The messaging app is often used to spread and dissociate rumors among people who create a technical hazard for elections and democracy.
A common election in India, the world's most populous democracy, seems to be a theoretical impossibility. By gathering votes of nearly one billion people in more than one century, in the subcontinent, the challenges of logistics, politics, economics, violence and law have to be faced.
This year, a new challenge has arisen in the form of social media - especially Facebook-owned text messaging app Whatsapp. Hate speech, dissolution and horror rumors are already responsible for the violence and deaths in India.
Indian social media
Russian Troll Farm infiltrated Facebook two years ago in an effort to tilt into US presidential elections 2016, social media played an important role in Indian politics. This helped a tough candidate for the Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and its Prime Minister Narendra Modi, although he came to power in a different way than the US.
In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party launched a social media campaign on Facebook, and to a lesser extent, on Twitter. The party's online efforts complemented and complemented its equally well-publicized campaign on the ground. A true army of the Bharatiya Janata Party's trained social media teams, and enthusiastic volunteers, ensured that the party's online presence was much more active than its rivals.
Along with the Bharatiya Janata Party's information technology group, party supporters exploited the political power of the social media. He often used abusive bans in criticizing the Congress Party, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other opponents of Bharatiya Janata Party.
In the lead of the elections of 2019, social media is being used in a very egregious and more dangerous way. The Bharatiya Janata Party has its own official app, which is spread through dissolution and inflammatory publicity about non-Hindus posted by party members and supporters. Broadly speaking, Whatsapp is being used to spread rumors and spread fear among the population, especially about those people who are considered as outsiders.
It connects with the main message of the Bharatiya Janata Party that Hindus should have first claim on India and that India should be a cultural form, and not a Hindu state, rather a secular state ruled by diverse religions. The main Opposition, the Congress Party, the lack of accessibility and skill level of the Bharatiya Janata Party in creating arms to the social media.
Threat of violence
Online, on the Internet, the Bharatiya Janata Party volunteer force raided the trollers, real supporters and party officials. Their collective intensity, especially about Hindu nationalism, has made everyone shy of violence - including social media platforms, law enforcement officers and general citizens.
The danger is real. From one calculation, the use of whatsapp - or misuse - already has 30 deaths in India. Many of these are not political incidents, but because of the fear of outsiders they come to abduct children in rural communities for allegedly warning about strangers spread through WhatsApp messages.
It is not yet clear whether WhatsApp's preventive measures, such as preventing users from forwarding any single message more than five times, will effectively combat the spread of dangerous and fake information. Earlier restrictions - including 20 limiting forwarding - no.
Avoid responsibility
Of course, media technologies do not make themselves anything. Their effect depends on how they are used. In the Indian context, Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government and its digital allies, against the minority, especially Muslims and members of the lowest caste, who are called Dalit, against the unusually high level of validity and merit Validity is provided.
As a result, using digital platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook for party members and social media volunteers is easy to provoke communal feelings. For the election, they have created an atmosphere of general disbelief, fear and paranoia, in which disinfection can not be separated from reliable facts.
My own research, which has been told in my forthcoming book, states that the decentralized format of the online network has allowed the Bharatiya Janata Party government to take advantage of the hateful and violent messages sent by other hardcore Hindu nationalist groups, while incompetence Or able to avoid responsibility. Those messages This enables the Bharatiya Janata Party to politically benefit from religious violence, while blaming WhatsApp or Facebook at the same time.
These developments in India raise a serious question about the nature of social media communications. In particular, these misuse of social media can cause people to reconnect the relationship between free speech - in which it involves forwarding messages to others - and violence. The results of Indian elections will be just an indication of how a society is starting to wrestle with new technologies, which is helping people to change their life.