I don’t even open most of their forwards,” a Mumbai girl told the BBC team that conducted the analysis.
There are my other uncles who stay in our hometown, I instantly mistrust anything they send.
“I trust anything my Mamaji sends, he knows a lot about the world. The study also offered interesting insights into people’s habit of forwarding messages. The study also found an overlap of fake news sources on Twitter and support networks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The study found that nearly 37% of messages sent on WhatsApp were about ‘scams and scares’ related to technology and conspiracies, among other things, while about 30% could be categorised under nationalism, including ‘common man’ stories and cultural preservation. The study used multiple methods to understand the circulation of fake news, including the analysis of 16,000 Twitter profiles and 3,200 Facebook pages, in-depth interviews and the analysis of WhatsApp messages shared by 40 respondents across 10 Indian cities. The social media analysis suggested that right-wing networks are much more organised than those who prescribe to the ideology of the left-wing, pushing nationalistic fake stories further. With the explosive growth of the fake news in India in last few years, a study conducted by BBCfound that the rising tide of nationalism is the driving force behind the spread of misinformation. Basic fact-checking on social media takes a backseat if the message is propagating ideas of nationalism and nation-building, found the report titled ‘Beyond Fake News’.