Understanding the ideological divide online
1 year, 5 months ago

Understanding the ideological divide online

Hindustan Times  

Algorithms used by social media companies in drawing in and retaining users have been the subject of scrutiny for several years now. Spanning multiple election cycles and a once-in-a-century pandemic, the debates centre around a simple question: Is social media dividing people? Starting from 2008, when Barack Obama first used social media for a political campaign to the divisive 2016 and 2020 elections that saw disinformation play a prominent role, the role of social media, and its spillover effects into real-world politics, has been hotly debated. Roughly a decade after social media was first used by the Bharatiya Janata Party to corral millions of young supporters, the proliferation of social media has led to armies of followers, and trolls, on both sides of the political divide. The social contexts and digital landscapes of the US and India may be different, but a better understanding of the link between social media and political ideology is imperative to counteracting the harmful effects of disinformation.

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History of this topic

BJP Activates Social Media Team to Counter Oppn Attack on Shah
2 weeks, 5 days ago

BJP Activates Social Media Team to Counter Oppn Attack on Shah

Deccan Chronicle  

New Delhi: As Opposition parties prepare to protest against Union Home Minister Amit Shah for allegedly disrespecting Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the BJP has activated its social media strategy to counter the allegations and target Opposition groups, particularly the Congress. Utilising memes, short videos, and video clips, BJP’s social media team of influencers has launched a vigorous campaign aimed at discrediting …

Chandrababu says misuse of social media biggest challenge
1 month, 3 weeks ago

Chandrababu says misuse of social media biggest challenge

Deccan Chronicle  

Vijayawada:Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday emphasised the need for effective measures to control harassment of people over social media. Calling this the biggest challenge, he wanted a debate on how such misuse of social media could be controlled and who should be given the responsibility for controlling social media. Chandrababu Naidu stressed the need for proper …

US elections plays out on social media in India
2 months ago

US elections plays out on social media in India

Live Mint  

Top business tycoons Harsh Goenka and Anand Mahindra led the ‘social’ brigade for Indian users on Wednesday, as Donald Trump ‘trumped’ Kamala Harris to claim the crown of the 47th president of the United States. Trump, a prominent figure on social media known for his meme potential, ignited an exciting “meme fest” as the election results unfolded. “As Trump makes …

Social Media's Polarizing Impact on Politics: Negative Interactions Surge in Run-Up to Lok Sabha Polls
2 months, 2 weeks ago

Social Media's Polarizing Impact on Politics: Negative Interactions Surge in Run-Up to Lok Sabha Polls

Live Mint  

The 12th round of the biannual YouGov-Mint-CPR Millennial Survey found that politics was the fifth most popular topic among urban Indians, with 47% saying they follow such content. However, 37% of respondents who follow politics on social media reported having faced negative interactions online due to their political engagement in the six months before the survey. The survey also found …

Social media emerging as force multiplier for newcomers in J&K election battle
3 months, 2 weeks ago

Social media emerging as force multiplier for newcomers in J&K election battle

Hindustan Times  

Social media has emerged as a major dissemination and campaigning tool for political parties during the ongoing assembly elections of Jammu and Kashmir, even creating ‘ripple effect’ for some Independents or newer candidates like Sarjan Barkati and those associated with Engineer Rashid led Awami Itihad Party. All the big and small political parties across Jammu and Kashmir are using social …

Anti-India narrative on social media: Why it’s time for government to counter online negativity
4 months ago

Anti-India narrative on social media: Why it’s time for government to counter online negativity

Firstpost  

A wave of anti-India sentiment is flooding social media, distorting our global image. India can no longer afford silence and has to reclaim its narrative on the world stage Lately, social media has evolved into a platform where global narratives are created, shaped, and spread at turbo speed. A recent example is the “What’s wrong with India?” campaign on social …

Modi’s BJP: Not Just an Inheritance, But a Reinvention
5 months, 1 week ago

Modi’s BJP: Not Just an Inheritance, But a Reinvention

News 18  

Having secured a momentous third term with a clearly outlined vision, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s overarching legacy, according to a new book, will be that of transforming his party into an electoral machine, a party that can win elections. ‘Indian Renaissance – The Modi Decade’, edited by Aishwarya Pandit, argues that Modi’s biggest contribution lies in dismantling a perception that …

