which they do by using the power of the internet.
2. The reader mass, who does not care to fact check or google it, becomes overly dependent on a social media platform for news articles.
3. The social media platforms themselves do not put a hold on such fake news (at least, which can cause panic or riot).

What is the way out?

As readers, it comes down to us sensitising ourselves, our friends and relatives because political parties do not care about the consequences of creating such a mess. In the end, we, the citizens, will be the sufferer. For self sensitisation, we can do the following things-

1. Read newspapers or verified publishing news articles (most newspapers have their websites these days).
2. Follow fact-checkers. Unfortunately, there are not many who fact-check such political items in India. If I would suggest one, then you can go for Alt News.
3. Self Fact-checking. This process can be used to verify where those images belong to. On Chrome, you have to right-click on that given picture; there comes an option ‘search Google for image’, click on that, and find articles and websites with those pictures posted on it.
4. Become politically responsible. This is something that we dearly need to understand. I know every person has an inclination towards some ideology or party, and we often put blind faith in them. That is something we need to change. In the given scenario I discussed in this article, people supporting BJP got a weapon to unleash TMC and defend their beloved party. But do they realise what crime they are possibly committing against humanity? Many of the people who shared fake posts were not even from Bengal. If situations become out of control, who will take responsibility? Are not these people just as much a contributor to the riot-like situation in the state? Sometimes people need to keep their ideologies aside and try to be politically responsible for the sake of humanity.
5. Control the urge to be the first. This has been witnessed a lot in the age of social media. Everyone wants to be the first to be the bearer of some news (verified or not does not matter). For this, even news channels are responsible as they have often given in to such fake news, just for ‘breaking news. Yes, it does break something, though it is people’s lives and livelihood.

Concluding Thoughts

Here is my appeal to the readers: if you encounter any such news item that is suspecting in nature, do not post or share it right away. Most of us are unaware, but this misinformation and fake news create much more havoc than anyone can imagine. Even if the news is against any party, be it BJP, TMC, Congress, or any other party, keep the temptation of sharing it aside even if you do not like a particular party and try to make a better judgment of the situation by being a politically and socially responsible person.