The month of September saw Congress leader Rahul Gandhi emerge as the biggest target of false or misleading claims, as per an analysis of all our fact-checks from the month.
BOOM did 100 fact-checks last month, one for each unique claim that were fact-checked as false or misleading. This number was arrived at after taking into consideration the exclusive fact-checks we did in English and Hindi.
How Do We Choose Which Claims To Fact-Check?
BOOM receives requests from social media users to fact-check posts and messages through multiple channels - a WhatsApp tipline, a WhatsApp helpline, and tags on social media with requests to fact-check posts.
Additionally, we also monitor accounts of prominent social media users - while keeping a close eye on those who have been known to spread mis/disinformation on a regular basis - and also look at posts with trending hashtags.
Finally, we choose the claims to fact-check based on careful consideration along several factors - such as virality and the potential for incitement of violence. This is how we arrived at 100 fact-checks on 100 different claims.
Apart From Gandhi, Who Else Were Targetted?
Out of the 41 different targets such claims that we identified, Gandhi was targeted by nearly 12 per cent of all such claims we fact-checked throughout the month. Half of these claims were made using doctored images or videos to mislead people into believing that Gandhi made errors while speaking, or performed an act that would be interpreted as being against Hinduism or India.
After Gandhi, the most targetted entities were India's Muslim community, and Pakistan, each account for 9 per cent and 8 per cent of all the claims we fact-checked, respectively.
For the nine claims that targetted Muslims in India, most of them were aimed at creating animosity against the entire community.
Most of the claims targetting Pakistan were made on the devastating floods that had struck the neighbouring country over the past few months, while there were also a few claims around the Asia Cup 2022.
Other prominent targets of false/misleading claims last month were Bollywood (6 claims), and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (5 claims).
What Was The Nature Of These Claims?
We had further categorised the false/misleading claims we fact-check according to their nature, such as political, communal, alarmist, climate-related, sports-related, technology-related, economic or cultural.
We found that an overwhelming portion of the claims were political in nature (47 per cent), while communal claims followed a little behind at 13 per cent. Claims of 'international' nature came third at 9 per cent.
Themes And Topics Of False Claims
We also divided these claims into 34 different themes or topics.
The most prominent theme we observed were claims that questioned the conduct of political leaders, accounting for 14 per cent of all the claims.
Classic political slander - false statements with the intent of damaging the reputation of politicians or parties - came second with 9 per cent of all the claims revolving around this topic.
The third most prominent theme was found to be Islamophobia, accounting for 8 per cent of all the claims.
Claims Shared With What Type Of Media?
We also categorised the claims according to the type of medium they were shared with - video, image or text.
Most of these claims were shared with videos, accounting for 57 per cent of all our fact-checks from September, while claims made with images followed at 31 per cent.
Claims made exclusively with text accounting for only 12 per cent of all our fact-checks.,
Other Observations
We also looked at correlations between the different categorisations.
An interesting observation we made was the rampant use of images and videos to share political claims. Videos were also used to make communal and international claims, but the use of images was done primarily to make political claims.