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Sunday 5 January 2014

Social media and rumor

No doubt that social media (SM) provide us a great platform to keep our knowledge, views, and analysis without any Chowkidar. Until the emergence of SM, we were fed what someone else wanted us to believe. But now things are different, everything positive or negative are waved within no time. People came to know so many things, mostly true, almost in real time. Until now SM is enjoying high credibility, in fact more than main stream media. Again the same SM may suffer from a serious problem, if it is not self controlled by individuals. This should make one worry.

I would like to give here one example of 'backward rumor' and how it works. Suppose there are two groups, A and B. Group B prepares a fake poster and they share on their timeline which is very very pleasing to group A. Immediately, group A becomes very enthusiastic and starts spreading like fire. Group B waits for few days to spread their original poster well and then they prepare anti-poster arguments on another poster. Now group B claims that see how fake is group A, they are spreading rumor and fake information and making people fool. This is how it works. It has been seen that some to full fill their personal preference/agenda comment and propagate something which is well against conclusive and established fact. These are very unfortunate which misled innocent people. If you say, can we not question something established? Yes, why not, you are entitled to question established fact provided your question should be built on equally, if not greater, credible argument.

One should not comment and speak anything which has no basis. All political parties have been doing lip services for long, and in the end of the day, there are no concrete outcomes. To change this we have to change ourselves first. One should speak what is credible, one should do what he/she speaks. This becomes more relevant when election is ahead. I hope we will be able to keep SM credible and clean whether something suits us or not.

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