As the US Embassy promotes Leftist elements in India, read how the Biden administration and CIA have been using social media, paying influencers to manipulate public opinion
5 months, 3 weeks ago

As the US Embassy promotes Leftist elements in India, read how the Biden administration and CIA have been using social media, paying influencers to manipulate public opinion

Op India  

On the 17th of July, the US Embassy in India informed about its event for Indian social media influences and content creators to learn about boosting social media engagement on social issues and learn about “active citizenship”. Is the US trying to use social media and Indian content creators, particularly those opposed to the ruling dispensation to meddle in India’s …

China’s AI-powered influence operations at India’s doorstep
8 months ago

China’s AI-powered influence operations at India’s doorstep

Hindustan Times  

Modes of warfare have undergone several changes since the end of World War II. A recent report by the United States -based social media analytics firm Graphika revealed a pro-Chinese political spam operation promoting a new and distinctive form of video content, which has been operating since 2019 on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. In November …

As India votes, misinformation surges on social media: ‘The whole country is paying the price’
8 months, 1 week ago

As India votes, misinformation surges on social media: ‘The whole country is paying the price’

Associated Press  

NEW DELHI — Bollywood stars seldom weigh in on politics, so videos showing two celebrities criticizing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — and endorsing his main opposition, the Congress party — were bound to go viral. But the clips of A-list actors Aamir Khan and Ranveer Singh were fake, AI-generated videos that were yet another example of the false or …

Rise of Social Media Influencers in AP Politics
8 months, 2 weeks ago

Rise of Social Media Influencers in AP Politics

Deccan Chronicle  

VISHAKHAPATNAM: Politicians in Andhra Pradesh are increasingly turning to social media influencers to reach out to and sway their voters. The interviews of several candidates have been shared across various Vizag-based social media pages, even as the youtubers claimed they were not being paid, and they were only reaching information to their viewers. Chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy's recent …

Digital Revolution in Indian Politics: How BJP Harnessed Social Media
8 months, 4 weeks ago

Digital Revolution in Indian Politics: How BJP Harnessed Social Media

News 18  

The emergence of digital media—social media, mobile journalism, YouTube, etc—has transformed the political contour in India, with social media platforms becoming the new battleground for electoral campaigns. Among these parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party has proven to be the most successful in harnessing the power of social media to connect with voters and shape public opinion, while the Congress-led Opposition—if …

How AI-Generated Deepfakes Are Playing A Role In 2024 Indian Elections. What Users Can Do To Avoid Pitfalls
9 months, 4 weeks ago

How AI-Generated Deepfakes Are Playing A Role In 2024 Indian Elections. What Users Can Do To Avoid Pitfalls

ABP News  

Artificial intelligence and simulated content have spurned discussions on robot takeovers, ethics, job losses, and financial fraud. But in a year of “super elections,” AI is playing a major role in campaigning — and in India, cheap and easy tools are being used to create content ranging from memes to deepfakes and simulated audio. AI's Use During Campaigning We’ve usually …

In India’s strife-torn Manipur, narrative battle is fought on social media
1 year, 2 months ago

In India’s strife-torn Manipur, narrative battle is fought on social media

Al Jazeera  

Social media warriors have sprung up to share their community’s views and put down the others’ in this ethnic conflict. “Before we got hackers, we had given access to our social media accounts to people outside the state … Social media has become important to tell people what is happening here,” the leader said. He told me, “I opened this …

Deep divides on social media, but algorithm tweaks may not help: Study on FB, Insta
1 year, 5 months ago

Deep divides on social media, but algorithm tweaks may not help: Study on FB, Insta

Hindustan Times  

There is significant ideological divide in the political information Facebook and Instagram users are exposed to, and they spend less time on these services when specially curated feeds are switched off, a set of new studies from what is the largest under-the-hood analysis of social media platforms has found, including clues that many problems that exist on these technologies may …

