The menace of Fake news has gained much attention during the recent time. “Fake news” is a term that may have different meaning in different context. Fake news or junk news can also be called propaganda and intentional wrong with misleading information or hoaxes. Generally, it is an intentional item to mislead public about anything in order to increase viewership or readership. Sensationalist, dishonest, or totally fabricated headlines are used either about entity, or person or community etc., in order to gain financially or politically.

Whenever Fake news is discussed then two terms i.e. „disinformation? and „misinformation? are often combined. But UNESCO published a new edition from their series “Handbook for Journalism Education and Training” where these two terms were defined differently. According to UNESCO, “disinformation is generally used to refer to deliberate attempts to confuse or manipulate people through delivering dishonest information to them. This is often combined with parallel and intersecting communications strategies and a suite of other tactics like hacking or compromising of persons. Misinformation is generally used to refer to misleading information created or disseminated without manipulative or malicious intent.”¹

The sources of fake news may be through print or electronic news media or through social media.² When Fake news finds its ways in mainstream media then this type of news can be very hard to correct and may have long lasting effects even after it is discredited. The Internet has grown to heights, and its boundaries are unlimited as well as unimaginable it is loaded with tons of information or misinformation, which can be made by anyone. The content which is fabricated, and headings which are misleading, and false context convinced millions of internet users worldwide. Sometimes, the Fake news publishers earn revenue by collaborating with companies like Google AdSense, Media.net and marketing affiliate programs like Amazon Associates which put advertisements on their Web pages.

According to survey conducted by Pew Research Center in 2016 it was found that most Americans suspect that fake news is having an impact. And even some Americans said they themselves shared fake news. Nearly 1/3 adults (32%) said they often see fake political news online, while 39% sometimes saw such stories and 26% hardly ever or never done that.³

The freedom to inform also suffers as journalists are expected to work fairly and fearlessly. But, it becomes difficult for them to do so when they get threatened and insulted on social networks. The Council of Europe published a survey in April 2017, relating to harassment against journalists which was conducted in its 47 member

countries. Out of the 940 journalists polled, 40% of them said they had been subjected to forms of harassment that had “affected their personal life” in the previous 3 years. Out of these cases, 53% consisted of cyber harassment.¹

Political actors have created a system of misinformation and propaganda war room and have utilized this digital opportunity to put anything as news and to weaken any information that is against their political agenda by calling it as Fake News. This system of fake news factories controlled by political actors has not been studied in depth. There is a basic difference between what is actually fake news and for what purpose the term of fake news is used for. First is fake news genre, where deliberate creation of misinformation takes place, and the latter is fake news label, where the term is used to delegitimize news media.

Political parties are exploiting digital technology and social media platforms to spread fake news and undermine trust in the media, public institutions, and science. It is being done to manipulate public opinion to bring them in their favor.

At a time when news consumption is increasingly digital, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and “black-box” algorithms are being leveraged to challenge truth and trust: the cornerstones of our democratic society.² According to a survey done by Microsoft, India³ topped fake news menace globally. The report showed out of the total Indians surveyed, 64 percent have encountered fake news as against the global average which was 57 per cent.

Major political parties in India have established separate cyber cell and information technology departments. They work in a very systematic way to create social networking profiles and disseminate information, disinformation and propaganda news to their supporters. Thousands of pages over Facebook and Twitter profiles with several thousand Whatsapp groups all comprising millions of users and members are being created by various political parties to influence voters and the public in general. Recently, low-cost internet data helped increase online news websites, You Tube channels, Facebook pages and Whatsapp groups.

A large number of Indians are unaware of system of Fake News factories which utilizes this large number to push their agenda. This mega online system is encouraging trollers to create man dominant web space where it is easy to harass women on social networking sites. Known journalists, activists and politicians are victims of fake news and online harassment.

Thousands of fake viral message, photoshop pictures reaches to crores of people daily on one or another issue supporting one party or targeting another party or community. It has torn the social fabric of the country and has presented a very nasty picture of the political system. Investigations in numerous incidents of violence and mob lynching against Tribals, Dalits, Minorities other the weaker sections have established fake news spread mostly through WhatsApp groups. The hate created against weaker section of the society by these organized factories of producing fake messages has resulted in lynching and killing of many people around the country.

