Can fake news affect voting pattern in India
Surely it does have an impact . In India , where there is million of citizens using the social media platforms like whatsapp there is a high chance of change in voting pattern due to rampant misinformation came from those fake news . In this era , where there are people who believe in whatsapp hoaxes like "Turn off your mobile phone , this is a message from NASA " , " HIV is infected in juice , don"t drink it . This is a message from police " and all , If some fake news spread out it will surely be a gain to those people who are waiting for a chance to spread their agenda for their own political gain . Even if this fake news is spread out for their political agenda , it will surely have a great impact even on the religious harmony of our nation . The hate messages spread through all these medias will mislead innocent , altruistic youth of this nation who consider each other like brothers and sisters . According to one study revealed , whatsapp is one of the key platforms where rampant misinformation is spreading in India . With over 200 million users , whatsapp is most widely used messaging app in India . According to certain researchers , they have found certain cases in which political leaders in India hiring public relations or consulting firms to spread their online propaganda . Even during some state elections , whatsapp reportedly housed rampant misinformation from multiple political actors and also by using twitter conglomerate misinformation is spread , says a study . By using bots , the follower count of certain celebrated political leaders is increased . their by getting maximum amount of audience for them to spread their agenda . This is revealed by the recent twitter purge of fake accounts causing loss of some hundred thousand followers to those political leaders . The social media just acts on the basis of the trending news . If you can generate trend , you are speaking everything truth . This is the condition now a days in social media . It all depended on trend . People just blindly follows the words of political actors who just can create a trend . Now a days most of the news spreading through the social media is clearly hateful and that can even cause damages to our well known religious harmony . In past years we all know about the incidents in our nation out of these fake news spread causing the lives of hundreds in certain villages in our nation . From the words of those villagers who realized that it was merely a political agenda later , all those things started with just an fake whatsapp messages and it lead to a communal violence causing the innocent lives . These past history tells that how the fake news make benefits for those political actors who play with innocent lives
India is always well known for it's religious harmony . All these political actors who just want to clear up their way towards power don't give any listening for this cause. They just want spread hate and cause they work for. Basically this is an agenda causing their victory and on other side it will cause harm to the innocent citizens of this nation.
All that we can do is verification of every news we get. Because , it is also a matter of national security . Out of hatred, out of anger, there may even have a chance for the occurrence of communal violence . So we should first verify every news we get . We should not allow those political actors gain their agenda. If we allow those people with their agenda, it may lead to damage of our harmony .
- Mohammad Fasal
