“We are not just fighting an epidemic; we are fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous as the virus.”- Dr. Tedros Adhanom, Director-General, World Health Organisation.
Fake news, also known as pseudo-news, junk news, or hoax news, is news consisting of hoaxes and deliberate misinformation spread via customary news media (broadcast and print both) or online social media. The ambit of fake news not only covers misinformation or disinformation but also covers news spreading hatred and communalism.
“Like coronavirus, there is another virus that is emerging, which is threatening social harmony, the virus of fake news and communal hatred,” Uddhav Thackeray wrote on Twitter.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s way of handling the coronavirus crisis is laudable. Uddhav Thackeray strictly warned that stern action would be taken against those creating communal disharmony in the present hour of crisis. “I will go to any extent to punish those creating false videos to promote communal disharmony,” Thackeray said in a video message to the state on Saturday.
He also appealed to all the citizens to maintain peace, follow the lockdown, and to stay at home. He also mentioned about the TikTok videos going viral in which people are deliberately trying to spread the virus by licking the currency notes and putting them in circulation, and said that he will not tolerate any anti-social element, and those trying to weaken the fight against corona will be strictly dealt with.
It is not disputed that Tablighi Jamaat played a role in spreading the coronavirus and weakened the fight against corona but the media is exaggerating the same to another extent. The job of the media house is to present the facts to the public and not add fuel to the fire which in turn spreads hatred and divides the society leading to polarisation of the society.
Hashtags such as #IslamicCoronavirusJihad, #CoronaJihad, #NizamuddinIdiots, #TablighiJamaatVirus, etc, are attaching the religion to the pandemic disease and spreading hatred against Muslims, among the Hindus and other communities.
Telangana-based lawyer, Khaja Aijazuddin had filed a PIL against hashtags trending on Twitter communalizing the Tablighi Jamaat meeting in Delhi’s Nizamuddin, which demonize and accuse the entire Muslim community of having deliberately spread COVID-19 across the country. Such hashtags do nothing except disturbing the public peace. In the testing times of such an epidemic where the only remedy to tackle is solidarity among people, such hatred being spread by the media houses breaks the society from within leading to adverse consequences such as riots and disharmony.
So what can be done?
Social distancing is the key to stop the spread of deadly virus until a vaccine is made, but it can be practiced only in the tangible world, in fact in the space of social media people are interacting with each other more than ever before. Interaction on social media is going off the charts. Such news has a considerable impact on people’s mental health also. More than 7,000 tweets are shared every second which equals more than 350,000 per minute, 500 million per day, and around 200 billion every year. Such mechanisms can help to stop the spread of such news to a considerable extent.
Some mechanisms such as TweetCred which rates the credibility of Twitter posts and Hoaxmap, an online platform directed at knocking the bottom out of false rumors, can help tackle the situation.
This is a critical time for wider informed engagement on the subject, and the scrapping of all the posts disseminating hatred and spreading communalism to maintain peace and solidarity among the people. There are always some anti-social elements in the society, always seeking for an opportunity to divide the society and disturb social fabric in the country and in such testing times of a huge crisis, what ought not to be done is to play with people’s emotions and religious sentiments so that social cohesiveness should be maintained. Together we can fight against the virus.
Written by Gangesh Aggarwal
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