Fake News Is Used in Election Campaigns. How Dangerous Is It? How To Avoid It?

Even after the truth comes out, political parties do not stop making misleading claims during election campaigns.

Political parties often make recurring, misleading claims while campaigning for elections.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

The Election Commission of India has announced polling dates for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections across the country. Team WebQoof has debunked several claims made during election campaigns and speeches over the years, finding them to be misleading or false.

It is no secret that political parties nowadays use disinformation or 'fake news' as important tools. This does not happen only in India but across the world.

In March, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ran a video advertisement, which made references to the Russia-Ukraine war. It showed a student meeting her parents after returning from the conflict-ridden area, emotionally telling her father, "Dad, Modi Ji stopped the war and got our bus out of there."

Recently, while speaking to India Today's digital channel 'The Lallantop', Union Minister S Jaishankar was asked about these claims. While answering these questions, he said that PM Modi had indeed spoken to the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine to request them to make a safe passage available for Indian nationals. The minister further claimed that he was present with PM Modi, when the latter spoke to Presidents of Russia and Ukraine.

What seems to be the problem?: The statement made by the actor in the video has already been refuted by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

In a press conference held on 3 March 2022, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi addressed this claim, saying, "extrapolating that to say that somebody is holding off the bombing, or to say this is something that we are coordinating, that, I think, is absolutely inaccurate.."

The MEA had denied the claim in March 2022.

(Source: The Quint/Screenshot)

However, this is neither the only time this has happened nor the first time. Many politics-related claims continue to resurface despite being debunked repeatedly. They show up repeatedly on social media platforms and on political levels.

That is the cycle of 'fake news'. In this report, we will explore some of these repeated claims, which have been fact-checked several times, but keep getting shared regardless.

Before going through this misinformation piece-by-piece, let's see how serious this problem is.

How Big of a Problem Is It?

Misinformation and misleading claims mar the biggest celebration of democracy. These claims are the one of the biggest problems when it comes to elections. This isn't just what we have seen; research conducted across the globe shows us this.

The World Economic Forum's (WEF) 2024 Global Risk Report says ranks first when it comes to the threat of disinformation.

India is at the highest risk of m/disinformation.

(Source: WEF/Screenshot)

Socialmediamatters.in surveyed first-time voters ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. 65.2 percent of respondents said that they had come across fake news, while 37.1 percent of them said that they had fallen for misinformation in the past.

Research in the field of psychology shows that when a claim is repeated too often, people start believing it to be true. Not only this, the issue is that a large number of people accept a statement as the truth just by reading the title or a headline.

Of all the people who believe what they read to be true, none try to find the source of the information or bother to read fact-checks related to the topic or claim.

Coming Back to the Claim About ‘Stopping’ the Russia-Ukraine War...

During the Russia-Ukraine war, several news organisations and BJP leaders had claimed that the Indian government had facilitated a temporary ceasefire.

It is difficult to believe that a third country temporarily stopped a war between two nations. It was as difficult for the MEA to believe this, as it was for a layperson. The Ministry said in its official statement that the claim regarding the Indian government 'stopping the war' was completely wrong.

An advisory issued on 2 March 2022 made it clear that India was in no condition to stop the war. It stated that if Indian nationals in Kharkiv could not find vehicles, they should proceed to the specified places on foot as soon as possible, where they could be safe.

Despite their clarification, the misinformation did not stop. Speaking at an election rally in Gujarat, Union Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah said that PM Narendra Modi had stopped the Russia-Ukraine war for three days, which is a claim that was repeated in the BJP's ad campaign.

Misinformation About Ending Terrorism

On 2 September 2021, former Union Home Affairs Minister Rajnath Singh claimed that ever since PM Modi came to power in 2014, India has not seen any major terrorist attacks, except in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Quint, along with several other fact-checkers, verified this claim and found it misleading.

After the reality of the claim came to light, social media users shared a slightly different version of it. Users began claiming that there had been no deaths due to terror attacks since Modi came to power, which was also debunked.

• The Minister of State for Home Affairs, Nityanand Rai, had given details for this claim in a response in the Rajya Sabha on 9 August 2023.

• As per the data provided, three civilians lost their lives in terrorist attacks in 2018.

• Approximately 174 people lost their lives to terror attacks between 2018 and 2022 in Jammu and Kashmir.

This claim, however, continues to get shared to this day. In February 2024, the BJP, in an advertisement reiterated the same claim that there have been no terror attacks since 2014.

The Quint published the figures sourced from government bodies in its fact-check, which shows that this claim is wrong.

Use of 'Fake News' in Previous Elections

It's not like misinformation is being used for political gains, for the first time for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. We have seen several such instances in many Assembly elections too.

• Ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Home Minister Amit Shah claimed that the state had become riot-free after CM Yogi Adityanath came to power in 2017.

• Data published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in 2019 contradicts this claim, recording 5,714 cases of riots in that year alone.

• Following Maharashtra and Bihar, UP was the state with the third highest cases of riots. You can read our report on this, here. Moreover, the claim about a "riot-free" Uttar Pradesh has been revived and reshared several times.

• Not only this, Shah has made several claims about the unemployment rate and GDP of Uttar Pradesh, which are not backed by facts. UP CM Adityanath has also made claims related to employment statistics many times.

• While campaigning for the Punjab Assembly elections in 2021, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal claimed that Punjab had the highest electricity rates in India. When we looked into his claim, we found that Rajasthan and Maharashtra had the most expensive electricity, not Punjab.

• Moving to the eastern part of India. When Amit Shah visited West Bengal ahead of the state's Assembly elections in 2021, Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury made a misleading claim about Shah in Parliament.

• Chowdhury claimed that Shah sat in Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's chair at Shantiniketan. However, this claim is false.

• There was also an attempt to spread misinformation by using a photo of senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi and AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi standing during an awards function, which was shared by the verified X account of the Congress party.

• Chhattisgarh too, had Assembly elections in 2022. Ahead of the polls, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya reached the state in order to campaign. In one of his speeches, he claimed that the state's unemployment rate had increased under Chhattisgarh's Congress government. However, public data refuted this claim.

• In January 2022, the official account of the Punjab Congress shared a photo of a group of women taking selfies in front of pink buses. They shared it with the claim that the Congress government was running special buses for women in Punjab so they can travel safely.

• However, the photograph used in the post shows a scheme run by the Assam government.

Voters Aware Of Being Victims of Misinformation, But Not Active

Two global organisations, UNESCO and Ipsos, conducted a survey in 16 countries, given the number of elections across the world in 2024. The findings were:

• 56 percent of respondents said that they used social media as their primary source of information.

• 68 percent of those surveyed believed that there was a lot of misinformation, which was being deliberately spread on the internet.

• 87 percent expressed concern over the impact of 'fake news' over the elections in their country, whereas 47 percent said that they were "very worried."

Only 48 percent of respondents had 'reported' misinformation that was spread during election campaigns on the platform that they saw it on.

How Can One Verify Misleading Claims Made in Election Campaigns?

Now that we know how rampant this misinformation is, the question is: How can we verify it?

• When someone claims that the GDP of a certain state has changed, the number of terror attacks is so-and-so, the number of unemployed people is a specific figure, what can one do?

• We answer these questions in the simplest way, to help you spot misinformation, in this episode of 'Verify Kiya Kya?'.

(Note: The story has been updated to add Union Minister S Jaishankar's statement on claims of India's intervention in Russia-Ukraine war.)

(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9540511818, or e-mail it to us at [e-mail] and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)