Fake news now on Election Commission’s radar

NEWDELHI: Ahead of the fourstate assembly polls later this year, the election commission (EC) is working to establish a mechanism to prevent fake news from influencing poll outcomes and vitiating the atmosphere during the democratic exercise, officials aware of the development said.

According to a senior EC functionary who asked not to be named, the commission wants to put a stop to rampant circulation of news that is not authentic; motivated to instigate or create fear; or to favour a particular party.

“We are trying to build capacity to combat fake news, which is published or broadcast just before the polls. Just as social media majors have begun to use fact checkers, we are also looking at creating a process to check fake news,” the official said.

Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Rajasthan will pick new assemblies later this year and the EC hopes to have a mechanism in place by then. The same mechanism can then be used in the 2019 parliamentary elections.

Fake news, especially that propagated on social media and messaging platforms, has become a significant problem around the world and is believed to have played a part in influencing the electoral process in the 2016 US presidential election and the UK Brexit vote the same year.

India has over 240 million Facebook users, over 10 million users on Twitter, and 200 million WhatsApp users. In recent months, rumours on WhatsApp and other sources have claimed the lives of at least 22 people suspected to be child-lifters.

The Indian government wrote to Facebook Inc., the owner of WhatsApp, on the problem; Facebook has responded with a list of measures it is putting in place to prevent the propagation of fake news.

The Election Commission, which conducts elections for the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies, has not signed up an external agency to help it with the task so far, but is exploring the template used by the European Commission and social media platforms such as Facebook and Google to identify fake news.

THE POLL PANEL PLANS TO USE THE MECHANISM IN THE 2019 PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS