Bolo Toh Jaane — Audi Alteram Partem: Re, The Crisis Called Fake News ft. Social Media

#BoloTohJaane — An initiative of The Sangyan and curated by Adv. Abhishek Kumar, to break the ‘spiral of silence’, based on the principle of ‘Audi Alteram Partem’ (“hear the other side”) and understanding of “let’s agree to disagree and respect each other’s ‘right to be wrong’”.

Let the śāstrārtha continue.

Audi Alteram Partem: Re, The Crisis Called Fake News ft. Social Media

Image Description [Alt Text]: On a wall-themed background with red bricks and a brownish wooden platform at the centre with The Sangyan’s logo and the following texts: #HaveYourSay and linktr.ee/sangyan (at the top), Audi Alteram Partem: Re, The Crisis Called Fake News ft. Social Media (in the centre), and #BoloTohJaane and The Point of View Wall (at the bottom).

Is our public discourse backsliding with the advent of social media?

Just like the Samudra Manthana, Social Media has also produced both Amrit and Halāhal — both in general to public discourse and specific to mass communication/journalism. Social media platforms have resulted in the ‘democratization’ of information and narrative away from the monopoly of legacy media and controlled journalism (by government, deep state and certain ideologies/pressure groups) and have created conditions for much more diverse points of view and citizen journalism (public citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information”) and other multiplier effects.

So, the internet and social media platforms, even though they have created space for propagating fake news, have also ensured scope for real-time fact-checking and counter-narratives (for instance, X/Twitter’s Community Notes feature) and make credibility a high virtue, be it for an individual or an organization. And given the strange time we are living in, it will only ensure more and more echo chambers and less and less room for Shastrartha.

However, in my limited understanding, to second what Elon Musk stated, AI is a “threat to humanity”, and the negative impacts of AI with respect to Deep Fakes and algorithm-based fifth-gen information and psychological warfare are already exposing the dark realities of our times and maybe we’re just moving towards realizing “Fermi paradox”.

Authored by

Adv. Abhishek Kumar

Founder, The Sangyan

Curator, Build Forward Better Camapign