Social Media Often Misused To "Manipulate Political Choices Of Voters", May Eventually Hijack Democratic Setup: Karnataka High Court
1 year, 6 months ago

Social Media Often Misused To "Manipulate Political Choices Of Voters", May Eventually Hijack Democratic Setup: Karnataka High Court

Live Law  

Social media has been used to manipulate political choices of voters, perniciously affecting the democratic setup of constitutional institutions, the Karnataka High Court observed on Friday. A single judge bench of Justice Krishna S Dixit said emergence of social media has changed the way in which people participate in the democratic process. "People increasingly rely on social media than their …

World Press Freedom Day | How free speech in India is compromised by government control over platforms: Book excerpt from ‘Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government is Holding Indians Back’ by Subhashish B
1 year, 8 months ago

World Press Freedom Day | How free speech in India is compromised by government control over platforms: Book excerpt from ‘Caged Tiger: How Too Much Government is Holding Indians Back’ by Subhashish B

The Hindu  

Published : May 03, 2023 07:00 IST - 6 MINS READ In December 2004, the Delhi Police arrested Avnish Bajaj, the CEO of Baazee.com, because someone in Kharagpur, West Bengal, tried to sell through the website video copies of two Delhi-based students having sex. Social media companies, a term left vague and expansive, need to take down content within 36 …

Explained: Why Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover is unsettling Indian users
2 years, 1 month ago

Explained: Why Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover is unsettling Indian users

The Hindu  

Published : Dec 05, 2022 15:41 IST Just a few weeks after Elon Musk completed his embattled purchase of Twitter, a video appeared on the platform showing a Muslim student in India reacting after being “jokingly” compared to a terrorist by his university professor. “In the big picture, Twitter has a very small number of active users in India — …

Kulbir Kaur | Ingroup vs Outgroup & other online aberrations
2 years, 6 months ago

Kulbir Kaur | Ingroup vs Outgroup & other online aberrations

Deccan Chronicle  

Social media has recently emerged as “ Villain No. I still remember his remark made with a blank look on the face: “I lost my son to social media.” His son had been waging a lonely online battle to prove that being a Muslim does not place him in the category of being ‘anti-national’. The anti-establishment, pro-people, environmentalist Five Star …

Control and delete: The Hindu Editorial on government appellate panels for social media
2 years, 7 months ago

Control and delete: The Hindu Editorial on government appellate panels for social media

The Hindu  

The Government’s plan to set up a panel that can overturn content moderation decisions made by social media platforms is problematic in many ways. The trigger for these Government-appointed committees to come to life will be, say, an appeal by a social media user who feels aggrieved by an order of the platform’s grievance officer. But this is exactly what …

Sonia Gandhi says social media being abused to hack democracy
2 years, 9 months ago

Sonia Gandhi says social media being abused to hack democracy

The Hindu  

The danger of social media being abused to hack democracy was rising and the government should put an end to the “systematic interference” of Facebook and other social media giants in electoral politics of the world’s largest democracy, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said on Wednesday. Raising the issue during the Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha, Ms. Gandhi stated that …

In Perspective | The only answer to India vs Big Tech on moderation
2 years, 11 months ago

In Perspective | The only answer to India vs Big Tech on moderation

Hindustan Times  

Last week, news agency Reuters reported what it described as a “heated meeting” between Indian government officials and big technology companies Google, Facebook, and Twitter on fake news and content moderation. Quoting unnamed sources, the news agency said India’s information and broadcasting ministry criticised the companies for dragging their feet on fake news, which forced India to point out content …

Twitter campaign and the story of Uttar Pradesh poll battle
2 years, 11 months ago

Twitter campaign and the story of Uttar Pradesh poll battle

India Today  

When the first few Orkut and Facebook groups supporting Narendra Modi started appearing in 2008, nobody thought that this served any purpose other than allowing a small set of NRIs or young, upper-class Indians a means of engaging with the leader. His nemesis and eventual successor, Yogi Adityanath, went from being a minor presence on social media to one of …

