The idea was to provoke him to give a juicy answer, but given that we have he’s one of the few academically inclined industrypersons, we were bound to get an answer like what he has given. Here’s the January 11 edition of Das ka Dum with Dr Bhaskar Das. Read on…
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Q: As we enter an election year, who does one trust for news that is authentic and one that all of us can trust?
A: I align with your concern. In the age of post-truth and deep fake, it is well nigh impossible to decode what is truth and what is false. In an environment of ubiquitous presence of social media, everyone can be a content creator and there is no accountability for fact-checking. Everyone loves to share, including forwarding and re-forwarding, which has been engendering different levels of socio-political and cultural tension.
With the ensuing general election, these trend would only get more intense—perhaps it’s a curse of digital world. As they say, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. So citizens need to act responsibly and verify facts from reliable/ multiple sources before participating in spreading/ sharing information whose veracity could be in doubt. We have no choice but to live with this new social reality. But one need not be a victim of this as gullible citizens.