Navigating Misinformation: Tackling The Fake News Wave During COVID-19 In Jaipur

Abstract

With the emergence of social media, there has been a notable change in how news is both created and consumed. Global social media use in 2020 reached around 2.95 billion individuals. The widespread dissemination of the COVID-19 coronavirus led to a surge of activity on social media. Most mediums were used to disseminate pertinent news, recommendations, and precautionary measures. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), unregulated dissemination of misinformation and conspiracy theories is proliferating at a faster pace than the transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, there has been an excessive amount of information circulating, causing psychological stress, unreliable medical advice, and economic upheaval.

The primary objective of this study is to examine the portrayal of false information and assess the consequences it has had on the inhabitants of Jaipur city. The objective of this research is to identify various kinds of false information and examine the underlying motives of individuals who disseminate misleading material. This will be achieved by a comprehensive examination of content on four prominent social media platforms. This research analyzed 130 of the most widely circulated false news items on social media in Jaipur. Data is gathered from the city of Jaipur via the utilization of the four predominant social media platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and WhatsApp. There are four distinct criteria that may be used to differentiate false news topics: COVID-19 therapy, medical facilities, therapeutic options, and currently accessible interventions. Hospitals' management of COVID-19 is widely misunderstood, including 34.62 percent of all misinformation. Text, images, audio, and videos are the four categories that categorize the many types of material. The proportion of text categorized as a certain kind contributes to the elevated ratio. The objectives of false news may be categorized into three main areas: generating sensationalism, endorsing certain medications, and disseminating propaganda targeting the government as well as hospitals and medical practitioners. While the occurrence of false news is unevenly distributed and constantly changing, there is a noticeable decline in the daily frequency of such episodes, approaching a conclusion.