Since ‘fake news,’ or false or misleading news is intended to manipulate public opinion, it’s designed to provoke an emotional response from a reader/viewer, it’s often inflammatory in nature and can elicit feelings of anger, suspicion, anxiety, and even depression by distorting our thinking.
While misinformation and disinformation influence everyone, certain people are more vulnerable than others. People with mental illnesses, those who live alone, and those with lower educational levels are all included.
Memory and Misinformation
Memory appears to be another area where disinformation appears to have an impact. In a 2012 study, researchers looked at a substantial body of literature on the influence of disinformation on memory. The study looked at whether misinformation influenced the memories of almost 800 military personnel who were undergoing survival school training, which included difficult mock POW camps. It showed out that misinformation influenced memory of details from the event, such as the appearance of guns or glasses, as well as the accuracy with which an aggressive interrogator’s identity might be recognized. After the questioning, more than half of the individuals exposed to a deceptive photograph wrongly identified a different person as their interrogator. When exposed to disinformation, memories for traumatic experiences are subject to being altered, according to the study.
Defending Against Misinformation
As people become more aware of misinformation and disinformation, more strategies to combat it emerge. A study conducted in December questioned whether users’ responses to a social media post that communicated health-related misinformation were influenced by their exposure to misinformation and its correction. It was discovered that responses to a tweet that contained incorrect information about raw milk contributed to influence public perceptions of the milk’s safety and health. The study also discovered that correcting responses delivered in a nasty or confrontational tone were just as successful as those delivered in a respectful tone.
How to Guard Against Misinformation and Disinformation
When it comes to determining what information is accurate and what is not, awareness is crucial. According to Catchings, there are a few techniques to guard against the consequences of misinformation and disinformation:
Use reliable sources to stay informed.
Consult with any friends or family members who are interested in remaining informed.
Don’t believe everything you see on TV or read on social media.
To defend oneself from misinformation and disinformation, we might also ask ourselves the following questions:
Where can I find it?
What kind of material is this?
THE INDIAN FAKE NEWS FACTS
On December 9, 2020, the EU DisinfoLab, a Brussels-based fake news watchdog, exposed a systematic campaign stoking anti-Pakistan sentiment: a concerted program run by the shadowy Delhi-based Srivastava Group. EU DisinfoLab dug up startling revelations of a massive cross-continental network of hundreds of news outlets and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) — ten of them accredited with the United Nations — that debilitated Pakistan’s image and may have served as extensions and promoters of the Indian government’s foreign policy objectives.
The Indian Chronicles investigation by the EU DisinfoLab documented a 15-year coordinated campaign involving up to 750 fake media sites and 550 domains spread across 119 countries. This network appears to have fulfilled two purposes in India. It boosted New Delhi’s foreign policy objectives in the first place. Second, it painted Pakistan — and, to a lesser extent, China — in a bad light.
The report’s main findings, which include the discovery of a “entire network of coordinated UN-accredited NGOs,” some of which are “directly linked to the Srivastava family,” suggest that the campaign was intended to discredit Pakistan internationally while also bringing up domestic issues such as minority rights and security. It was also intended to influence UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and European Parliament decision-making.
Identity theft was also a part of the campaign, with the name of Martin Schulz, the former president of the European Parliament, and a photograph of James Purnell, a former British government minister, being stolen. Professor Louis Sohn, one of the founding founders of international human rights legislation, passed away in 2006 at the age of 92. Despite this, he was named as a participant in the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace (CSOP) at a UNHRC session in 2007 and a separate event in Washington, DC in 2011. CSOP was one of dozens of organizations resurrected from dormancy to be used as a proxy intelligence tool against Pakistan.
NGOs such as Balochistan House, Gilgit Baltistan Forum, Balochistan Forum, European Organization for Pakistani Minorities, and the South Asia Democratic Forum were allegedly utilized to discredit Pakistan.
According to the authors of the Indian Chronicle, these UN-accredited NGOs collaborated in Brussels and Geneva with non-accredited think tanks and minority-rights NGOs. The Srivastava group was directly responsible for a number of these, however it is unclear how they came to be.
According to the report, SADF arranged at least ten activities such as rallies in front of the UN Broken Chair monument in Geneva, outside the UN headquarters in New York, gatherings on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, or in front of Pakistan Embassy in Ottawa. Balochistan House also conducted seminars and events hosted in the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg, with the aid of lawmakers like as Richard Czarnecki and Fulvio Martusciello.
These gatherings denounced Pakistan and used to raise contentions about the situation of religious or ethnic minorities or criticize policies on matters such as terrorism.
EU DisinfoLab Executive Director Alexandre Alaphilippe remarked that it was the ‘largest network’ of disinformation they have exposed. The watchdog partially exposed the network in 2019, but now believes the operation is more larger and more resilient than previously suspected.
Without fully finding out the ‘movers and shakers’ driving the negative publicity against it, Pakistan has struggled to manage Shia–Sunni tensions, terror outfits and angry ethnic Pashtun and Baloch movements. Islamabad did not pay attention to how Indian networks such as ANI, Zee News, and the New Delhi Times, as well as hundreds of its international partners, exploited these internal flaws.
When reporting on Pakistan, these three news organizations concentrated on Balochistan, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and religious minorities, providing as key sources of information for their European and American counterparts.
Claude Rakisits of the ANU said, “Not preventing this kind of harmful conduct speaks a lot about the Indian administration.” New Delhi may or may not have been behind the initiative, but it certainly did not go unnoticed..
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