Nothing but lies: Fake videos, rumour set off the lynch mobs
Vijaita Singh Yuthika Bharagava NEW DELHI , JULY 07, 2018 UPDATED: JULY 08, 2018 10:34
IST
Left to grieve: Relatives of people lynched by villagers in
Raainpada, near Dhule. | Photo Credit:
Pravin Khare
Over 20 people have died in mob attacks triggered by fake
news, and experts say social media should deploy technology to stop the
mischief
A promotional video on child safety made by an advertising
agency in Karachi triggered violence 900 km away in Maharashtra’s Dhule, and
led to the lynching of five people from a nomadic community on July 1.
The video, spliced and edited to trigger panic about “child
lifters” on the prowl, spread on WhatsApp and other social media platforms like
wildfire. Its victims were from the Gosavi nomadic community that derives
sustenance by seeking alms. They were intercepted by villagers in Dhule’s
Rainpada hamlet on suspicion of being child abductors and bludgeoned to death.
In Malegaon, a team led by Additional Superintendent of
Police, Harssh A Poddar rescued five people from being lynched by a mob. The
community had seen videos from Pakistan, Bangalore and Chennai, all aimed
instigating violence.
“There are quite a few videos doing the rounds. One is from
Pakistan, which is actually an edited video of a child being lifted from
Karachi, and it is being attributed to India. Another one claims organs are
being harvested from children. There is one from Bangalore where a woman is
seen wearing a burka and walking away with a child,” Mr. Poddar said.
Those arrested for indulging in such acts invariably had a
minor crime record, he added.
“We arrested 16 people in Malegaon for trying to kill five
people who were suspected to be child-lifters, and most of them had minor crime
records previously. They take the excuse of a crowd for the violence,” he said.
Secunder Kermani, BBC’s Pakistan correspondent who traced the
advertising agency that made the video in Karachi said it was filmed a few
years ago. “The advertising agency said they made the video pro bono to promote
child safety in Pakistan. The actors were mainly all employees of the agency.
They had no idea that the videos had been linked with the lynchings in India.
They were heartbroken,” Mr. Kermani said.
Videos of alleged child abduction spiralling on social media
platforms like WhatsApp have led to the murder of more than 20 people across
India in the past two months. Dr. Gleb Tsipursky who served as a professor at
Ohio State University and the co-founder of Pro-Truth Pledge, an initiative to
promote truthfulness, said, “lynchings in India are the most violent and deadly
episodes of fake news-inspired violence.”
Tracking mob lynching in two charts
But there were plenty of others in developing countries like
Brazil,and also in developed countries: In the U.S., a gunman shot at a pizza
parlour, provoked by fake news.
WhatsApp and its owner Facebook could do many things to stop
such incidents, he said. “One example is looking for certain keywords in
messages sent on WhatsApp and warning people that they might be getting
misinformation.”
Waking up to the danger, the Home Ministry asked the States
and Union territories (UTs) to check incidents of mob lynching fuelled by
rumours of child-lifting on social media.
The government directed WhatsApp to immediately take steps to
prevent the spread of “irresponsible and explosive messages.”
In the past, it has asked the U.S. to bring pressure on
social media giants to install servers in India, but the proposal was turned
down.
ALSO READ
Visitors from Chennai
had lost their way before they were attacked by the villagers in Tamil Nadu’s
Tiruvannamalai district. Sixty five-year-old Rukmani, who was in Athimoor
village in the district, was killed on the suspicion that she was a child
kidnapper. Photo: Special Arrangement
When social media rumours on child abduction trigger mob
lynchings
Post counter-videos
Dr. Tsipursky said if the servers are in the country where
the government is located, It would help in that “more control can be imposed
by a government on social media giants.”
Mr. Poddar said while one method to check fake news was to
post counter-videos clarifying the actual position, the other was to register
the offences.
“A couple of days back, a video of a child that was allegedly
kidnapped surfaced. It was found that the child knew the man in the video, and
had lied that he had been kidnapped because the man had asked the child to
repay some borrowed money.
“The video looked convincing. The word got around that police
is registering cases in [genuine] offences and no violence was reported in the
past four-five days in Malegaon,” he said.
“At the heart of this problem is a lack of media literacy,
with people believing rumours rather than credible media sources. The
government needs to invest much more resources into education, of children and
adults alike, in media literacy. Likewise, the government needs to push social
media giants to work hard on fighting misinformation, and hold them accountable
for taking meaningful steps. Finally, the government can get social media
giants to trace the source of fake news stories, and hold their perpetrators
accountable for the consequences,” Dr. Tsipursky said.
No comments:
Post a Comment