Part 2: The Fake-news Pandemic is here to stay. Can design thinking solve this issue?

Published in

Jab jago tab savera

9 min readDec 16, 2020

“HMW equip urban citizens of India with access, ability, knowledge, and motivation to form informed choices with a receptive mindset?”

The question is ready and intact. But another question persists.

How do we go about it?

Well, as discussed in the previous article (Part 1), we had the stark realization of how easily we are swayed by well-worded opinions and how hoards of people have risen to mutiny and violence based on fake news or half-knowledge.

But, why do people behave this way?
What makes one believe and share something?
What creates a bias in their minds? How receptive are they to different opinions?
How do they consume news? What type of news do they actually want to consume?
What drives people to take action?

Our next step is to find answers to these queries.

In Part 2 of this 4 part series we discuss -

Empathizing with People — Surveys, Interviews and social experiments
Analyzing Insights
Transitioning to brainstorming

Empathizing with People

One of the most crucial steps in this entire study is to understand the people on a first-hand basis by taking a leap into their mindset and thinking processes with a human-centered design approach. Our primary objective, here, is the understanding of user choices and behavior regarding the type of news they consume, their belief systems, personal biases, receptivity, and motivation.

“People ignore design that ignores people.”
-Frank Chimero, Designer

We use a mixture of investigative methods and tools to form an explicit understanding of the urban citizens of India. Quantitative tools are used to extract behavioral patterns of people in terms of their news consumption and sharing habits while few qualitative methods & social experiments are employed to understand the what, how, and why in rich detail that is reflective of the actual complexities of real human situations. (Cooper, Reimann, et al, 2007)

The four methods we used are:

User Surveys
Personal Interviews
Newspaper Experiment
WhatsApp Social Experiment

User Surveys

We conducted an online survey primarily based on gaining insights into our respondents’ news consumption preferences and patterns. We received responses from 297 participants belonging to variegated age groups. The data gathered was cleaned by removal of repetitive entries and outliers prior to data visualization and analysis. The survey generated a series of insights as follows.

News Source:

It was observed that the dependence on digital news sources is more prominent in younger age groups over the older ones. The dominant role of Social media also came into the picture with 1/3rd of the respondents preferring it as the primary news source over key news sources like newspapers & TV news channels.

2. Awareness:

We even tried to analyze the degree of awareness of the public regarding current affairs based on prevailing news. Well, it was pretty astounding to observe that important Indian news that directly impacts the public like, the EIA Draft notification and the National Digital Health Mission were neglected during the timeline of the Sushant Singh Rajput death case (late Indian Bollywood actor). Surprisingly, very few respondents are aware of relevant news corresponding to health, employment, and social activism in the country.

3. Reliability:

Though people perceive newspapers and TV news channels to be more reliable yet they tend to use Social media as their primary source of news. Also, the old age group finds its primary news source extremely reliable and accurate.

4. Sharing behavior:

Social media has also become a major platform to share news along with availing it due to ease in sharing and wide outreach yet many people still indulge in personal discussions to share and receive news. Currently, WhatsApp forward is a chief news and info sharing platform with the 45+ age group being the most active.

5. Fake news:

The degree of awareness of fake news is not so satisfactory as more than 40% of the respondents assert that they have never or rarely come across fake or conspicuous news.

6. The motivation of Action:

A concerning insight is that over 50% of the people do not report news which they find fake or suspicious on Social media. Additionally, this behavior encompasses an age-based relationship as the tendency to report reduces with increasing age.

In-depth interviews

After having mustered a series of observations through the online survey, we delved deeper to discern the reasons behind such user behavior and perceptions through semi-structured interviews with individuals belonging to diverse age groups.

Interestingly, user behavior varies significantly across different age groups in terms of receptivity, awareness, reliability, and motivation. However, Social media is a major source of information across all age groups and very few of them follow the fact-checking process before sharing news on social media. Also, a salient pattern emerges in the interviews as the receptivity in people tends to reduce with an increase in age.

18–35 years

Social media is their newspaper, memes their columns, and influencers their news anchors! However, this age group is relatively more active in recognizing fake news, especially on WhatsApp. As compared to other age groups, youngsters have a highly receptive and logical mindset. They bear the desire to stay aware and create change but do not really know how to!

35–45 years

WhatsApp and Facebook are their permanent roommates who give them minute updates! However, this age group holds little receptive attitude as compared to the following. An interesting discovery is that the female homemakers heavily rely on husband and children for the credibility of news that they come across due to self-doubt and low self-confidence.

