Understanding Fake News in the Times of a Pandemic
To start with an easy conception, fake news is like the Indian athithi (guest). It is uninvited, causes trouble, which is mostly ignored, spreads gibberish and keeps extending its stay. Fake news has seen a soaring rise in the past decade or so. However, it is an age-old phenomenon. An interesting anecdote by Izabella Kaminska (2017) in the Financial Times, talks about the fake news crisis that happened in 44 BC, in the city of Rome. Octavian, the canny propagandist, in a power struggle to be the next ruler, set out to defame Mark Antony, his sole contender. Using short and sharp slogans written upon coins, the Twitterati of the time, he tried to portray Antony as a womanizer and a drunk. This shows that as long as communication has been used to circulate information, misinformation has been its inevitable by-product.
A major outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the surge of fake news, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and rumors. The World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said, “We’re not just fighting an epidemic, we’re fighting an infodemic”. Alice Hazelton (2020) raises a major concern in the World Economic Forum, of the problem of “finding reliable information in the digital age”. It is true that the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) revolution brought in unprecedented democratization of information, where the internet emerged as a global platform for channeling information and knowledge on a larger scale, it also means faster, easier and wider dissemination of fake news.
The situation is becoming so bad that countries across the world are raising strict concerns over the whole fake news crisis. For example in the United Kingdom, a “rapid response unit” has been set up under the Cabinet Office to work with social networks to tackle the dangers of fake news. Similarly in India, the government launched a chatbot on WhatsApp to address user queries and to extinguish any rumor regarding the coronavirus pandemic. Some countries like Vietnam are even fining people for posting fake news on social media.
Fake news is creating more tension and garnering greater attention, which only aggravates the trouble during these fearful times. Let’s consider this WhatsApp forward:
The results of such unverified and superstitious statements from WhatsApp universities, however, possess the ability to gain quick mass attention. On a serious note, when misinformation like this is further shared by people of higher authority or people with larger mass appeal, it only solidifies itself. Take, for instance, the recent (now deleted) tweet by Amitabh Bachhan which was very similar to this message. This situation becomes even more deplorable when unverified WhatsApp forwards are misunderstood by World Leaders as the source of real news or research. Take for example, when Brazillian President Jair Bolsonaro supported Brazilian citizens to ignore medical advice on social distancing, belittling the potential of the virus to spread easily. Assurances like these coming from leaders and celebrities only normalizes it for the common masses with little or no resources to question such claims and cross-verify their validity.
But how does fake news work? Why do people believe in it? How does it become so popular? These are some crucial questions we need to address at the present moment when fake news is causing a real panic. One clear answer lies in the works of Jean Baudrillard, an influential figure in understanding the impact of media in the present generation. His work highlights how ‘reality’ with its notions of objectivity stretched between the scale of ‘true’ and ‘false’, cannot be taken for granted.
Baudrillard suggests that fake news does not seem so fake on a superficial level. Fake news becomes identical to the actual news, in terms of its form and structure, even in its widespread distribution, that it becomes impossible to challenge its content as well. It quickly becomes an entity with a reality of its own. The ‘truthful’ news is the representation of reality that arguably depicts the ‘real’ events. However, Baudrillard’s (1983) idea of a simulacrum, challenges all traditional notions of ‘reality’. It is world of simulations where these representations are not real, to start with. These representations become a “hyperreality” (Baudrillard, 1983). Thus the media, especially the new media, acts as a hyperreality, where everything is a copy of a copy, each so similar to the other that one cannot identify the one true representation. Each simulation carries a reality in itself such that the viewers become passive consumers of fake news, which seems so real to them, removing them from the ability to question it. And that is how fake news has been working.
A panic-stricken population, having to deal with an unprecedented situation about a threatening virus, of which they know nothing about will start believing the news of the already existing hyperreality with much ease. Enter the WhatsApp forwards, Facebook and Instagram posts, each presenting itself as a credible source providing some answers, some closure to the uncertainty that this virus has brought. Most of these messages claim to be coming from official and credible sources, however, that is not the case.
We are living in a post-truth era where any objective boundary for defining the truth is blurred. What works here is the appeal to personal and emotional beliefs. Long gone are the days when philosophers like Francis Bacon, who is often hailed as the father of empiricism, could write so boldly on matters like truth (See: Of Truth). The ability to see through the nature of truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and be able to define it to others using such well-stated arguments, would seem impossible today. Bacon would have countless sleepless nights writing Of Truth in modern times. The post-internet era, as discussed earlier, has opened the forum to anyone and everyone, with a digital device and an internet connection, to create their versions of the truth. But Bacon made a very important remark, centuries ago, which is more relevant than ever now. He says “A Mixture of a Lie doth ever adde Pleasure ‘’. And perhaps, that’s why fake news has survived and continues to live on triumphantly even today because this adulteration of lies in the truth has historically been a bigger success than water in milk.
Let’s consider another WhatsApp forward. This message, apparently coming from UNICEF, was debunked soon after its circulation. The list of such messages and posts is long. And with time they are getting more validity and attention then they should. The mechanism working here is very simple. In the absence of a reliable source in the day-to-day consumption of information, people will look for answers anywhere they can find. We are in an extremely fast-paced situation here, where the virus is changing the course of daily life quite rapidly. Therefore the need for sufficient information to cope with it severely compromises the need to have actual proven facts. A message like this, along with countless other rumors, conspiracy theories, distorted information is doing rounds on our social media. Claims like “drinking hot water and sun exposure” and others which speak of the effectiveness of evergreen haldi blend easily with to a large extent with unscientific and absurd claims like “stay away from ice cream and eating cold”. A mixture of lies does ever add pleasure indeed.
With all things said and done, the lesson here is not to simply trust any information you come across that makes any claims about the coronavirus, whether it’s a remedy to protect your family or a ‘scientific claim’ about the virus itself. These are fearful times, and fake news especially is thriving on our fears. Along with social distancing, we also need to be more attentive and critical of our surroundings and question the news that we are being bombarded with. Start cross-checking the messages and posts, read news from trusted media houses and question. Question. Be an informed citizen and help curb this fake news pandemic by spotting misinformation around you. There are several media platforms and websites like BOOM and AltNews who are doing their best to fight this crisis. Stay Home, Stay Safe and Stay Informed!
