The fake news on social media platforms in India is of increasing concern. Some of the social media platforms that are affected include WhatsApp, facebook, and twitter. The fake news is conveyed inform of fake text, digitally manipulated videos, and audio recordings. In the recent past, fake news has been in two main domains. One side targets the political activities that surround the campaign and election of the members on the lower house of India. It has attracted a huge uproar of fake news because it is one of the largest democratic exercises that target over 900 million voters (Phartiyal & Kalra, 2019) . Another domain is the viral sharing of fake news about child kidnappers. The latter has lead to tens of deaths across the country since 2017. Although most of the fake news items are pulled down to protect people from being misguided, this essay analyses one such video about child kidnappers that has been captured and highlighted by BBC, (2018). The fake video is perceived to cause stereotyping of strangers, promotion of violent behavior against suspected child kidnappers, peddling of fake news, and unlawful resolution of alleged criminal cases through mob lynching.
Circulation of videos that contain fake news on WhatsApp is one of the most adopted forms of spreading fake news. The snapshot of the video that has been captured in the video titled ‘ The digital epidemic Killing Indian’s,’ is a sample fake news videos that circulated on WhatsApp. The video starts with a mob beating up a suspected child kidnapper then goes on to explain that there are alleged child kidnappers that abduct children and kill them for their organs. The snapshot is a section of a video that highlights the plight of two innocent young men on an adventurous tour to explore a newly discovered waterfall before being suspected to be child kidnappers and lynched by a mob (BBC, 2018).
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The fake news on social media platforms elicits ethical and legal issues. The ethical issues of the highlighted fake video are the exposure of violent content to the public indiscriminately and stereotyping of strangers. On the other hand, the video illicit legal concerns such as, false victimization, violence against strangers, and spreading incorrect information.
The indiscriminate sharing of violent videos develops a violent attitude among the public towards suspected child kidnappers. The violent attacks of the alleged kidnappers result in severe injuries and sometimes death. It is also surprising to note that that most of the victims that victims of the mob attacks are innocent and have nothing to do with child kidnappings (BBC, 2018). For instance, according to Patil (2019), the fake violent video whose sample is shown in the video by BBC, (2018), has lead to 33 deaths in 69 violent incidents.
The stereotyping of strangers also causes the public to violently attack and even lynch them as demonstrated by the case of Nilotpal Das a 29 years aspiring artist (Dhar, 2019). Before his death, he tried to introduce himself, but the mod could not believe him and went forward to kill hill by beating him up using bamboo sticks. Consequently, it makes society fear visiting new areas that they can be easily identified as strangers.
Finally, it is illegal to spread false information in most countries. The propagation of fake news forms an avenue that instigates the spread of such unverified information. As such, it has exposed unsuspecting social media users to the consumption of information that makes them commit criminal activities such as killing innocent citizens at the expense of handing them to law enforcement agencies for investigation.
In conclusion, the fake video causes stereotyping of strangers, promotion of violent behavior against suspected child kidnappers, peddling of fake news, and unlawful resolution of suspected criminal cases through mob lynching. The effects result in deaths that are instigated by violent attacks on strangers that lead to severe injuries and death. As noted by Smith (2019), it is prudent for the various social media platform to proactively engage in evaluating fake news and pulling them down to prevent the content from affecting its users as practiced by facebook.
References
BBC. (2018). The digital epidemic killing Indians [Video]. Retrieved from https://web.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/1124856081007741/?_rdc=1&_rdr
Dhar, A., (2019). Nilotpal, Abhijit Were Killed By The System, Not People: Friends Of Two Assamese Men Died In Mob Lynching. Retrieved from https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/nilotpal-abhijit-were-killed-by-the-system-not-people-friends-of-two-assamese-me/312391
Patil, S., (2019). India Has a Public Health Crisis. It's Called Fake News. The New York Times . Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/opinion/india-elections-disinformation.html
Phartiyal, S., & Kalra, A., (2019). Despite being exposed, fake news thrives on social media ahead of India polls. Reuters . Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/india-election-socialmedia-fakenews/despite-being-exposed-fake-news-thrives-on-social-media-ahead-of-india-polls-idUSKCN1RE08Z
Robbins, S., & Judge, T., (2019). Organizational behavior (18th ed., pp. 2-37). The United States of America: Pearson Education. 5
Smith, B., (2019). The fake news problem no one in India is talking about: Telegram. Retrieved from https://qz.com/india/1558112/after-facebook-whatsapp-indias-getting-fake-news-by-telegram/
URL of the Fake News Video
https://web.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/1124856081007741/?_rdc=1&_rdr
