Part 2 of our discussion on FakeNews, hosted with support from Mint. Part 1 | Part 3 "We have to recognise the fact that Fake News is created to accrue power in some form or the other," Saikat Datta, Former Editor (National Security) at HT Media, said, speaking at MediaNama's discussion on Fake News, Rumors & Online Content Regulation, was categorical that Fake News is not new. "For decades, the Americans have had a doctrine called the doctrine of information operations. Where did they get it? Fake news goes 2000 years back. The spread of religion started with fake news", he added, saying "It becomes a question of faith and belief. Unless we recognise that, there is nothing that you can do to address fake news." "If you think some regulation of content or platforms will work," Datta continued, "(it won't) because it is in the national charter of various agencies, even in India, to actually produce fake news. From the fields that I'm familiar with, it used to be called Information Operations, or disinformation campaigns. This is done by the state." Political parties and information ops The difference now, is that political parties in India are also using Fake News to influence citizens: "We spoke to a couple of political parties and their social media cells," Venkat Ananth, staff writer at The Ken said, "and we found that there is a trial and error approach, as to what works. They said it's a combination of the message and the…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...