Colonel Shiv Choudhary (Retd)
We are living in an era of constantly flowing information driven by technology. With this, comes the inevitable bane. This technology floods our lives with abundance of news and social media means like videos, images, television, radio, hoax calls, messages, links, write up, Twitter, facebook, Reddit, Instagram etc. Any use of these platforms has its own implications. However, the worst fear comes when existing news and social medias are used for spreading false information, called ‘fake news’. This trend can be both misleading and dangerous for the entire world. The actors behind all fake news thrive on high percentage of end users of these technologies.
Fake news is not a new phenomenon. The hoaxes, misinformation, propaganda, and satire have long been into existence. Of late their dimensions and effective range have increased which spare none. Whatsapp campaigns during election times offer the best feed. Spreading fake news can serve to advance specific goals, serve monetary interests, influence individual opinions, political decisions, make or break political careers and shake the world economies. This false but believable news keeps an eye on common social prejudices, instantaneous emotions and habits. The significantly farther, wider, deeper and 10 times faster diffusion of fake news hinders any hope of authoritative denial and damage control.
If the technology continues its current advance, we may witness events which never happened, hear voices which were never spoken, see things which were not there, melding of images at locations never existed, bloodshed never happened, trigger false riots, win elections, and sow panic and despair. Fake announcements aired using CEOs or banking officials could throw financial markets into turmoil. Photo shopped images and videos could devastate anyone’s private life.
Controlling fake news is a constant challenge for the world today. It is a big threat to modern democracies, economy, impregnable defense and humanity as such. People are investing huge money in intended disinformation campaign. The remedy to this menace lays in technology driven tools, scuttling the funding, training of journalists, and educating and mobilizing public opinion. Mr. Jason Zinser in his article “Good, Bad, and Daily Show”, explores that “fake” news programs have political agenda and potential problems. We must thus not lose sight of the larger political narrative.
Fake news can be broadly classified as deliberate misinformation, false headlines, social media sharing and satire (comedy news). Fake news are mainly pertaining to political narratives, manipulations, terrorism, epidemic, tragedies, VIPs, celebrities, divorces pregnancy, exposures, racism, sensationalism, catchy headlines, conspiracies, salability, pranks and allegations.
There is also a trend of floating both old and newly generated fake news items. One often finds items like Italians throwing their money on the streets as being useless against Covid-19, film maker Sudhir Mishra getting beaten up by police, restoration of 4G network in UT of J&K, Indian Army creating a 1000 beds hospital within two days etc.
What has brought this challenge affront? Eroding news media credibility and missing ethics, race to report first, motivated reporting, loud echoing of political voices, eye popping headlines, impulsive finger pressing, cult of defending indefensible, urge to pursue own narrative and belief, are duping us from hearing real news. Along with these, social polarization on ideological lines, lack of strong legislation and free publication or broadcast flowing from the right to freedom of expression under Art 19 of the constitution, only accelerates the speed of manipulated news feed.
Low investment, low expected penalty, no physical injuries, absence of rigorous efforts by press, failure of government watch dogs, low priority to identify and check veracity of contents, make it an attractive lethal weapons for misleading public. Fake news also brings quick smile, excitement, fun, stirs emotions, creates humor, feeling of superiority, confirms convictions by loads of ‘Likes’ by viewers, makes one believe what one sees emotionally charged on facebook, twitter or YouTube. One instantly enjoys and thrives on pressing ‘forward to all’ button seeing hybrid war of catchy headlines.
The boundary between the fake and real news is blurred and fake news plays on our emotions. Producers of fake news use a fool proof trick of advertising with the element of fear, surprise, emotions and hatred to compel us to share. The headlines like PM visits a mosque, Indian PM declared as best PM, Jana Gana Mana declated as the best national anthem by UNESCO, Rs 2000 currency note declared as best currency by UNESCO, and accidents due to Pokemon Go, provoke us to fall in the same trap.”Fake it Till You Make it” cannot be allowed as clarion call for trafficking.
It all boils down to identifying and separating cheese from the chalk. There are clear indications and signs of every fake news. One only needs to be sensitive to those signs to save the world from this threat. New technology is only helping faster to distinguish truth from the lies. Look for near similar names of originator or channels like for ESPN (ASPN,EPSN, ESPM), Atualite (Tulalite), Https (Http), ABC News (abcnews.com.co) and Huzlers (Huzler), information bar, sensational message, mismatching URLs, source, about us, publisher, satirical news, fact or fiction, current or recycled and pros.
Every reader and viewer needs to spare a moment and apply FactCheck, International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), PolitiFact.com, Snopes.com, strange domain name or website that ends in “LO” (“Nwslo”), URL address ending with com.co, sloppy and unusual signs, over use of caps and own detective skills. Use Wikipedia known for its originality and neutrality, and google for multiple verifications and pre-debunking where needed.
Now we know the benign, and we need cure. Every third person in the world uses some media. Over 35 cr Indian are using different medias with over 20 cr whatsapp users. Thus finding a cure is very difficult. Efforts in the past especially in west, so far have tactically targeted the “supply side”. We need to hit the demand side. We must disrupt economic incentives and financial motivation to curb this art of making money by promoting own narrative. One may refer to hoax websites for fact checking to limit their spread. There is a constant surveillance to see what people desire to read and hear and curb temptations.
USA is vigorously collaborating with experts and organizations such as the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University to develop needed tools and services together for journalists. A global consortium called ‘News Integrity Initiative’ with $14 million fund is already underway to enable people on what to read and share.
Certain tools have been developed and the effort goes on with French co, Forbes.com for fact checking tools. A few of such tools include Spike and Check to identify and predict breaking stories, Snopes to fight fake news, Hoaxy to pick fake sites, Crowd Tangle to discover and monitor content, Google Trends to watch searches, Le Decodex, to tag fake and real, Phemeto to check veracity of user-generated and online content, “Automatic Crap Detector”, to check “the online media economy driven by monetization of “views” through ad revenue,” Snapchat action to redesign its social media app to close the flaw, and CRAAP test for , currency, relevance, authority, accuracy and purpose. Combating fake news is a growing narrative of almost all technology platforms. There is rush amongst major technology players like Amazon, IBM, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Baidu, Yahoo, and Microsoft who are making their codes available openly to learn algorithms to control over the intelligence..
The most common response had been primarily revolving around rebuttal, removal, and public awareness. Effort also revolves around educating and training of journalists and users on use of verification tools before sharing. There is also a proposal to de-anonymise all social media accounts keeping in mind the inherent danger of invasion of privacy, free speech, and creation of surveillance state. One needs to look out for literacy of originator, listing of author and “about me” / “about us” section or link, media literacy, name of person hosting the contents, URL: .gov, .edu, .mil, and websites that end in .com, .net, and like this.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will soon be utilized to filter good and bad news and guard against an easy feed. Twitter is also in a prototype phase to flag off features of fake news. Similarly, Block chain technology due to its decentralized information data could be the closest technology to curb fake news.
Problem of fake news is well installed in the public conscience. There are more dangers in digital world like eruption of an incurable benign. Democratic values like freedom of speech must not collide with preventive actions. The technical support from tech giants might help us in fighting the proliferation of fake news, but not the larger ‘political’ problem posed by fake news. Aim should be to bust the fake news factory inspired by political agenda and financial considerations, least the fake news. This is also throwing another big challenge to the military minds on how to confront false information warfare in future. We need to prepare ourselves with mind and eyes open, supported by tools to recognize truth over deception and disallow ‘fake news’ to become a weapon of ‘mass misleading’ and ‘fake world’ before it destroys democracy to the benefit of its enemies.
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