In this technology driven era one can’t deny how crucial role social media plays. With over 300 million mobile internet users in India, the social networking usage has clocked above 70% of this large piece of consumer base. With increasing penetration of internet into rural India these numbers are expected to go high significantly. Source: Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)
Social networking or social media has not been just the medium of entertainment anymore; over the last few years it has become the major source of information exchange via various platforms like whatsapp, facebook, twitter & Instagram to name a few. Information circulation via social network is beating any other medium gradually and Social media has emerged as a powerful tool for campaigning and marketing.
However this paradigm shift has its own pros and cons. On one hand it has played a vital role in connecting the masses, helped the campaigners to target and send across their messages to target audiences. A huge segment of Indian population is young and prominent user of these platforms. This makes them the targeted potential audience for marketers and campaigners. The demography that a social media offers is vast and dynamic and that’s why it has become the preference of many.
However this evolvement has its own cons as well and the irony is that the ill effect of the social media information is being driven majorly by the educated Indian youth. The mood driven sentimental imperativeness of sharing the content online without applying the logic and checking the facts has led to social media flooding with rumours, hoax and misguiding information which in turns makes people ill informed.
The emotions and sentimental quotient of individuals and some admins drives the information like fire spreading one group to another, one page to other crushing the reality on the way.
For instance the proud & emotional countrymen recently declared gold medal victory at Rio Olympics for the Indian gymnast Dipa Karmakar via many Facebook posts, days before the event actually took place. During the famous even odd traffic rule in capital of country, fake pics of jam-packed Metro stations created huge worry and chaos among people using public transport.
I am sure everyone must be well aware of the post related to images of Bill Gates’s so called daughter circulating through out internet. Or the very popular viral messages related to contamination of beverages like Pepsi and Frooty with HIV virus. These are few of the messages that were hugely circulated across internet with incorrect messages that led to misguiding the masses purely because people did not bother to check the authenticity of content.
In many cases it leads to the huge damages including financial ones as well. For example the widely circulated notorious campaign against Kurkure which urged consumers to boycott the product as it allegedly contained plastic. The argument given to proof plastic in the ingredients was that kurkure burns when exposed to fire. This surely created concern among the consumer of the product and in sentiments of concerns people started spreading it. However the truth is, it burnt due to presence of carbohydrates and edible oil present in the product.
Another popular message which comes to my mind is of so called NASA satellite image of India during the Diwali night. In the proud national sentiments people throw away the logic, science and even geography and circulate the fake images. Several WhatsApp messages with all kind of provocative and misleading information are very common now days. These messages get dangerous when the misinformation is aimed at sentiments, especially when pertaining to ethnicity, cast, community and religion.
Political degrading has taken ugly shape in last couple of years over social media with each party follower degrading others with circulation of fake and misleading information and images and the users of Social networking sites has simply aided them by being the blind followers. Such online media content is non-verified and without proper sources or approval from concerned authorities results in creating hoax and results in either distorting the facts or projecting something unreal.
These misleading messages and images have spice to fuel the sentiments and thus liked by many but at times the real issues and critical information gets supressed in the mob of the fake messages.
Information is critical and essential for growth, but authenticity is what drives the direction. It is not very difficult to tackle these messages, users themselves being responsible while circulating anything on social media can help to a great extent. One can contribute by avoiding being sentimental and verifying the credibility of information or the source.
