THE PRINT
Updated: 14 April, 2019
The authors, who are the people behind the Alt News website, bust fake news that did the rounds in India.
Representational image | Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Rohingya refugees are eating flesh of Hindus
A popular, predictable and oft-used strategy on social media is to foment division along communal lines by spreading misinformation. There are numerous instances, wherein a coordinated and organized attempt to vitiate inter-faith relations has been observed. The tactics employed in this regard are predictable – use of unrelated images and/or videos, or through provocative text. The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar brought attention on Rohingya refugees in India and provided one such opportunity. In the instance that we will talk about here, the nature of the claim accompanying certain photographs revealed the sheer extent to which hatemongers will go in their pursuit of instilling fear, mistrust and hate.