Adilabad politicians take to social media to demean opponents
3 years ago

Adilabad politicians take to social media to demean opponents

Deccan Chronicle  

Adilabad: Leaders from TRS, BJP and Congress have started predicting the future of their opponents, including possible switching over to other parties and their strained relations with their respective high command. Not to be left behind, Congress leaders ‘exposed’ the nexus between TRS and BJP in the recent election to Adilabad local bodies MLC. It is learnt that a BJP …

Inside BJP’s UP War Room: Catchy Tunes, Cheeky Cartoons Mark Party's Mega Pre-Poll Digital Drive
3 years, 2 months ago

Inside BJP’s UP War Room: Catchy Tunes, Cheeky Cartoons Mark Party's Mega Pre-Poll Digital Drive

News 18  

It is the baap of all state elections and the ruling BJP does not want to leave anything to chance. From the BJP’s out-of-bounds war room in Lucknow, a mega social media outreach and ground-level campaign is being rolled out to reach voters ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls 2022, party functionaries told News18. The social media structure of …

India internet law adds to fears over online speech, privacy
3 years, 5 months ago

India internet law adds to fears over online speech, privacy

Associated Press  

NEW DELHI — It began in February with a tweet by pop star Rihanna that sparked widespread condemnation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s handling of massive farmer protests near the capital, souring an already troubled relationship between the government and Twitter. “India’s plans for the internet appear to be like that of a closed ecosystem like China,” said Raheel …

India’s internet law adds to fears over online speech, privacy
3 years, 5 months ago

India’s internet law adds to fears over online speech, privacy

Al Jazeera  

Law puts digital platforms such as Twitter and Facebook under direct government oversight, but critics worry it may lead to outright censorship. ‘Closed ecosystem like China’ “India’s plans for the internet appear to be like that of a closed ecosystem like China,” said Raheel Khursheed, co-founder of Laminar Global and Twitter India’s former head of politics, policy and government. “Twitter’s …

Election & Voting Processes Stand Threatened By Social Media Manipulation, Says Supreme Court
3 years, 6 months ago

Election & Voting Processes Stand Threatened By Social Media Manipulation, Says Supreme Court

Live Law  

Election and voting processes stand threatened by social media manipulation, the Supreme Court remarked in the judgment delivered on Thursday in Facebook vs. Delhi Assembly case.Entities like Facebook have to remain accountable to those who entrust them with such power. Election and voting processes stand threatened by social media manipulation, the Supreme Court remarked in the judgment delivered on Thursday …

Twitter vs Govt of India: Importance of SM and what is the road ahead
3 years, 6 months ago

Twitter vs Govt of India: Importance of SM and what is the road ahead

Op India  

Today, when the whole world is confronted with an unprecedented crisis due to the COVID19 pandemic, another crisis has emerged over the ‘penetrative’ role of social media platforms in India. Considering the kind of enormous outreach of social media, platforms such as Twitter have started to act arbitrarily to become a state within a state Twitter decided to defy an …

Rules and rulers: The Hindu Editorial on social media curbs
3 years, 7 months ago

Rules and rulers: The Hindu Editorial on social media curbs

The Hindu  

It does seem that most if not all global social media giants will miss complying with the new IT rules of intermediaries, which come into effect today. Among other things, they require the bigger social media platforms, which the rules referred to as significant social media intermediaries, to adhere to a vastly tighter set of rules within three months, which …

These books will guide you through the intricacies of social media
3 years, 8 months ago

These books will guide you through the intricacies of social media

The Hindu  

The more we dig into social media, the more there is to understand in terms of community guidelines, what is ‘in’ or ‘out’, what is a violation of our privacy, and more. ‘Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing’ by Chris Bail Chris Bail sees social media as a prism that “distorts our identities, empowers …

Facebook, Twitter: A lifeline for Indians in the Covid crisis and a threat for Narendra Modi
3 years, 8 months ago

Facebook, Twitter: A lifeline for Indians in the Covid crisis and a threat for Narendra Modi

