Author: Siddiqui, Taha
Publication Year: 2022
Keywords: Fake News,Information Disorder,Effect on the Credibility of Real News
Abstract: The present study is an attempt to understand the growing phenomenon of fake news and its impact on media's credibility in India. Media credibility is a subject that has been hardly touched upon in the Indian context. Credibility of the media is an important part in the growth and success of a media organization, be it print, electronic or new media. India has seen a massive mushrooming of media organizations alongside a steady rise of social media platforms This has resulted in providing many options for news consumers but at a very heavy cost. The gatekeeping process that existed in traditional media, is almost non-existent in new media technology which has put a question mark on the trustworthiness of the news
The present study is an attempt to understand the dynamics of trust and news consumers, in context of the present era where one witnesses abundance of information and news from different sources. This abundance of information has created more of a confusion than clarity leading to an environment of information disorder. Especially during the pandemic, there was a huge surge of health misinformation that was being floated across all mediums and many research scholars have tried to study this phenomenon. However, the present study goes beyond the understanding of fake news and tries to dig deeper into the question of media trust and the factors that contribute and indicate trust in media.
The spread of misinformation, including "fake news," propaganda, and conspiracy theories, represent a serious threat to democracy, as it has the potential to alter beliefs, behavior, and policy. Therefore, this study is an attempt to understand the spread of fake news and its impact on the overall trustworthiness of media organizations. The study researches on the issue of media credibility and understand its relationship with fake news. It has looked upon the various phenomenon from the perspective of several media effects theories and has tried to incorporate a model, "Misinformation Cycle of its own to explain the phenomenon of fake news using machine learning algorithm
Research is beginning to disentangle how and why misinformation is spread and identify processes that contribute to this social problem. The researcher proposes the above integrative model to understand the social, political, and cognitive psychology risk factors that underlie the spread of misinformation and highlight strategies that might be effective in mitigating this problem. However, the spread of misinformation is a rapidly growing and evolving problem, thus, scholars need to identify and test novel solutions, and work with policy makers to evaluate and deploy these solutions. This study provides a roadmap for future research to identify where scholars should invest their energy in order to have the greatest overall impact.
Guide: Gupta, Subash
University: Graphic Era Hill University Dehradun
Shodh Ganga Link: View Thesis
Category: Digital Media
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