As a part of the on-going educational campaign by WhatsApp on user safety, WhatsApp has initiated a radio campaign to create awareness about misinformation circulated on the platform. Through this radio campaign, WhatsApp urges its users to be cognizant of the messages they receive and be mindful before forwarding.
The first phase of the educational campaign started on August 29 with radio ads across 46 Hindi speaking radio stations of AIR across 7 states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The second phase of the campaign starts on September 5 with radio ads across 83 radio stations of AIR across the states of Assam, Tripura, West Bengal, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Orissa and Tamil Nadu. These campaigns will run in eight regional languages i.e. Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Telugu, Oriya and Tamil and will run for a 15-day duration. The campaign has been designed in an easy to understand format to help user’s spot misinformation and further sensitize them about the challenges of fake news and addressing these as a society.
These radio campaign highlights some easy tips to help users decide if the message shared with them on WhatsApp is true or not –
· Understand when a message is ‘forwarded’ – Double check the facts when you’re not sure who wrote the original message
· Check information that seems unbelievable and photos carefully – Stories that seem hard to believe are often untrue so check elsewhere to see if they are really true. It is easier to believe photos and videos, but even these can be edited to mislead you. Sometimes the photo is real, but the story around it is not. So look online to see where the photo came from, before believing in it
· Question information that upsets you – If you read something that makes you angry or afraid, ask whether it was shared to make you feel that way. And if the answer is yes, think twice before sharing it again
· Be thoughtful about what you share – If you are not sure of the source or concerned that the information may be untrue, think twice before sharing
