Social Media has always been the epitome of consumption of information, scandalous and sensational news, entertainment, connecting with people, and whatnot. And since the discovery of social media and various social media applications has led to more and more people investing their time and sometimes their money as well, in order to be at par with the world.

However, what leads to social media businesses becoming filthy rich and popular is the technological advancements. Though social media has become almost an inexorable part of our society now, we can’t always depend on it. The proliferation of misinformation in social media is not new. Every day we read a bunch of things online on social media, which may be true or false. We don’t have a single clue about it. Social media has proved itself to be a very atrocious source of media that can easily influence the minds of the people and try to change their attitudes and opinions. 

In the past few years, the number of fake news stories has increased via social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and whatnot, and because they are shared online faster than we can ever imagine. There are most probably three different notions of fake news, it is misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information. 

Misinformation is basically false information conveyed with the belief of it is true. It mostly happens unintentionally. 

Disinformation is the intentional sharing of information even after knowing it’s true.

Mal-information is the information that is shared or conveyed and is true but it can cause harm to a person, organization or country is called mal-information. All this adds to fake news. 

India has primarily focused on supervising social media platforms through legalistic instruments and menaces of criminal culpabilities. However, the need is to locate its parliamentary efforts and bring about a comprehensive transparency law to force meaningful revelations by platforms to enable a broader community of informed stakeholders. 

However, with the timeliness of communication and the dissemination of timeliness information have led to social media becoming an important communication channel for two-way information. With the help of social media, getting in touch with people from different regions and industries is just done with a touch or a click, and the communication between different types of people living miles apart from each other has also been very easy.

Therefore, the public can also learn about pertinent situations and specific information about different events in different regions from social media. On the other hand, influenced by the interaction and amalgamation of massive true information and misinformation on social media platforms, the public is often prone to emotional oscillations and tends to publish their views and emotions on social media platforms and receive disparate responses depending on the type, progress, and content of events.

Even during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were much fake news and rumors which were circulating via social media. From offering unvaried and homogenous home remedies to tackle the virus, to floating fake advisories asking people to avoid food such as ice cream and chicken, and sharing conspiracy theories, Indian phones were being flooded with misinformation. Even Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi also requested the citizens not heed the rumors surrounding Covid-19.

Social Media completely works on the concept of Propaganda, where information is shared or conveyed without knowing whether it is true or false. It has always been a social devil to almost every person in the world.