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Do you know:

What is Fake news, social media, and sociopolitical tools?

How easily you can distinguish the source in a flood of reasonably looking information?

Who are misinformed people?

What is fake science?

Who are pseudoscientists?

What is the essence of being human?

What is the future of humanity?

What is reduction of humanity?

What are data driven technologies?

What are digital technologies?

What is digitalization of agriculture?

How digital technologies are being used in agriculture, health, and finance?

 

Why I pose these questions?

There are some who may know all these but there are many who might have heard the words but are confused about the significance of these words or even sentences. Don’t worry. You will now hear from me once every week A-Z of all this and so many other things which you must have been sick of listening like “fake news”. Anyone and everyone can say whatever to anybody, spread rumors, misguide public, tarnish the image of respectable people, abuse the government functionaries, threatened businessmen and other influential and what not under the umbrella of “fake news”. But, when someone acts against them, they simply take refuge behind the words/sentences like “Oh its fake new” or “the site is not mine from where this has been trolled” are some of the common sentences that everyone of us listen frequently. Since I am also among those who are sick of all this hence, I decided to write on this topic in simple words so that students, lawyers, journalists, and all those who are interested in advancing their knowledge can be helped.

 

What we actually mean about fake news, social media, and/or sociopolitical tools? Let’s talk about this phenomenon starting with the introduction.

 

Sociopolitical tools, technologies and/or “social media” have the power to unite the communities separated geographically but, it also possessed the power to divide the people or groups of people. Doing this way, they can easily delete unwanted contacts or information not only from their social media tools but also from their perceptions and thoughts.

 

Bertrand Russell: a philosopher, of the 20^th, century and Nobel laureate in Literature of 1950 once said:

 

“Credulity (someone willing to believe things and lies and could be fooled too easily) is a greater evil in the present day (20^th century) than it was ever before because owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and owing to democracy, spread of misinformation is more important than in former time to the holder of power”

Imagine, he said this in 20^th century but with all the coming era, this quote will appear as if it was said for today. This is the power of this quote which you can very easily relate with today’s social media.

 

What social media is composed of?

1. Misinformation: a false or incorrect information shared with pre-conceived idea that it will cause no harm to the user or mislead the reader. There is exceptionally fine but defined difference between misinformed and uninformed or ignorant people. Ignorance can be corrected, as one cannot know everything; besides, ignorance is not contagious. If I don’t know something, my simple answer would be “I don’t know”. instead of telling lies. Misinformed however, can work like dominos. It is like a cancer with very real consequences. For example, if someone tries to tell you something repetitively and frequently, like “person A is a cheater, liar, thief, money launderer, and/or corrupt, make sure he/she is misinforming you and forcing you to change your perception about person A,
2. Disinformation: which is a false, inaccurate, or misleading information designed, presented, and promoted with the intention to cause harm to public or to earn profit. it is a different from of misinformation and is shared intentionally. Civilized societies view disinformation as:

       “a process of eradication of history, ending in disruption or blockage of critical thinking, in which a particular phenomenon (for example “money laundering,” or corruption), through repeated and widespread use in our major institutions,   

         substitute automatically for facts” or “a constant unlearning of the facts”.

Since ability to think critically is deeply linked to the ability to think historically therefore, disinformation alleviates the conscious processing of information thus, creating a structure where contradictions are not recognized. (Pakistani society is one of the textbook examples of this phenomenon which anyone can currently witness),

        3. Mal information is when genuine information designed to stay in private is shared with the intention to cause harm. The world has witnessed numerous examples of mal information not only in US general election of 2016, but many other countries has experienced this phenomenon as well.

           The most common example of this is being presently witnessed in Pakistan as leakage of various types of videos and audios,

