Duty, Identity, Credibility: Fake news and the ordinary citizen in India

In all of the heated discussion about fake news around the world, the one thing that has remained
subdued is the voice of the ordinary citizen. In this project, therefore, we started with a central
question: why does the ordinary citizen spread fake news, without verification? And if ordinary citizens
are concerned about fake news, as multiple surveys seem to show, how have they changed their
behaviour in response to that concern? We were also interested in understanding better the type of
fake news spread not as stories/urls but as images and memes – anecdotally known to be the key
method of information dissemination in private WhatsApp and Facebook feeds. We were however also
keenly interested in starting to explore the question of whether or not there was a fake news ecosystem
in India on social media.