Four Out Of Five Images Flagged As Fake Kept Circulating During 2019 Lok Sabha Elections: Study

A study conducted by a researcher from MIT and three from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil found that between February-June last year, four out of five images that were flagged as fake continued to circulate among Whatsapp groups.

The images circulated coincided with the parliamentary election campaign. The team has concluded the findings after searching 4,250 such public WhatsApp groups, and have now been published in Harvard Misinformation Review'.

"Even though fact-checking efforts label content as misinformation, it is still being freely shared on the platform, indicating that public fact-checking alone does not block the spreading of misinformation on WhatsApp," the findings as quoted by Times Of India.

Co-author of the paper, Kiran Garime told the media that the groups are not people who know each other, such as family groups. These are political groups with strangers.

The study said this was true 82 .2 per cent of the time. The fake images were shared 2,944 times and the maximum shares for an image even after being flagged stood at 1,089. Of them,15 per cent of the images were health-related.

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