Dynamics of fake news dissemination: A case study in the Indian context

Abstract

The potential to reach out to large mass of people in considerably shorter periods of time, though resulted in acceleration of news production, it also paved way to a sudden boom in circulation of fake news. The attempt made here is to understand the various factors that influence the propagation of fake news. With the assistance of an online quantitative survey, the demographic factors, social media habits, news consumption habits and fake news exposure of 163 people are closely observed to identify any sort of patterns across it. Further, the thematic aspects of the fake news items that are come across by maximum number of respondents are put into discussion, to identify the elements that determine popularity. It concludes with stressing the need to have a more nuanced understanding of onlinecommunities for a comprehensive understanding of ‘fake news dynamics’.