From lies to likes: How false narratives thrive on social media

The incident had been blown out of proportion, a clear case of a false narrative – a commonly held belief based on incorrect or incomplete information – amplified on social media platforms.

The incident only confirmed what a 2018 research by MIT scholars Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy and Sinan Aral found: false news spreads more rapidly on the social network X (then Twitter) than real news does — and by a substantial margin. The project also found that “humans, not bots”, are primarily responsible for the spread of misleading information.

Here’s a look at what false narratives are, what contributes to their spread, and how they impact those caught in the crosshairs.

What is a false narrative?

A false narrative often refers to incorrect knowledge passed throughout a community or society. It differs from false news, fake news, or individual lies because it typically develops over time or through reinforcement. This subtle reinforcement over time leads to false narratives being accepted as truth by large groups of people, and are therefore, very difficult to dismantle.

False narratives involve the presentation of incorrect information regarding a particular situation. A news story could contain a false narrative if it falsely portrays a situation or does not provide necessary background information. The information received could also be incorrect or could have changed in time, causing misconceptions and miscommunication about a particular event.

After an event is initially reported with a false narrative, many audiences may have trouble reconciling with the updated information, and instead, continue believing the false information.

In the Nagpur incident, for example, initial media reports did not include any comments from the police or the people in the video. The incident took place on August 20, according to the police, and went viral on August 23. The following day, some local news organisations reported that the incident was based on a false narrative. But by then, social media users had already shared the video widely and it went viral, especially in the wake of the outrage over the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata.

Why is false news spread?

“In most cases, one might assume that bad actors are primarily responsible for spreading false information. However, often people simply don’t know whether something is true or false, and they unintentionally share it. The majority of misinformation is not spread deliberately; instead, it is often shared by individuals who are unaware of its accuracy,” says Kiran Garimella, Assistant Professor at the School of Information and Communication, Rutgers University.

“People don’t share false information necessarily to deceive others but because they are often mindlessly scrolling through social media without taking the time to verify the facts. For content to go viral, it requires normal, ordinary people to share it. Even if a political influencer spreads false content, it won’t go viral if people don’t believe in it,” he adds.

In his opinion, in the Nagpur case, the video and the claim were mostly shared unintentionally. It must have been created and posted by someone who was genuinely concerned and would have been further shared and spread by people who held certain biases, he said.

Speaking about false narrative building on social media, Joyojeet Pal, Associate Professor at the School of Information at the University of Michigan, says, “A range of factors contribute to the creation and spread of false narratives. The level of economic or social insecurity in a society impacts people’s willingness to engage in conspiracy theories, the level of polarisation impacts their engagement with misinformation about the ‘other side’, the quality of mainstream media narrative impacts the kinds of things people expect to consume as credible.”

India, he says, has all these contributing factors to cater to the false narrative building. “You have economic and social insecurities that make people more willing to believe things that give them a temporary distraction from their problems, you have a high degree of polarisation that makes narratives about certain groups that have been presented as antagonists more attractive, and finally, you have an influencer culture which has monetised misinformation through platform engagement,” he explains.

Negative emotions and algorithms

According to Pal, two factors related to social media platforms and algorithms are crucial in the spread of misinformation. “First, much research has shown that messages that invoke negative emotion are more likely to go viral than things that are framed positively – essentially platforms reward bad behaviour. Second, algorithms curate content based on your past behaviour. So if they know a person likes a certain narrative, they keep feeding that person that narrative, even if it is dodgy or hateful. So this means the algorithm encourages you to engage more and more in something that is either false or damaging to society,” he says.

“Related to both of these is the issue of influencers – when an algorithm finds that an individual account is getting attention, it promotes that individual, even if that individual is spreading false or problematic content. In that case, an account that is spreading a true counter-narrative, but is not an influencer, will get less promotion from the algorithm,” he adds.

Garimella, however, believes that the role of platforms and algorithms is overstated in mainstream discourse. “Algorithms are not specifically the problem, it is not the villain. Think about WhatsApp, it has no algorithm but a lot of misinformation thrives on it. Spread of false information is a human problem and not an algorithmic problem. Algorithms do not play a significant role in spreading misinformation,” he says.

Emotions do play a big role in spreading false narratives, Garimella agrees. “Any content that evokes emotions is responsible for the spread of misinformation. Several disinformation campaigns have been successful because they target the emotional aspect of it,” he says.

Although no one was ‘at fault’ in the Nagpur incident, the false narrative prevailed. Those who did not see the updated version of the story continue to believe the narrative to be true, causing harm to the individuals whose identities were revealed in the video and their families.

The accidental victims

In the Nagpur incident, when DCP Kadam contacted the autorickshaw driver and the girl for interrogation, the girl said that she did not own a mobile phone, was not active on social media, and was equally shocked at the turn of events. “Her parents are now thinking of discontinuing her education even though she is not at fault,” says Kadam. With some people lending a communal colour to the incident, the autorickshaw driver’s family is also being subjected to threats, Kadam added.

A similar narrative was shared in the media in 2015 when Delhi resident Saravjeet Singh was labelled an ‘eve teaser’ in the media after Jasleen Kaur, a former Delhi University student, accused him of verbally harassing her at a traffic signal. Though a court acquitted him years later, the incident is still fresh in the minds of many as his photograph was widely circulated then.

Similarly, in 2018, 22-year-old Vishal Sharma was misidentified on social media as the accused in the infamous Kathua rape case involving an eight-year-old girl. After receiving nasty posts on his social media account, Sharma deactivated his Facebook account and chose to stay home, until the news cycle moved on.