CNN  

On most days, Network Capital, a business networking group with over 67,000 members on Facebook, focuses on providing its community with information on job vacancies, higher education, and careers. Sonali Pal Chaudhury/NurPhoto/Getty Images In a statement last week, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said it had asked Twitter, Facebook and others to remove around 100 posts by users …

Rising Internet Users, Next Big Thing to Rake in Money for Social Media Platforms
3 years, 10 months ago

Rising Internet Users, Next Big Thing to Rake in Money for Social Media Platforms

News 18  

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, while unveiling the social media guidelines last month, put forward some interesting figures. A 2019 estimate by the World Bank and the United States Census Bureau put Indian population at 136.64 crore while the data statistics platform Statista put the number of internet users in India in 2020 at 69.7 million. Likewise, YouTube is used …

Govt announces new social media rules to curb its misuse
3 years, 10 months ago

Govt announces new social media rules to curb its misuse

The Hindu  

The Centre on Thursday notified new, stricter guidelines for social media intermediaries that will make it mandatory for platforms such as WhatsApp to aid in identifying the “originator” of “unlawful” messages. The rules, which categorise intermediaries as social media intermediary and significant social media intermediary based on number of users, said significant social media intermediaries providing messaging services would “enable …

Congress seeks five lakh volunteers for social media campaigns, says 'online warriors' will defend truth
3 years, 11 months ago

Congress seeks five lakh volunteers for social media campaigns, says 'online warriors' will defend truth

Firstpost  

Launching the recruitment campaign, Rahul Gandhi said that the party needed to create an army of truth to counter the hate and misinformation spread by trolls The Congress on Monday launched a ‘Join Congress Social Media’ campaign with an aim to have five lakh online “warriors” who, former party chief Rahul Gandhi said, will counter hate and “defend the idea …

Twitter is stuck between a rock and a hard place in India
3 years, 11 months ago

Twitter is stuck between a rock and a hard place in India

CNN  

CNN Business — India’s efforts to crack down on dissent have left Twitter with an impossible balancing act: protecting free speech, or risking its employees and business in one of the company’s most vital markets. The company said in a blog post Wednesday that it was “served with several separate blocking orders” by the Indian government against hundreds of Twitter …

At the mercy of big tech billionaires
3 years, 11 months ago

At the mercy of big tech billionaires

Hindustan Times  

The United States technology industry has shown us that it is more powerful than world leaders. The government made a serious mistake when it allowed the platform’s parent company, Facebook, to add payment services — because this will enable it to also monopolise Indian commerce. Note that Facebook didn’t dare to pull this stunt in Europe because the European Union’s …

Why Hate Facebook? It Might Just Be Last Best Free Speech Measure
4 years, 2 months ago

Why Hate Facebook? It Might Just Be Last Best Free Speech Measure

The Quint  

The recent investigative reports by TIME and the Wall Street Journal on Facebook’s content handling and lobbying activities have triggered an intense political debate in India. On the one hand, Facebook’s moderation of hateful content in India seems to have been influenced by business and political imperatives; on the other, it appears as if the relationship between its public policy …

Social media is an extension of our physical world and it is rife with propaganda
4 years, 3 months ago

Social media is an extension of our physical world and it is rife with propaganda

The Hindu  

The 2014 Maharashtra Assembly elections were just around the corner. His research underscored what he calls ‘seed accounts’— profiles that swamp the platform with specific content through their networks to manipulate information. When such accounts are followed by the Prime Minister, the issue becomes far more serious.” A 2018 study by BBC, titled ‘Duty, Identity, Credibility: Fake news and the …

Indigenisation & Not Injured Stance is the Answer to Snooping by China, Writes Lt Gen (Retd) DS Hooda
4 years, 3 months ago

Indigenisation & Not Injured Stance is the Answer to Snooping by China, Writes Lt Gen (Retd) DS Hooda

News 18  

The revelation that a small Chinese company called Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Technology collected online and social media data of 10,000 influential Indians, including political leaders, was greeted with a great deal of shock. We must also be conscious that while Zhenhua may only be collecting data from open sources, this would only be one part of the data that would …

