“…the government is responsible for Bipin Rawat’s death, Bipin Rawat’s daughter is accepting Islam, the North Korean army is going to Kashmir, etc. What sort of nonsense is this!,” while addressing a press conference, Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Secretary Apurva Chandra stated. “We have used the provision of section 69A of the IT Act to block these (Pakistani)channels under the emergency provisions as their contents were totally toxic…”
The government has ordered the blocking of 35 channels on online video-sharing platforms YouTube and 2 websites. These websites were engaged in spreading anti-India propaganda and fake news on the Internet in a coordinated manner through digital media. YouTube accounts blocked by the Ministry had a total subscriber base of over 1 crore 20 lakh, and their videos had over 130 crore views.
Disinformation is a more generic term and is prevalent across almost all walks of life, some accidentally and some by design. Disinformation causes fake news is well illustrated by the classical example from the greatest epic, Mahabharata. In the middle of the war Yudhisthira, whose honesty could be counted upon, shouted अश्वत्थामा हतः इित नरो वा कुं जरो वा ( Ashwatthama is dead, not sure if its the man or the elephant). His formidable enemy creating the havoc was none other than his teacher Dronacharya who dearly loved his son by the name of Ashwatthama. The noise of the battleground caused him to hear only the first half of the utterance from Yudhisthira and was enough to sink him in deep sorrow, dropping the weapons and getting killed. Disinformation caused by noise in the system turned out to be fake news causing ultimate damage for the unsuspecting father.
Social media has leveraged digital connectivity & reach to make societies more democratic as the source of information is distributed now. One can argue that fake news is an inherent problem of this powerful technology and needs to be carefully understood and dealt with by media houses, regulatory bodies, and society at large. During covid times, the massive slowdown in print and electronic media content generation and consumption has cleared the way for the accelerated growth of digital news. With this, the menace of fake news has become a nightmare with utmost urgency to be dealt with.
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