Muslims were the biggest target of false and misleading claims in the month of October, making up 11.6 per cent of all the claims we encountered last month, followed by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi (6.32 per cent), the Narendra Modi-led central government (5.26 per cent), and newly appointed British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (5.26 per cent).
While false claims in the past had consistently targeted Muslims and Gandhi, Sunak being targeted prominently last month coincided with him being appointed the British Prime Minister, following Liz Truss' exit from the post.
We published 95 fact-checks last month, each debunking a unique false/misleading claim. Our analysis revealed that most of such claims we encountered were political in nature, accounting for 45.3 per cent of our fact-checks, followed by international and communal claims, accounting for 14.7 per cent and 13.7 per cent, respectively.
Types Of Claims And Purpose Of Sharing Them
We also categorised the claims according to the type of manipulation, and the purpose of sharing them.
We incorporated an existing typology provided by Claire Wardle of First Draft News, who categorised 'fake news' into the following types: Satire or Parody (also Humour), Misleading Content, Imposter Content, Fabricated Content, False Connection, False Context and Manipulated Content.
The most common type of manipulation was found to be 'misleading content' - misleading use of genuine content to frame an issue or individual, making up 32.6 per cent of all the claims we encountered.
Here are a few examples of misleading content:
The second most common type of claim was 'false context' - sharing genuine content out of context, or with a false context, making up 22.1 per cent of all the claims we saw.
Yet another categorisation we made was according to the purpose of sharing manipulated information. Going through all the claims, we identified six different purposes - demographic anxiety, smear campaign, fake sensationalism, negative sentiment against country, parody content and gendered attack.
We defined each of these categories as the following:
- Demographic Anxiety - Creating animosity against specific demographic groups.
- Smear Campaign - An attempt at damaging the public image of individuals/organisations.
- Fake sensationalism - Presenting information in a way that is intended to provoke/excite individuals, and appeal to their emotions.
- Misreporting - Media houses sharing dubious information to draw public attention and engagement.
- Gendered Attack - A concerted effort at attacking individuals/groups based on their gender identity.
- Negative sentiment against a country - Provoke negative sentiments against a specific country.
The most commonly identified purpose of sharing false/misleading claims last month was to create 'fake sensationalism', accounting for 44.2 per cent of all the claims.
Here are a few examples of such claims that tried to falsely sensationalise and create hype around issues or individuals:
The second most prominent was smear campaign (32.6 per cent), followed by demographic anxiety (15.8 per cent). The latter was predominantly done with the purpose of creating animosity against Muslims with false communal claims.
Here are a few examples for smear campaign and demographic anxiety:
Sentiments Behind Falsities
We also further categorised the claims according to the sentiments behind it (positive, negative, neutral), and looked at how the top targets were aimed at.
Our analysis revealed that Muslims were targeted exclusively with negative sentiments, with false and misleading claims showing them in bad light.
Claims targetting Rahul Gandhi were balanced - half of them showed him positively, while the other half was negative.
The Central govt was also targeted negatively, while Rishi Sunak was targeted positively.
Visuals Preferred
Images and videos remain the preferred medium of sharing such claims, as they accounted for 40.0 per cent and 39.4 per cent, respectively. Claims shared exclusively with text accounted for only 21.1 per cent of all the claims we analysed.
Furthermore, images were found to be the preferred medium for sharing political falsities, while communal and international claims were shared primarily with videos.