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Fake News- It Is Dangerous And Everywhere, But It Is Stoppable (Takeaway from

a Workshop on 'Fact Check and Fake News Verification')

Research · October 2019

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28027.87840

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Sandeep Sharma
Central University of Himachal Pradesh
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NEWS & VIEWS FROM THE HIMALAYAS

October 24, 2019

Fake News- It Is Dangerous

And Everywhere, But It Is
Stoppable
by Sandeep Sharma(https://hillpost.in/author/sandeepsharma/)

A
s the number of smartphone and social media users are proliferating in
the state, it becomes immensely important that the users do not becomes
vehicles of online political propaganda and spreaders of fake news. During
election campaigning for the by-elections in the state, a case was registered with
Kangra Police against an unidenti ed youth for spreading misinformation about a
candidate of a major political party. Superintendent of Police, Kangra had
con rmed that the action against the accused would be taken under IT
(Information and Technology) Act. During the same time, with the intention to
spread awareness about fake news and to enable social media users in
veri cation of fake news, a workshop on ‘Fact Check and Fake News Veri cation’
was organized by the School of Journalism, Mass Communication and New
Media, Central University of Himachal Pradesh at Dharamshala. The major
takeaway of the workshop can be summarised as follows-

Fake news is dangerous! It can cause serious damage to or assassinate

somebody’s character. It can kill or murder somebody. It can spread hatred,
 animosity and violence. I can
seriously numb one’s reasoning
power. It can make a person
) believe that fake world is the real
world. It cheats you and deceives
you. What will happen if one day
you wake up and realise that
everything you have been
believing is mostly made up of
fake information?  Its dangerous if
it’s fake!

Fake News
Himachal 
gearing up for taking on the Fake
News menace 
Fake news- it’s everywhere!  It’s there crawling up the walls of your social media
account. It is there ying seamlessly from one Whatsapp group to the other.  It’s
there residing in news outlets’ speedy run for breaking/making news.  Its there in
one’s desire to make impression of being the rst. It’s there right now in your
small talk with your friends, relatives and acquaintances, may be over a cup of
coffee, tea or dinner.

Fake news- It’s combatable! It’s stoppable if you fact check and verify the
information which you have slightest of doubt about. It’s controllable if you don’t
share unveri ed and unauthorized information. Its actually preventable if you
keep your common-sense activated. Its avertable if you take a break from the
speedy run for TRP. It’s avoidable if you know the fact checker tools like Google
reverse image search. It’s actually avoidable if you think and do what you think.

The workshop was taken by Dr. Mukul Shrivastava Google Certi ed Fact Checker,
who is the veri ed fact checker and head of the department of Journalism and
Mass Communication Lucknow University. The journalists, journalism students
 and research scholars were sensitized on the issue of fake news and thereupon
given training about the tools and techniques of fake news veri cation. Students
were also advised to exercise utmost cautiousness while giving out personal
) information on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
There seemed to be an agreement among all the attendees that awareness, more
than any regulatory mechanism, is the key to curb the spread of fake news. In the
workshop more than fty participant were trained tackling the phenomenon of
fake news and the School of Journalism, Mass Communication and New Media,
Central University of Himachal Pradesh at Dharamshala is planning to take up
more such workshop to in future.

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Sandeep Sharma(https://hillpost.in/author/sandeepsharma/)
Sandeep Sharma is a research scholar in communication studies
pursuing his Ph.D in the subject at Central University of
Himachal Pradesh, Kangra.
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