Why misinformation and fake news is growing and how to control this infodemic?

Misinformation and fake news have been used since eternity. We can find such instances in ancient Mahabharata mythology as well. When Krishna tried convincing Yudhishthira to say Ashwatthama died whereas an elephant named Ashwatthama had died, not the real Ashwatthama in question.

With time fake news and misinformation have changed, depending upon where it is used and who it is being used against, it changes its form. Jumping to today's day and age misinformation has become really common, with people sitting in public offices and high constitutional positions are the main transmitters of such information to mislead public at large which they set out to serve at the first place. When checked and called out they start threatening the social media platforms and pass executive orders against them. Recently Twitter fact checked a few of Donald Trump's tweets and Trump threatened to take action against Twitter and other social media companies. 

In the age of social media, fake news and misinformation becomes even more potent in the hands of those trying to weave a fake narrative, mostly for nefarious purposes. Countries spreading misinformation against each other has slipped into the foreign policy strategy of a few. Never before in human history misinformation had been used to sway public perception within and outside country's borders with such coordination and precision.

When coronavirus pandemic hit the world, it brought along an infodemic with itself. Misinformation and fake news related to this virus started flying thick and fast specially in countries hit at a later stage. Right from conspiracy theories to states peddling a certain narrative without any credible information, we have seen it all. Russia has been blamed many times for being a front-runner in this category. It started spreading misinformation undermining America's credibility in dealing with the pandemic. Pro-Russian websites put out conspiracy theories to spread fear. Later China joined in and did not hesitate to use government linked social media accounts to spread misinformation.

Recently European commission issued a joint communication blaming Russia and China in spreading disinformation related to Covid-19. They used the term infodemic and associated it with false and inaccurate information which has been spread over social media. The communication said "foreign actors and certain third countries, in particular Russia and China, have engaged in targeted influence operation and disinformation campaigns around Covid in EU. The Vice-president of the European commission reiterated, they have solid evidence backing this claim.

The old masters of disinformation remain Russia. Its former avatar, the "Soviet Union" coined the term "Dezinformatsia". The Russian campaign against the EU, led to the creation of East StartCom Task Force, within the EU's diplomatic service. It has been keeping an eye on the Covid related disinformation campaigns recently.

The US and China have taken this disinformation and misinformation campaign to another level of blame game. It is not just limited to the term infodemic in the US-China context. US has been blaming China for the spread of Coronavirus and the current president Donald Trump has made it his re-election campaign to bash China. A report in Politico cited a study saying that Trump supporters have spread Covid-19 rumours about China. An analysis of 1.6 million tweets over a ten-day period in March found at least thirty such groups promoted anti-China narrative. The Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been rather critical of China's action both in relation to coronavirus and the Hong Kong national security law, even scrapping the special status of Hong Kong SAR. US has even claimed the virus may have been developed in a laboratory and is refusing to trust any information shared or leaked by China. 

On the other hand, China is empowering their own officials and diplomats to use Twitter to bash US. Twitter even though is banned in China has become a favourite tool of communication for the People's republic of China officials. Some Chinese officials have even gone on to say the Coronavirus was a creation of US army and weave conspiracy theories around it. Lately China has been accusing US of racism following the death of George Floyd by choking from a white Policeman in Minneapolis. In an analysis by the New York Times, a suspiciously large number of Twitter handles were active in retweeting China's diplomats and news outlets, a third of them has come up in the last three months. China has also been aggressively pushing its propaganda campaign around the rescue of other nations with medical equipment and other kind of help in the backdrop of this pandemic spreading like wild fire.

Talking about disinformation and fake news campaigns within a country, we can take the example of India, the amount of misinformation spread by political parties and mainstream media is unthinkable in any other country. The use of social media has been appropriated to spreading fake narratives to suit all kind of politicians and their political parties. Those with more money are able to do it better and more aggressively than others. With a massively growing user base of social media and internet in general India has been in special focus of all the social media giants but they are constantly failing to check the spread of fake news on their platforms. Social media organization like Facebook's WhatsApp have been the most used platforms to spread fake news at scale. Due to the lack of strict regulations around the spread of fake news and disinformation, these social media companies are not following the same filtering system they would use in developed nations. 

We, in fact have, in many ways, stepped into a post truth world, where truth doesn't exist. What's left is information, that too in many shades. Everybody can pick and choose the shade that suits them ideologically and politically. Information is commodities with variant offerings, highly personalized and self-suiting.

Conclusion:

Though fake news and misinformation cycle has been prevalent since eternity, it is the medium that has kept evolving. In today's day and age of technology and social media, fake news has taken a whole new meaning. It is information which is in multiple shades and highly personalized, often hard to tell which version is the right one. This post truth world as we call it, has put common people at a significant disadvantage. They don't seem to understand which medium is feeding them fact or fiction as information. The regulations involving this propagation of information on social media is also not clearly defined, leading to the social media platforms happily letting any information float around without any vetting. We need clear, strong laws and regulations against fake news peddlers, people or organizations creating or circulating misinformation or fake news, if we want to curb this menace.