Understanding misinformation in India: The case for a meaningful regulatory approach for social media platforms

TL;DR

This paper reviews the landscape of misinformation in India, analyzing social, political, and regulatory aspects, and advocates for a meaningful, history-informed regulatory approach to mitigate social and economic disruptions caused by fake news.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive synthesis of existing literature and policy analysis on misinformation in India, proposing informed regulatory strategies based on historical lessons and current frameworks.

Findings

Regulatory approaches must be context-specific and historically informed.

Current policies show gaps in addressing misinformation effectively.

A coherent regulatory framework can mitigate social and business disruptions.

Abstract

For research, this paper has included numerous literature that are covering a variety of information on the topics of misinformation, social media and fake news, regulation of misinformation and social media platforms, all presented for India. Studies including thematic analysis of misinformation, brief history on social media and its amplification of misinformation, current and past policy interventions by the Indian government, history of self-regulations in industries, and an analysis of regulatory approaches in the Indian context. This paper aims at introducing a coherent reading into the context of misinformation in the country and the subsequent social and business disruptions that will follow. Utilizing lessons from history around industry regulations, existing policy research and framework analysis to convince the reader of the nature of policy intervention that will bode well for all stakeholders involved. The literature sources have been mentioned in their respective sections for reference. The research utilized the PASTEL framework to analyse data collected from other research efforts covering the topic of misinformation and regulation across academic whitepapers and news media blogs and articles, all available freely on the public domain. Relevant secondary data, in terms of information, previous analysis in other research efforts, and literature work included in respective sections in the paper have been reproduced, shared and/or indicated wherever necessary.