@ Vikas Sharma | Sr Journalist
New Delhi: While the spread of fake and unreliable news through social media continues to be a growing concern, Indian media is trying its best to provide reliable information to its readers. At the height of the recently concluded general elections – the largest democratic exercise was undertaken in the world – a survey of news published in English media established that less than 10 percent fake news were reported in April 2019.
The survey by Logically, a leading UK start-up that uses AI to combat misinformation and ‘fake news’, revealed that while India was undergoing elections, only 1,30,000 news stories were not reliable and 33,897 articles were completely fake. However, the study also highlighted that 85% of English news being reported in the Indian media didn’t contain any factual inaccuracies.
Though Indian media has been vindicated of charges of “fake news” and paid media, if the problem of fake news is not taken seriously, then the incremental deterioration of trust in the fourth pillar of democracy will pose a serious threat to publishers and India’s netizens.
The study pointed that during the same period, fake news pieces were shared more than 1 lakh times, hateful articles were shared more than 3 Lakh times and 15 Lakh shares were connected to extremely biased stories reflecting the sender’s personal opinions on topics. As a result, readers could be entering filter bubbles and echo chambers on their own.
The study was conducted post the analysis of over one Million articles across English publications during a 30 day election period from 1st to 30th April 2019. The analysis further revealed that out of 1, 69,144 articles relating to politics and government, out of which 14% of the news was not reliable and 4.6% was completely fake. Overall Indians shared news more than 1 crore times.
Mr. Lyric Jain, Founder, and CEO, Logically said, “The world is battling a trust deficit driven by false news spread both accidentally and by unscrupulous agents. While responsible reporting is the need of the hour, lack of technology to combat the problem of fake news is still a huge challenge.”
Lyric further added, “These numbers are startling because though the journalists may try their best to report accurately, the constant circulation of fake news around the clock, on social media platforms makes it extremely tough to differentiate between fake and real. Similarly, readers too are unable to distinguish between mainstream and fringe media. They attribute the presence of fake news to ‘the media’ and lose trust in the ability of publishers to report accurately. Tracking down the source, credibility, and veracity of information is increasingly becoming difficult in such a complex ecosystem. Only extended intelligence – a combination of technology and human expertise can address this problem”
22-year old Lyric Jain, a Cambridge and MIT graduate is on a mission to foster social change. Logically has been developed by a diverse team of data scientists, coders, designers and journalists. Adding a layer of credibility to the internet to battle misinformation, the platform acts as a real-time, user-friendly filter, ensuring users can quickly consume information that is – fair, authentic, credible and trusted (FACT). Logically also has the largest dedicated fact-checking team across the globe.
Logically recently launched its intuitive, human-centric platform powered by Extended Intelligence (EI) machine learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and human oversight to empower citizens to combat fake news and misinformation on any topic, available to everyone on Android.For more information please visit: https://www.logically.co.uk/ or http://logically.in/
