At a press conference on Saturday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee decided to address the menace of fake news in fuelling last week’s riots in the state. “Video clips of an incident in Comilla, Bangladesh, and a Bhojpuri film were being shown as if these incidents had taken place in [West] Bengal,” Banerjee noted. “There is Fakebook happening in the name of Facebook. I respect Facebook but not Fakebook.”
For the past week, an unlikely threat has buffeted West Bengal: social media. A week ago, on July 2, Muslim mobs rioted through Baduria town in North 24 Parganas district. The trigger was a derogatory cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad posted by a teenage boy on his Facebook wall.
Instead of prompting more cautious use of social media, the riot has unleashed a flood of fake news. The scale of violence was exaggerated, incidents were misrepresented and claims were made about attacks against Hindus that had simply not occurred.
Fake news mills
On June 5, ABP News debunked one such social media rumour that held that a Hindu woman had been lynched by a Muslim mob in West Bengal. It turned out that the woman was Muslim and the incident had no religious colour to it: the mob had accused the victim…
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