Whatsapp’s the New Way of Spreading Fake News
In a conversation with my grandma, I discovered something shocking. We were having small talk, discussing the weather, the house chores, and then … the corona virus. The corona virus, did you know it originated in the United States? That the corona virus is the government’s attempt to cover up installing the sinister 5-G towers? That Israel is somehow the cause of this whole mess. I listened. I asked where she found this information and of course the answer was Whatsapp.
She was an eye-opening example for me about the impacts of propaganda. And so I researched where it comes from and how? The oversimplified version of what I have learned is this: Propaganda through means of platforms like Whatsapp has evolved into the most efficient means of conveying political and social biases.
The answer to the first question of where and how the propaganda originates is linked to the nature of applications like Whatsapp. Whatsapp is an encrypted messaging application (EMA) where information spread is concealed by code, so the origins of the content cannot be traced. Information is spread mostly through family and friend group chats and the nature of EMA’s also makes it difficult to track the source of the propaganda and the reasons behind it.
But what is true is that the spread of misinformation has harmful side effects. Whatsapp, among a variety of other EMAs are used to convey false information. And Covid-19 misinformation is just the most recent example. The novel coronavirus is reported to have originated in a Chinese wet market. But when propaganda paints it as Israel’s attempt to take over the world, then there is a problem. It’s sentiments like these that continue to increase hostility and tension amongst opposing groups.
Of course, Covid-19 isn’t the only time when Whatsapp has been used to spread propaganda. EMAs have contributed to a rise in violence in a variety of countries including India, Myanmar, the United States and Venezuela. In India, which is reported to have the highest number of Whatsapp users in the world, the Indian ruling party had ‘volunteers’ whose sole job was to forward propaganda messages to influence the course of the 2019 Indian Election. In another example, an incident in India led to the killing of a group of people when Whatsapp disinformation said that a group of kidnappers were in the area.
India has the highest number of Whatsapp users and it’s also seen its fair share of Whatsapp propaganda. The effects of which are only just coming to light. A correlation exists there, that an increase in the use of EMAs will continue the spread of fake news. But to prove that correlation studies must be done as the information we have right now is limited. And if we don’t learn more about the nature of EMAs and how propaganda is spread through them, then we are at risk of them slowly seeping into our lives.