Billions of Indians use WhatsApp and   Facebook and other social media networks but the same social media may turn anti-social at the hands of rumor mongers leading to lynching.⁴ In 2018, during May and June at least 22 people have been killed by mobs on the suspicion of being child-lifters or involved in cow slaughter in different parts of the country and the police blamed fake news for these lynching.⁵

According to an investigation by Indian Express after interviewing senior police officials it was reported that from mid of 2017 to July 2018 various whatsApp viral messages led to the killing of 27 people in 15 cases of lynchings by uncontrolled mobs blinded by viral rumours of child-kidnappers across nine states from Assam to Tamil Nadu.⁶

Infamous fake news factory i.e Postcard News continues to post with impunity. Though, in 2017, Alt News, which is Fake news buster website, had chronicled numerous instances of fake news posted on this website. It never was punished for creating fake news and for spreading misinformation.¹ Danik Jagran, popular Hindi daily published false news, still on its website,² that victim girl was not raped, though several fake news buster websites such as The Wire, News Click exposed Jagran.³,⁴

When Padmaavat movie related protests were happening in 2017 and the Karni Sena was out on the roads (because they claimed that the Hindu princess Padmavati?s story was being distorted in the movie), a school bus was attacked in Gurgaon (a city in Haryana). Suddenly a message went viral to show five Muslims were involved.⁵

In India, since 2015 lynching has become a major problem. It became prominent especially when a Muslim villager named Akhlaq, a resident of Uttar Pradesh was killed by a mob after rumors spread that he was storing beef in his freezer. In this case the accusation was spread by a loudspeaker from a nearby temple. Mohammad Ali, an Indian journalist, said that “crime and the killings of the past months had a common thread, linked to rising nationalist sentiment in the country”.⁶

According to a Reuters report, in India, a total of 63 cow vigilante attacks had occurred between 2010 and 2017. In that period also it occurred mostly since the NDA government came to power in 2014. In these attacks, 28 Indians were killed and 124 were injured. Out of the 28 killed, 24 of them were Muslims.⁷ Majority of these incidents are directly supported by online fake news messages and indirectly by hatred created through these messages.

Human rights groups and researchers have cautioned Facebook that it is being used to spread half-truth and promote hate about Muslims, particularly the Rohingya, since 2013. In April, the Guardian reported that hate speech through Facebook in Myanmar had bursted during the Rohingya crisis, which was caused by a crackdown by the military in Rahkine state in August, 2017. Several thousands of Rohingya Muslims were massacred, sexually exploited and assaulted, houses and vllages were leveled to the ground and more than 700,000 Rohingya escaped over the border to Bangladesh.⁸

As the users of Facebook touched to 18 million, so too did hate speech, but it reacted very slowly and earlier in 2018 found its platform accused by a UN investigator of fuelling anti-Muslim violence.⁹ In mid-2014, after rumours online about a Muslim man raping a Buddhist woman started lethal riots in the city of Mandalay, the Myanmar government requested a crisis meeting with Facebook. It said that government should send an email when they saw examples of dangerous false news and the company would review them.¹⁰The report by San Francisco-based nonprofit Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) found that, in Myanmar, “Facebook has become a means for those seeking to spread hate and cause harm, and posts have been linked to offline violence.”¹

This trend has led to create more fake pages on Facebook just as Info wars is a fake news page over Facebook. Facebook not just allow Infowars but it earns profit from the it and its audience. Facebook?s advertising tools, allow advertisers to pay Facebook to target the 743,220 users who “like” the InfoWars page.²These types of pages are flourishing on Facebook in innumerous number and revenue generation is continued.

What?s happening on the Facebook platform raises doubts about its public relations campaign where it claims to have removed 652 fake accounts and pages meant to influence world politics. It also announced removal of pages, groups and accounts linked to Russia and Iran, citing „coordinated inauthentic behavior?³

In 2016, Facebook and Google faced sharp public criticism that fake news on their sites may have prejudiced the presidential election?s result. Google also permanently barred approximately 200 AdSense publishers for alleged violations of the updated AdSense Program Policies, which regulate the use of “misrepresentative content” on publisher Web sites.⁴

Several countries like France, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, Egypt, Russia and U.K have started deliberations to frame Laws and rules to check abuse of free speech and to curb and control the menace of Fake News.

The France?s Parliament in 2018 passed a new law against fake news. It has given power to Courts in France to order the immediate removal of "fake news" which was published during election periods. The same law allows to suspend foreign television if they "deliberately disseminate false information likely to affect the sincerity of the elections.” This implies that France has the power to take on any foreign TV station suspected of spreading “false news.⁵As penalty, law provided for one year imprisonment and a fine. This law has been criticized a lot.

The Office of Communications (OFCOM) in the UK controls broadcast media. The Independent Monitor for the Press (IMPRESS) and Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) which are UK Press watchdogs will regulate only those newspapers whether traditional and online that sign up to their terms and conditions. The fact is that these are limited in number.⁶ Also neither IPSO nor IMPRESS have taken any significant as a regulatory action. Therefore, a UK parliamentary committee (the Culture, Media and Sport Committee) commenced an enquiry into tackling the problem of fake news. ⁷ The committee looked into various important questions like „what is fake news?; „its impact on public understanding?; „effect of sale and purchase of advertisements over the growth of fake news? etc. Further, the committee looked into the responsibility of social networks for harmful and illegal content on their platforms.⁸

In 2018 Egypt?s Parliament passed an anti-fake news law. Under the law, the social media accounts and blogs which will have more than 5,000 followers on sites such as Twitter and Facebook will be treated as media outlets. It will make them subject to prosecution if they will publish fake news. This law also regulates the establishment of