Here’s how you can wade through fake news this poll season

CHENNAI: Elections are still a month away, but the guerilla marketing tactics have already begun to take toll on the public. Phone calls with recorded messages of political leaders, social media campaigns occupying timelines... the list is endless. Thanks to the pandemic, computers and phones have replaced loudspeakers and street-corner meetings to a large extent.  

TV advertisements have become a popular method this time, with the ruling party boasting about its achievements and the opposition highlighting the failures in minute-long video clips of songs and catchy lines. On social media, IT cells have taken over, ensuring that hashtags highlighting the “negatives” of their rivals are always trending, often without making any substantial claims. 

Fake news has also stared pouring in all over social media, now more than ever. It is hard for the users to sift fact from fiction. As senior journalist Edward Burke of Boston Globe puts it, “...searching for reality and truth is more beneficial than gorging on exciting conspiracies and other fictions.”   It is important to verify “fact” through multiple sources, says journalist and fact-checker Saket Tiwari.

“One party may claim it has built 5,000 houses for the homeless, presenting an image that it has fulfilled its promise. It’s rival may say that only one-third of the promised houses were built. Both of these are facts, but not necessarily the truth.”  “The only way to perfect this is by acquiring skills to be able to judge and identify misinformation,” says Pratik Sinha, founder of ALT News, a leading fact-checking portal.

He says that tools such as the Google Fact Check Explorer may come in handy for verification. “It is an exclusive search engine for fact-checks,” added Sinha. He pointed out that local publishers could also translate the content for fact-checkers for information that needs to be verified. 

Saket points out that semi-literate people become soft targets for fake news. “Voters must independently verify background of the person they wish to vote to power,” says Uzair Rizvi, a fact-checker with AFP Fact Check. “He points out that people can go to the candidate’s social media accounts, listen to their speech on YouTube and then take a call.