The enormity and logistical intricacy of India’s six-week election were astounding, but so was the “unprecedented” volume of misinformation circulated online.
False social media posts and instant messages, from doctored films to irrelevant photos with fictitious titles, proliferated following the largest democratic exercise in history.
The US-based India Hate Lab’s Raqib Hameed Naik claimed to have “witnessed an unprecedented scale of disinformation” during the elections.
“Conspiracy theories were actively promoted to widen the gulf between communities,” stated Naik, whose group studies hate speech and misinformation.
Over the course of six weeks and seven voting phases, AFP fact-checkers across India’s political spectrum debunked forty election-related myths.
False films appeared claiming to show one person voting more than once, and others had Bollywood celebrities supporting the opposition.
A few were crass or made fun of.
Others were even more sophisticated and malicious concoctions meant to purposefully mislead.
They were all extensively disseminated.
“Anger and resentment”
The Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has come under scrutiny for postings that inflamed sectarian tensions with the more than 200 million-strong Muslim minority in India.
These included a number of videos and fiery campaign speeches by Modi in which he falsely claimed that his opponents intended to transfer India’s riches in a way that would benefit Muslims.
According to Naik, these kinds of articles “stoke fear and animosity towards Muslims to polarise voters along religious lines.”
He stated, “The ruling party’s strategy of sowing dangerous seeds of division and hatred in society has not only undermined the integrity of the democratic process but also exploited religious sentiments for electoral gain.”
All across the political spectrum, false information was found, but Rahul Gandhi, the head of the opposition Congress party, was one of the main targets.
On social media, his quotes, images, and videos were circulated, although frequently in part or out of context.
Gandhi’s actual prediction that the opposition alliance would win was taken from a digitally edited film and analyzed by AFP. The altered version said that Modi would win a third term when the results were announced on Tuesday.
Others allegedly had Gandhi making a fraudulent plea for Modi’s victory.
Those that incorrectly associated him with China and Pakistan, India’s adversarial neighbors, were among the most heinous examples.
Among them was an image purported to show Gandhi waving the “Chinese constitution” during an electoral rally. That was, in fact, the Indian one.
Other posts, taking advantage of Modi’s attempts to position himself as the nation’s most ardent supporter of the faith, depicted Gandhi, a Hindu, as being against India’s predominant religion.
One video went viral showing a true picture from Pakistan of a Hindu temple that had collapsed.
But the author made up the story that it was from Gandhi’s constituency and that he was the one who destroyed it.
He was purportedly shown in another edited film declining to accept a statue of a Hindu deity.
Another said he paid young people to follow him on social media, but he was actually discussing youth unemployment.
Supporters of the BJP shared all of them extensively.
A decline in trust
Despite the fact that many political parties have well-functioning social media teams and digital outreach, detractors said the BJP’s sophisticated online operation was pushing posts.
Gandhi attacked Modi’s party and claimed large sums of money were “spent to distort my image.”
Opposition parties, however, also disseminate false material exalting the Congress and disparaging the BJP.
A number of digitally altered videos featuring two Bollywood actors criticizing the Bharatiya Janata Party and urging people to support the Congress party were released.
In an attempt to deceitfully accuse the ruling party of manipulating an electronic voting machine to rig the election in its favor, social media users also circulated an outdated video.
According to Joyojeet Pal, a University of Michigan researcher on the role of technology in democracy, “overall, trust in content itself is falling.”
Pal told AFP that Indians were aware of the widespread usage of manipulated and false content on social media during the election.
He stated, “There’s a very good chance that they don’t think the edited content is authentic.”
“But since these support their beliefs, there’s a good chance they’ll forward them anyhow.”
