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Verified By BOOM Special
It’s The International Fact-Checking Day & We Can’t Keep Calm!
Browser View | April 02, 2024 | Subscribe
Hello,
Back in 2016, the need for a fact-checking newsroom didn’t resonate with the masses. Forget masses, even media outlets didn’t really see the need.
Cut to 2024, there are over 20 fact checking newsrooms in the country, several of them from mainstream media outlets. It’s the International Fact-Checking Day and this one’s a special edition. Read on!
So, how has the journey been so far? In short: A rollercoaster!
2016-18: The Era of Child Kidnapping Rumours
🔖 Unrelated images, videos were shared to spread rumours about children being kidnapped for the purpose of harvesting their organs. So much so, that various state police officials had to release periodic statements debunking such misinformation.
You can read all the fact-checks related to child kidnapping here.
2018-20: News Cycle=Misinformation Cycle
🔖 We noticed that the trends in the misinformation space followed the same pattern as the ones in the news cycle. For instance, in 2019, the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir was the most talked about and consequently, it led to a plethora of false claims.
Major challenge: Internet shutdown
🔖 How do you verify information with local sources when there is no internet? How do locals decide what to believe when they have no access to alternative sources?
You can read the fact-checks related to Article 370 abrogation here.
2020-22: The COVID pandemic
🔖 This one doesn’t need any introduction. With a flood of information, comes an equally huge amount of misinformation. From home remedies/cures, to lockdown rumours, to grocery stores running out of ration, to fake government advisories, to anti-vaccine misinformation—the list was endless!
A learning: Maybe this is not the best way to put it, but the pandemic helped in raising awareness about fake news/ misinformation that actually mattered to the citizens. Because, this was related to your health. It wasn’t a random social media post which people didn’t care about.
Everyone wanted to know whether that home remedy will actually cure COVID or whether they should take the vaccine or not.
2022-24: Communal Spin, AI, Deepfakes et al
🔖 There was a time when almost every news incident or any viral video was given a communal colour. I remember calling up the victims, their families, police officials and local reporters multiple times and asking if there is a communal angle to the incident, as claimed on social media.
So much so that after a point, the definition of the word ‘communal’ got blurred.
And with tech evolving at a rapid rate, so did the sophistication with which mis/disinformation was being spread—AI, deepfakes, audio clones. As we enter a busy election season, we are already seeing how the latest advancements in technology are being misused by political parties and their supporters to target their rivals.
You can read the fact-checks related to deepfakes here.
Never Back Down!
🔖 The aforementioned timeline might make you feel that what happened in 2018, didn’t happen in 2022. While it might be true for the news cycle, it doesn’t hold water in the misinformation space.
There are some visuals and claims that keep coming back and we continue to debunk them every year!
Here’s a list of oft-repeated false claims.
The Problem: Reach of Fact-Checks
🔖 It’s easier to believe false information than fact-checks, even though fact-checks are backed by tangible evidence—Not one or two but multiple independent sources.
Misinformation travels at a much faster rate than fact-checks do. And we realised that only debunking misinformation wouldn’t do.
TA-DA! BOOM Workshops
🔖 We started conducting hands-on workshops in the field of fact-checking and media literacy to train people to debunk misinformation on their own.
And no, not just for journalists or people in the media industry but everyone under the sun. Because if you’re receiving information, you should also know how to verify that information.
This further led to: The Teen Fact-Checking Network and North-East Facts Network.
🅱️ Recommends
📖 Today’s recommendation is: AI-Generated Fakes: How to spot them, how they're made and how they have been used to mislead
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Verified By Boom is written by Divya Chandra, edited by Adrija Bose
and designed by H Shiva Roy Chowdhury.
If you have suggestions about this newsletter or want us to conduct workshops on specific topics, drop us a line at 👉 [email protected] and we will get back to you in a jiffy. Thanks for reading. See you next week.👋
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