"If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes accepted as truth," these words are attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. And they hold relevance even today as we witness a sharp rise in mis/disinformation.
While the dangers of fake news, malformation, mis/disinformation, manipulated content are well known, the problem increases manifold when the source of such falsehoods are people in power, whose voices are amplified way more than verified news.
Political parties, politicians are often caught peddling rumours and falsehoods for reasons best known to them. But with the influence they have, combined with the power of IT cells, false narratives get amplified and reach hundreds of thousands of people.
Between 1 January to 24 December 2021, The Quint’s WebQoof team fact-checked at least 123 claims made by politicians and political parties cutting across political lines.
These claims were about a host of issues including COVID-19, state elections, farmers' protest among others.
Based on our sample, we saw that the most claims were related to parties/politicians relying on misinformation for propaganda. 73 percent of our fact-checks fall under this category.
And most often, despite fact-checks, politicians neither delete such false claims, nor issue a correction.
We analysed all these claims and categorised them into broad themes/narratives. Based on the fact-checks that we have done, we will attempt to elaborate on the following points:
What was the most predominant...
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