       4. Distorted perception or malicious deception

Perception is a mechanism to see and interpret an object and a process of receiving, selecting, organizing, interpreting, checking, and reacting to sensory stimuli or data” Many problems of general public, organizations, working class, household life and even in members of a family can arise due to perception adulterated with “distortions”. People with distorted perception can change, twist, or exaggerate something that appear different from the way it really is meaning thereby, that it reflects the opposite of the true characteristics of everything that a person with distorted perception see or experience. Perception is changeable, unreliable, and does not allow us to behave according to our beliefs and thinking and doing what we think is right.  Whereas the person with distorted perception perceives it as permanent, reliable and under our control which is not true and had been the root cause of many problems in the societies like recent disturbance the world witnessed on GT road and even more degraded form seen in Sialkot. One can distort an image, or even a thought, but social media are busy day and night in distorting the “ideas and beliefs” through false information or propaganda published on news websites and channels to mislead visitors and spread misinformation via social networks and word-of-mouth. Falls information, new/stories and/or statement kept repeating on social media to the extent that it sounds true. This illusion of truth happens even to those who know that the information is falls. However, when we hear the same false information repeatedly and continuously, we often come to believe that it is true. This also happens to people who can know better and those who can analyze that the information is false,

        5. Fake news: the mother of all evils in civilized and more in uncivilized sections of any society.

A fact checking website in United States “PolitiFact” described, fake news as “made-up stuff, masterfully manipulated to look like credible journalistic reports, that are easily spread online to large audiences mostly

misinformed people with distorted perception willing to believe fictions and conspiracy theories”. The power and depth of fake news has been fully realized during the 2016 US general election when the whole world understood the real meaning of “Fake news” and experienced the devastation caused due to misuse of sociopolitical tools.

How fake news work?

Fake news promotors tempt the visitors in through click baiting and online content that uses provocative, intriguing, and sensational headlines which seduce a person into clicking in order to view the original web article at the source publication. Since emotional reaction of the recipients are considered a cause of quick spread of fake news therefore, some headline may raise emotions of anger such as kidnaping and raping little girl or harassment of and/or rape and even murder of women etc., or the headlines that create curiosity in people. However, in 99.9% cases that source articles do not match the headline, or the entire article turned out to be misleading and fake, but the click helped spread it like wildfire. Each click and view of the source article generates advertisement-based revenue for that very publication. Since each page of the article usually contain multiple advertisements which further multiplies the revenue as more the advertisements are clicked, more revenue will be generated. To make it more profitable, some articles use touchy videos and provocative images to attract more people. In other words, fake news promotor earns their bread and butter through illegal means, and through misleading and fooling people as a tool to get popularity overnight. Is it ethical?  What do you think?

To me it is an unethical way of gaining popularity and earning bread and butter thus, the readers must decide should this be allowed unchecked? Imagine the severity of harm that this menace is causing to the followers. They are confused, uncertain about what and what not to believe? what is right and what is wrong? what is a truth or what is a lie? In simple words, fake news promotors are promoting uncertainty and confusion in general and a society of ill-informed/misinformed people particularly those who are unable to make decision or who’s decision can be influenced. The perpetrators of fake news are gloated instead of being ashamed. How long one can distort reality? and how and when will people realize that realities are being distorted: a million-dollar question that needs to be answer?

Fake news is usually promoted through Illusory Truth Effects. The people who know that the information is falls can also become victim of this menace because when the falls information is repeated time and again, it sounds like it is true. Adolf Hitler wrote in in his book “Mein Kampf” that “slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea”. That is the power of illusory truth effect. We know that internet is the breeding ground for fake news, false rumors, conspiracy theories, and outright lies, and we are not immune to this phenomenon. The media ecosystem is so awash in falsehoods that everyone of us is encountering fake news every day and at every moment which put all of us at the risk of illusory truth effect. This should be taken seriously because misinformation, falls information and/or fake news poses a real-time threat to the functioning of civil society. It has fueled acts of violence in India in 2018 after WhatsApp sparked a mob killing. When coronavirus pandemic spreads across the globe, conspiracy theories drove large crowds of protesters to march in the streets against social distancing and wearing masks. This happens not just in India but elsewhere as well and indicated lack of awareness. People know that falls information are circulating on the internet, but they are not ready to believe that they can ever become victim of this phenomenon. This is one example how illusory truth effects affect our judgmental capabilities and indicated the difficulty of avoiding this because it is driven by our unconscious and automatic processing system that does not allow us to realize that we have fallen prey to it. It is hard and boring but necessary to make a concerted effort to analyze critically the claims made before us if anybody wants to avoid illusory truth effect. The more we neglect this, the more we will fall prey to this.

 

“We must believe before we can doubt, and doubt before we can deny,”

Bertrand Russell 1922 Conway Memorial Lecture,

See you next week. Till then, enjoy reading this and relax. Pl. don’t forget to give your comments and suggestion. Bye