Freedom and bias: How Facebook is facing a reckoning
4 years, 3 months ago

Freedom and bias: How Facebook is facing a reckoning

Deccan Chronicle  

What a year it is turning out to be for Facebook! The ongoing deposition before India’s parliamentary standing committee on information technology was always going to be a perfunctory but important attempt to raise questions of Facebook’s influence over societies and their behaviour. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad shot off a strategically timed letter -- coinciding with the parliamentary committee …

It’s time for India to regulate the internet’s social media platforms
4 years, 4 months ago

It’s time for India to regulate the internet’s social media platforms

Live Mint  

This has become a pattern now. Allegations fly fast and furious, not made easier by the often hard-to-fathom behaviour of social media platforms themselves, ranging from a top executive holding an objectionable poster of “Brahminical patriarchy” or hiring known political party baiters for positions of responsibility. Social media platforms describe themselves in many ways—as technological innovators or platforms—depending on which …

Ravi Shankar Prasad writes to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
4 years, 4 months ago

Ravi Shankar Prasad writes to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg

The Hindu  

With Facebook already facing criticism over the alleged bias towards to Narendra Modi-led government in India, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has written to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of the social network, raising “serious concerns” over the “concerted effort” by the platform to “reduce the reach of people supportive of right-of-centre ideology”. The Minister also highlighted that the …

Social media: The new theatre of India’s culture wars
4 years, 4 months ago

Social media: The new theatre of India’s culture wars

Hindustan Times  

The phenomenal rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and others is proving to be a double-edged sword in the functioning of democracies. The former’s flagging of a presidential tweet as fake news, and the latter’s executive order altering the liability of SM platforms who edit content, is worth understanding better. Especially since the early 20th century, US …

Facebook row is unelectable Left's desperate attempt to gag social media
4 years, 4 months ago

Facebook row is unelectable Left's desperate attempt to gag social media

Firstpost  

The Centre needs to intervene at the policy level not to censor, but to make these platforms adopt transparency. Around that time, Facebook approached Boom Live and Alt News, two ‘fact-checking’ platforms widely perceived as anti-Rightwing and as mainly targeting nationalistic politics led by Narendra Modi. So, when the Left and so-called liberal ecosystem starts screaming about Facebook’s supposed pro-Modi …

Social media and democracy
4 years, 6 months ago

Social media and democracy

The Hindu  

WE live in a dark phase filled with adversity. What Moore reveals in the book is downright desperation of political parties the world over to drub their opponents in uncanny ways by leveraging social media. Moore details how social media, which had an idealistic agenda to begin with, have become indispensable to the political tumult in today’s democracy. He led …

Are social media platforms arbiters of truth? | The Hindu Parley Podcast
4 years, 7 months ago

Are social media platforms arbiters of truth? | The Hindu Parley Podcast

The Hindu  

In the midst of the massive protests that have erupted in the U.S., social media platform Twitter decided to do something it had avoided for several years: call out some of President Donald Trump's tweets as being incorrect information and as being against its policies. This prompted Mr. Trump to warn social media platforms of stricter controls via an Executive …

Fighting the misinformation pandemic in the age of Covid-19
4 years, 7 months ago

Fighting the misinformation pandemic in the age of Covid-19

Hindustan Times  

The global disruption unleashed by the coronavirus disease has led to an uptick in the use of social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter. Since out-of-context images are a major source of misinformation, citizens can use reverse search image tools such as RevEye and TinEye to locate their origin This has, however, exacerbated pre-existing challenges around curbing …

The Art of Ruling: The Modi-Shah Doctrine of Governance and how the duo brought the Media and Mobs to kneel in 2019
5 years ago

The Art of Ruling: The Modi-Shah Doctrine of Governance and how the duo brought the Media and Mobs to kneel in 2019

Op India  

The Year 2019 has been historic by any measure. In this article, we shall make an effort to deduce how Narendra Modi brought the liberal establishment to kneel, of which the mainstream media is the most prominent part, and dealt with the threat of Muslim mob violence. The Blitzkrieg If the Modi government’s strategy during its first term was ignoring …

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