HOW WHATSAPP FUELS HALFTRUTHS & RUMOURS
One example of the potential damage social media messaging can inflict was seen last month in Jharkhand. Villagers in Kolhan region, who had been constantly getting WhatsApp messages warning them of child traffickers, lynched seven men, suspecting them to be traffickers. WhatsApp messages containing pictures of dead children had been circulated in the region which has a history of child trafficking. The pictures were fake but there was no mechanism to verify their authenticity.
Increasing Internet penetration, cheaper smartphones and technology that enables social media communication in regional languages are among the factors that have made India the biggest market of WhatsApp. It has become the most favoured communication platform for family members, friends, colleagues and young entrepreneurs. At the same time, it hosts an avalanche of rumours that have led to fatal tragedies.
“WhatsApp has become the most popular form of rich messaging,” said Pratik Sinha, who runs AltNews, a site to debunk fake propaganda. “Many morphed images get circulated. It was an image from Syria that got circulated in Jharkhand. I have seen videos in which people [in the videos] are speaking a different language but when people are in a certain emotional state, it affects them.”
Vibodh Parthasarthy, faculty at the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance at Jamia Millia Islamia University, said, “The conditions under which messages circulate often tend to act as triggers. In an already charged environment, false pieces of information could be interpreted in ways that contribute to enhancing pre-existing prejudice, rumours or intent.”
Rumours and half-truths on WhatsApp outnumber cases of genuine information getting circulated. The 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots were triggered by a video which showed two young men being killed. It turned out that the incident had taken place in the Gulf Region. The UP police highlighted the misuse of social media in the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in Dadri in late 2015 – rumours flew that he possessed cow meat.
Experts argue that one should be cautious in attributing violence to irrational media reception. “Violence and threats to violence exist in contexts that exceed media reception. Media is often held out as a causal factor when other factors are not addressed,” said Ravi Sundaram, professor at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. “Under colonial rule, newspapers were seen as promoting seditious content; following independence, cinema was seen as exciting the ‘passions’ of unruly mobs. In recent years, this burden has passed on to social media.”
According to Sanjoy Hazarika, director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, the real problem, is the confidence of the perpetrators that they can get away. It is difficult to trace the person at the beginning of the messaging chain because WhatsApp is encrypted end to end. “It is good for privacy but makes it difficult to monitor,” said Sinha.