45–60 years

The most actively updated age group, this group thinks that they could host the TV news better than the anchors! They claim to be updated about anything and everything, be it religion, social issues, or politics! Active on over 20 WhatsApp groups on average, news & information passes through this age group like a wildfire. However, they are less receptive and share news based on their own judgment and bias.

60+ years

The least receptive of all, these people do not prefer holding discussions with different-minded people and strongly feel that WhatsApp groups are good platforms for gaining and sharing news. Least informed about fake news, they strongly feel that any news is always correct and fact-checking is merely trivial.

Newspaper Experiment

So far, we developed a good understanding of “what people do and why do they do it”. Now, our very next step is to discover “what people want to do”. Curious to know what people really wish to know and further share willingly, we spent hours scrolling through countless research methods only to let out a long sigh of despair! However, a few minutes later, our brains churned out an interesting experiment!

Why not let people design their own newspaper!

Role Play!

Well, a bunch of subjects of all age groups was selected for this experiment wherein they were asked to play the role of an editor of a daily national with a task to design the front page of the newspaper.

We provided the subjects with a blank newspaper-like sheet along with 20 news samples. The news pieces were all similar in size to avoid bias and were composed of news headlines and associated images while dummy text took over the content. All the subjects were asked to go through the given news samples and select the ones that they would like to publish for the readers and thereafter draw boxes on the given sheet as per their preferred sizes.

However, these participants were guided to draw larger boxes for news that they find important and place them in the center and towards the top while less significant ones can be small or/ and positioned down. We even ensured that the folks think out loud throughout the experiment while engaging them in conversations to know their thoughts and beliefs behind selecting some news and dropping others.

Indeed, it turned out to be an engaging and interesting exercise that generated a series of insights.

1. A common perception of almost all the individuals was their preference for positive news! To be clearer, the participants preferred the news that talked about the COVID-19 recovery rate over the one with the death rate.

2. Another major finding was that the subjects actively separated out news such as that of Kangana Ranaut or the SSR suicide case, that was not directly relevant to their life.

3. Also, age turned out to be a significant parameter of news consumption as the younger age groups were concerned with development & social issue while the elderly group was heavily inclined towards political & religious content.

A Social Media Experiment

Very often we have noticed the elders of our family succumbing to the charms of fake forwards. Some of these seem utterly harmless, advising ayurvedic remedies for incurable diseases while some are along the lines of hate speech and outright lies. Some of these aim to panic and confuse us leading to political chaos while some simply want to curtail our freedom.

In our discussions, we came across a strikingly funny point of how people may be more likely to follow something if not doing so may unleash the wrath of god! We are sure all our Indian readers would’ve noticed the goddesses painted on tiles affixed on the dingy staircase to curb the infamous Indian habit of red-paan pichkari. Is goddess Lakshmi a bigger deterrent than the good ol’ ‘Yaha thookna mana hai’ or ‘Do not spit here’?

The telltale signs of a fake forward-

Jarring bright emojis vying to catch out attention
Huge consequences of danger
Fake names and numbers of apparent deputy collectors of the city who have issued the message in ‘public interest and safety’
An immediate call to actions
Irrelevant or blurred media inciting anger or uproar

We know this, you know this, why do we still have a mammoth problem?
Who are the people more likely to be gullible and forward?
What can be done?

To better understand this and solidify our assumptions with data and research we decided to conduct a social experiment. We formulated a fake forward of our own and forwarded it to a couple of WhatsApp groups! (Kindly note that it was soon conveyed that the message is fake so as to avoid a wildfire spread)

These are some scenarios that played out-

The youth better understands the tell-tale signs of a fake forward
Certain sections of the youth are also action-oriented and ask for proof concerning the same
Family groups are more likely to believe irrespective of their demography and education
Hugely populated WhatsApp groups with a slightly elder population are filled with an influx of messages every day as they want to share good and helpful news within their circle, and be seen as the first bearer of this news. It is also a way of staying connected with relatives and acquaintances.
People may choose to believe certain news depending on who the sender is.
A huge percent of fake forwards in India is around politics and religion (traditions and practices)

Analyzing Insights

After amassing bucketloads of insights from multiple methods of user study described above we listed all our insights many of which were age-specific.
Similar insights were grouped under one umbrella and this is when patterns started emerging — multiple sentences that indicated one direction