Fake News “you don’t know, what they know & you should know.”

First of all, it is wrong to assume that Misinformation is a millennial world problem ignited with social media. It has always been a part of human evolution; however, it came out in the spotlight after the 2016 U.S election controversy.

Let me narrate a short scene from one of the mythological epics of India “Mahabharata”.

The War between two clans of the same family was coming to an end. With their enormous army and powerful leadership, Kaurava’s win seemed inevitable. The battlefield of Kurukshetra was already blimping with Kauravas’ victory over their paternal cousins Pandavas.

Hand drawn illustration inspired by an artwork

Enters Yudhishithra; the first among the five Pandavas. He was known as “Dharamraj” (the righteous one & who never lies).

Here he was, standing in the middle of the battlefield and he announces, “ASHVATHAMA HAS DIED…”.

Ashvathama was Kaurava’s commander in chief’s son. Upon hearing his son’s demise, Dronacharya abandoned his weapons, left his army, and started mourning.

Pandavas would never get the golden opportunity like this to corner the most powerful leader of Kauravas. Hence they went ahead and killed Dronacharya, and then the rest is history.

Pandavas won the War and ruled the kingdom of Hastinapur for 36 years.

Hand drawn illustration inspired by an artwork

Now let’s go back to the part where Yudhishithra announces loudly “ASHVATHAMA HAS DIED…”…. and whispers “THE ELEPHANT”. And yes no one heard the latter.

That Misinformation not only changed the tide of the War but also didn’t make Yudhishithra a liar.

But why I am narrating this 2,000 year-old tale here?

Because my research from 2020 indicated that our species has not evolved since 2000 years, especially when it comes to spreading Misinformation and consuming that Misinformation. Which by the way has led the man-kind into all sorts of wars. From battlefields to social media to mob rages.

My gig at Logically started last year. Logically is an AI-led media house, advocating against “Misinformation & Fake news.”

My first project was to revamp the B2C app for the U.S. elections 2020.

The research we conducted looked at the outcomes related explicitly to Political News, Entertainment, Government policies, Social media, and Covid-19. There were other topics too, but we wanted to know how people consume info around the mentioned topics.

We conducted the user research in England, India, and the U.S.A and that’s what we found;

1. Not seeking information but binary answers: 65% of the users during the interview mentioned that they would wait a maximum of 10 days to verify if the news is Fake or not. Our research & existing data indicated that many readers don’t dig in deep into the information. They only want to know “Yes” or “No” to their questions. This is surprising as most of the topics don’t have binary answers.
2. Real news can also be misinterpreted as Fake: Well this is the confession that our users had made; “The more sensational and shocking the news is, it has more of an effect than real information.” Conspiracies are everywhere. Which makes it difficult for the readers to decide which information should be trusted. Sometimes due to the non-stickiness of language, readers negate the real news as fake news.
3. The idea of wanting to be right: In psychology, we call it “Confirmation Bias.” Most of the time, the information that we view; already agrees with the views we have. Since the info presented to us is based on our previous likes and clicks, we consume only one side of the story. Coming across the information aligned with our views can make us feel emotional, upset, or happy. We think people should know about it. Hence we share it, we like it, we send it to all our friends and family, and the cycle just continues.
4. We also realized the lack of better media literacy among the audience.
5. Another observation was that most of the information sources are politically inclined, and hence even unwillingly, we end up taking sides. The most famous and so-called reliable sources also drive agendas.

This insight helped us decide the Primary goal of our app — Educating people about fake news & help them build Informed opinions.

While our small design team at Logically is taking a stab at such a big & ancient problem, You must keep an eye on the source of the next Whatsapp forward you receive.

Stay tuned for the next article on “How we used the insights to re-build Logically app.”