Book Description

Large numbers of Indians - over an estimated 300 million citizens with internet-enabled mobile phones at present - have been receiving unprecedented amounts of fake, false, half-true, hateful, inflammatory (or incendiary) information in the recent past and are going to receive more such information during the general elections, the results of which will be known on 23 May 2019. The so-called WhatsApp army of the right-wing ruling regime has been 'weaponised' to influence political outcomes. Facebook and its sister social media platform, WhatsApp, are not really neutral and agnostic as they claim they are. They have been complicit in promoting the interests of Narendra Modi and his supporters in the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh for some time now, well before Modi became Prime Minister of India in May 2014. Even as the world's largest social media organisation of its kind is increasingly being questioned in different countries, this book takes a critical look at the working of Facebook and WhatsApp in India.