Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:
Social media is dividing people and families. Elections and politics has been a part of our lives since independence. In good old days, people read newspapers and magazines, a few attended election rallies, voted on the ballot day, accepted the results with equanimity and moved on with their lives for the next five years! But the vitriolic discourse and acerbic animosity visible on social media today is unprecedented. It is inflicting long lasting damage to friendships and relationships and tearing apart the social fabric of the country. What’s causing this is a matter of debate for another day. A sane person wouldn’t care much about who is supporting who and why. Everyone is entitled to his opinion which should be respected. However, what I find strongly objectionable and disturbing are the blatant lies and fake news causing distortion of truth and character assassination. It indicates one of the two things about the architects of fake news 1. They truly believe in those messages and form their opinions based on them or 2. They know that the messages are fake and yet want to spread them to peddle false narratives with ulterior motives. All political parties are guilty of it, some far more than others. Print media of the past was certainly more reliable and respectable because of its checks and balances and also for its accountability. Any Tom, Dick or Harry could not express his views in print media as he manages to do on today’s social media with wanton disregard to truth! Print or electronic media can be biased one way or the other. However, they wouldn’t dare to publish a morphed picture or a doctored video or completely distorted statistics for the fear of legal actions. Every person on social media is a channel by himself and can spread fake news with impunity. The parent company (WhatsApp or Facebook) can’t do much about it except for putting restrictions on number of forwards in one click! They can’t go after a million liars half of whom are actually non-existent and faceless. However, the damage that is inflicted by these fake news spreaders is insurmountable. When most people rely on digital media for news and information, many are not able to differentiate between what they read on digital news media and social media. Artificial intelligence then swings into action and feeds them with news and information which peddle similar narratives thereby trapping them into ideological echo chambers and creating indoctrinated unidimensional robots! Social media lies can be classified as follows
1. Morphed pictures or videos
2. Completely fake news without an iota of truth
3. Falsely attributing some narratives to some respectable figures (like Ratan Tata or Narayan Murthy) in an attempt to increase the credibility of the narrative. An average reader is a gullible individual without the wherewithal to differentiate wheat from the chaff! The lies and falsehoods can change him into an ideological monster capable of inflicting rage and violence. This trend is dangerous!
Is there a remedy to this? Keeping healthy skepticism about everything that you read, trying to check the facts from authentic sites or sources and more importantly promoting book reading culture in society would help. The dictum “everything on social media is fake until proven otherwise,” is a reality!
(The writer is Director, Cardiac Cath Lab and Interventional Cardiology,
Kamalnayan Bajaj Hospital
Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar).