Muslims were the most targeted religious group of false claims last year, followed by Hindus, according to our 2022 annual report, targeted by 14 per cent and 4 per cent of all the claims we debunked last year, respectively. Most of these claims were found to be shared with the intent of spreading demographic anxiety and furthering polarisation among India's biggest religious groups.
Among the political parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (and its leaders) turned out to be the most frequent target of false claims(16 per cent of the claims), followed by the Congress (7 per cent) and AAP (5.4 per cent).
BOOM published 1135 fact-checks in 2022, in English, Hindi and Bangla, between January 2 and December 30. Each of these fact-check dealt with a unique false claim.
We analysed each of these claims and looked for themes, topics, targets, sentiments behind targetting (positive, negative or neutral), along with the method of deception used to spread them.
With over 481 claims revolving around politics, political falsities were the most dominant area of information manipulation we spotted in 2022, accounting for over 42 per cent of all our fact-checks.
The prevalence of political claims last year is owed to a series of high profile assembly elections, in states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Manipur, some of which saw regime changes, while others saw incumbents return to power.
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