By – Nidhi Jacob
BOOM’s analysis of all debunked fact-checks in 2023 revealed that Muslims as a community continued to be the primary target of mis/disinformation, mirroring the trend from the previous year. The community has consistently emerged as the primary target of fake news since 2021, per our analysis of the reports from the past two years.
Between January 2 and December 31, 2023, BOOM published 1,190 fact-checks, in English, Hindi and Bangla (this figure excludes the translated stories in Hindi and Bangla from English). Of these, 15.4% or 183 fact-checks were claims targeting the Muslim community.
Among claims targeting Muslims, 84.2% were found to be shared with the intent of spreading ‘Demographic anxiety’, a term broadly defined as creating animosity against specific demographic groups. This trend mirrors the growing prevalence of Islamophobic rhetoric in Indian politics, along with increased hostility against Muslims in the country.
Another consistent target included Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But, of the 1,190 fact-checks, only 63 targeted Modi. Unlike the Muslim community, the prime minister of the country has a significant amount of false claims portraying him in a positive light.
This story was originally published in boomlive.in. Read the full story here .