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Verified By BOOM 51

Verified By BOOM 51

🇸🇪 Sweden Declares Sex As a Sport? Apparently Not.

June 10, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

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Good Morning, . Did you also come across media reports claiming Sweden is the first country to consider sex as a sport? Well, I saw multiple Instagram accounts as well sharing the same claim.

But not everything that you see online is true, right? This, and how the Mewat region (just about 100 kilometers away from New Delhi) has become the hub of cyber frauds.

Read on!

Something bizarre happened this week.

"Sweden declares sex as a sport."

No, it's not a fact. It's the headline of an article. Although, in an ideal world, headlines should be telling facts.

Coming back to the misinformation space, several mainstream media outlets misreported that Sweden has introduced a European Sex Championship after recognising sex as a sport in the country.

All one had to do is:

Do some digging on the internet
Reach out to the concerned authorities in Sweden and verify the claim.

But, all of this takes time and some believe getting it first is more important than getting it right. Although, it's the latter that should be prioritised.

Here are the facts:

We found a news report by Swedish news outlet Göteborgs-Posten refuting the same viral claim in April this year.
Anna Setzman, head of communication and press, Swedish Sports Confederation, in a statement told BOOM: "The Swedish Sports Confederation vigorously denies the false information being spread in some international media about Sweden and Swedish sports."

109 Fact-Checks Published In May

The assembly elections in Karnataka dominated the fake news cycle in the month of May, accounting for 21% of all the fact-checks done by BOOM during the month.

Other prominent topics: Manipur clashes, Imran Khan's arrest and the ongoing wrestlers' protest.

Read the detailed analysis by Debraj Sarkar of all the false claims we debunked in May.

Fact-Checks Published This Week

Majority of the false claims targeted Muslims (52%) with Alarmist (16%), International news-based false claims (12%) and others trailing far behind.

The tragic Balasore train accident was the one of the most prominent targets of false claims.

Read our Twitter thread to know the detailed analysis by Debraj Sarkar.

#BOOMWeeklyReport | BOOM published a total of 25 fact-checks this week. Majority of the false claims targeted Muslims (52%) with Alarmist (16%), International news-based false claims (12%) and others trailing far behind. (1/n)
#BOOMFactCheck
— BOOM Live (@boomlive_in)
11:06 AM • Jun 9, 2023

🕵️‍♂️ Inside Mewat: A Scammer's Manual On How To Run A Sextortion Racket

🔖 Those fake ads for phones and bikes on OLX? And sextortion scams? It’s all happening from Mewat.

Just about 100 kilometers away from New Delhi lies the Mewat region — covering parts of Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. It has become the hub of cyber frauds.

Adrija Bose and Hera Rizwan travelled to Mewat and spoke to some of the scammers.

💬 Interview: Why Indians Like Watching Scripted Videos

🔖 Meanwhile, scripted videos have gained momentum in India, becoming popular on social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

The context and messaging within these videos are manipulated, often communal and misogynist in nature.

So, why exactly are scripted videos so popular?
What is social media's role in them?
What should the government do?

Decode's Kaisar Andrabi spoke to Nirali Bhatia, a counseling psychologist to understand.

🚫 Fake News You Almost Fell For

🔍 On 7 June, various social media posts claimed that the Indian Nursing Council (INC) declared all nurses to be addressed as ‘Nursing Officers’ and to consider B.Sc (Bachelor of Science) Nursing as equal to MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery). It further stated that the central government declared that all nurses are junior doctors. But, is this true? Read this fact-check by

🔗Nidhi Jacob↗️.

🔍 An old video from 2018 showing a young boy being caught by railway gangmen for placing stones on a railway track near Kalaburagi in Karnataka was falsely linked to the recent tragic train accident in Odisha's Balasore. BOOM's 🔗Anmol Alphonso↗️ debunked the claim.

🔍 AI at Play: An AI-generated image of Tom Cruise and his doppelgangers was shared with a false claim that it is a real photo of the Hollywood actor posing with his body doubles ahead of the release of his upcoming action film, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. Read this fact-check by 🔗Srijit Das↗️.

🔍 A video of a burst LPG cylinder found under a train went viral on social media with the claim that “a Muslim man threw an Indane cylinder filled with gas on the tracks in Haldwani”. Well, find out the facts in this article by 🔗Runjay Kumar↗️.

🅱️ Recommends

📖 This week's recommendation is: The Journalism-AI Survey by Charlie Beckett

71 news organisations spread across 32 countries—this is the basis of this exhaustive survey that intends to approach the concept of AI and journalism in a holistic fashion. The survey deals with responses from different departments within journalism establishments to assess perceptions of AI applicability.

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Verified By Boom is written by Divya Chandra, edited by Adrija Bose

and designed by H Shiva Roy Chowdhury.

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