A 2018 study by professors of the MIT Media Lab and MIT Sloan claimed that lies spread faster than the truth. After analysing 1,26,000 stories shared by 3 million people over 4.5 million times on Twitter, the researchers discovered that false news travels “farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth”.
A subsequent study in 2023 by researchers at the University of South California (USC) found that the reward-based system of social media encourages users to stay online and share sensational posts frequently, forming habits that drive automatic sharing without considering the spread of misinformation.
These were likely some of the reasons behind the spread of rumours and misinformation on social media about the alleged rape and murder of a trainee doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College.
It is true that social media effectively exposed the misconduct of hospital authorities and the laxity of the police. However, false claims, like the presence of 151 grams of semen in the victim’s body and broken pelvic girdle or hyoid, fake photo of former principal Dr Sandip Ghosh with main accused Sanjoy Ray, fake death certificate of the victim and unverified voice calls on social media misled the common people.
Kolkata Police, though, appears to have taken some action, summoning more than 300 people so far, among whom many ran fake social media profiles. However, the use of AI technologies to generate content makes it challenging for the police to keep up with misinformation peddlers.
Bengali social media influencer Indrani Biswas, vocal from the start, believes the death of the trainee doctor at RG Kar deeply moved the public emotionally. “Initially raw emotion drove people. As a result, they could not think rationally and verify every piece of information,” Biswas told THE WEEK.
She continued, “Most of us could not believe that such a thing could happen. Additionally, I felt that a section deliberately spread misinformation and designed it in a manner to exploit public emotions.”
Anthropologist Dr Suman Nath, who has written about how political parties leverage big data analytics to run social media campaigns, acknowledged the potential of an organised fake news operation by motivated individuals or groups. He attributes the public’s belief in such misinformation to “confirmation bias”.
Dr Nath told THE WEEK, “Confirmation bias is the tendency to believe anything that confirms one’s existing beliefs and most people are not rational. They are self-delusional. In this case, they were convinced something was wrong. So, people believed any information that suggested a potential wrongdoing in RG Kar.”
He believes news media too contributed to the chaos. Dr Nath mentioned an unverified viral voice call where the then alleged Assistant Superintendent (non-medical) of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital was heard saying to the victim’s parents first she was unwell and then she had died.
The hospital authorities might have initially tried to avoid panicking the parents, a common practice, he said. “But the news media portrayed this as an attempt to hide information, convincing the public of a cover-up. These people will now believe any social media content which suggests misconduct in the hospital on August 9.”
Increased engagement with specific content prompts social media algorithms to boost similar posts. If unverified and false information receives high engagement, feeds will be continuously flooded with such content, creating a loop.
Dr Anuttama Banerjee, a consultant psychologist, believes that in general, people’s trust in authorities is also diminishing. She said, “Our trust is shaken. There's a strong decline in trust towards media, government, police and all authorities. The prevailing belief is that the system is failing us. As a result, even when authorities present the truth, it is often dismissed or viewed with scepticism."
She also asserted that common people have become increasingly impatient, leading them to believe anything instantly. “We crave instant gratification. In situations like the RG Kar incident, this desire was intensified by anger. Consequently, they believed every gory detail about the incident because it depicted its severity.”
