This looks like a normal cricket match in India.
But everything about it is fake: the players, the umpires, the pitch and even the crowd
noise.
A gang set up fake 'Indian Premier League' matches to dupe foreign bettors.
It reached the quarter-final stage before it was busted by local police.
This bizarre story is only the latest example of misinformation making headlines in India.
A study done at the University of Alberta in Canada claims India was the biggest source
of COVID-19 misinformation in the world, accounting for roughly one in six cases worldwide.
And a Microsoft survey adds that nearly 2/3 of Indians have encountered fake news, which
is more than the world average.
So why has India, the biggest democracy in the world, turned into a hub of so-called
fake news?
One main reason mentioned by many experts is the lack of digital literacy in the country.
While India had about 150 million internet users a decade ago, it has seen an increase
to more than 800 million now, thanks to low-priced mobile phones and cheap internet data plans.
A lot of people are now coming online, probably the just the last five years, you know, hundreds
of millions of people have come online.
And so that's the key here.
So, you know, though, misinformation has been a thing for a long, long time, online misinformation
aided by digital platforms, which enables this sort of widespread, massive dissent.
I think that's a problem.
During the coronavirus pandemic, credible news was often drowned out by unverified information
online.
Misinformation related to false cures and conspiracy theories caused panic, anxiety
and fear as the virus spread.
For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, a Hindu group hosted a cow urine drinking
party in India.
They believed this would help prevent a COVID-19 infection, as many Hindus consider the cow
sacred.
Leading politicians of the ruling party had also advocated the use of cow urine as medicine.
I am in a lot of pain [health issues] but I take the cow urine every day.
After this, I am not supposed to take any other medicine for coronavirus.
I am not affected by coronavirus infection.
Others rubbed cow dung on their bodies because they believed they could heal a COVID -19
infection through this.
But there is no scientific grounding for such treatment.
In fact, doctors warned that it could lead to other diseases such as black fungus infection.
But to really understand why the country’s turned into such a hub for misinformation,
we need to understand two key things: Politics and religion.
In fact, politics and religion are two areas that contribute to nearly half of the fake
news generated in India, according to a study by the Asian Journal for Public Opinion Report.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi represents the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, in India.
In 2014, he came to power with the mantra of “Sabka Saath – Sabka Vikas”, or “We
are with everyone – for everyone’s prosperity”, referring to a multicultural, multireligious
Indian society.
But eight years later, the country is witnessing a sharp religious divide and a rise in nationalism.
According to research done by the BBC, these factors have contributed to the rise of so-called
“fake news” in India.
If you look at most of the fact checkers in India, and if you look at the kind of misinformation,
they are bursting every day, if you just look at the amount of misinformation that is coming
from different political parties that they have been debunking every day, you can see
this.
A lot of misinformation is coming from the supporters of the current ruling party.
Many BJP leaders, including cabinet ministers were also found spreading misinformation.
In this tweet, the Minister of Commerce in the Modi cabinet claimed Indian streets have
been lit with LED lights.
However, a reverse image search shows the image is actually from a street in Russia.
There are many other examples, where prominent figures of the ruling party have shared misinformation.
Experts worry the country is especially fertile ground for misinformation.
In fact, the party has built a huge social media production hub, known as the BJP IT
Cell, a nationwide network of social media managers and influencers.
Thousands of people work here spreading online messages, making them viral.
The group has often been accused of also spreading misinformation.
The BJP denies this accusation.
We do not indulge in fake news.
Let me be very candid about it.
We do not… the party does not indulge in
fake news.
If something has been attributed to the party, one needs to go to the root of
it.
So, we’ve talked about the role digital literacy and politics play in the proliferation
of misinformation in India.
But what about religion?
The misinformation has been weaponized by most of the vested interest.
And if you look at the current political situations, what happens in terms of misinformation, it
is unfortunately targeted against the minorities.
So, if you happen to be minority, then you are more likely to be affected by the misinformation.
Here’s an example: In this video, Muslims are being accused of poisoning rice in India.
But if you watch the video, you’ll notice people speaking Spanish.
Estamos haciendo la mezcla...
Zooming in on the name of the rice brand you can clearly read Casserita.
A Google search leads us to a popular rice brand in the Latin American country of Peru.
The real story was that in Peru some people were adding food color and oil to the rice
to make it look better.
But it had nothing to do with Muslims or India.
Things like that that are happening these days on Corona Jihad, for instance, like,
right, like so this instance of Muslims actually is trying to spread COVID deliberately.
That has led to, you know, Muslim commerce, like people, you know, being a bit wary of
buying from Muslim vendors and things like that.
But I think so that's another example of online rumors leading to offline consequences.
But when talking about the problem of so-called fake news in India, you cannot leave out WhatsApp.
It is seen by many experts as a major tool in the war of disinformation in the country.
With nearly 500 million users India is the leading country in terms of audience size.
Owned by the US tech giant Meta it deals with small social circles of people one knows which
makes the platform more private and personal, and therefore also more trustworthy than other
social media platforms.
And the unique character of end-to-end encryption makes it almost impossible to trace the source
of misinformation.
For tens of millions of Indian users WhatsApp has become a replacement for
the internet.
In some cases, rumors spread via WhatsApp have real-world consequences:
In July 2018, five people belonging to a nomadic community were lynched in the western state
of Maharashtra when rumors began circulating on WhatsApp groups about a kidnapping gang
active in the area.
Similar cases were reported from other parts
in
the country.
So, what could the solution be?
Facebook and Twitter have developed artificial intelligence tools to identify misinformation.
But what could be done when it comes to untraceable sources like in WhatsApp?
I think platforms have to constantly work with civil society, with journalists, with
fact checkers, organizations like ours to see how we can use technology without, you
know, without obviously infringing on people's rights, individual liberties, to control the
spread of or to slow it down.
All experts interviewed by DW agree that the solution lies in the digital literacy of the
individual as well as pressuring companies like Meta and Twitter to include user-friendly
tools for fact-checking.